By Katy Savage, Standard Staff
A Massachusetts couple has a vision for their newly acquired 59 acres on Best Road in Hartland.
“We want to make this place the ultimate vacation,” Suzy Kaplan said.
Kaplan and her fiancé Todd Heyman are building a farm hotel called Fat Sheep Farm and Cabins.
On Tuesday, excavators covered their yard, Catamount Solar installers climbed a roof, two builders from Perkinsville sipped coffee inside a cabin and baby goats cried in the background.
Once they’re done, five cabins will range in size from 500 to 660 square feet and be equipped with kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms and rented out to guests, who will be able to pick their own vegetables, get fresh eggs every morning and play with lambs in the spring.
The two dreamed of living on a farm and this is their way of making it possible.
“I think the goal was always to be able to farm but to have another business to help sustain it,” Heyman said.
Kaplan and Heyman want to start renting the cabins in May. While they do that, they want to renovate a 1970s barn and install a commercial kitchen in the basement and serve food to guests upstairs. They want to bring in professional chefs, build an outdoor pizza oven and do Saturday night pizza for the community. They envision yoga retreats in the barn and cheesemaking workshops.
“Right now we’re still trying to define it,” Heyman said.
Heyman and Kaplan come from Massachusetts — he lived in Cambridge, she lived in Jamaica Plain.
They spent all last winter looking for land, hunting for an affordable place with good soil and a good place for their cabin business.
They looked in Maine and New Hampshire and even Pomfret before choosing Hartland.
“For what we wanted to do it was really hard to find the right property,” said Kaplan. “This place was perfect.”
Suzy Kaplan and Todd Heyman stand in front of one of the partially constructed cabin on their farm. (Katy Savage Photo)
Carol Stedman, who owns Clay Hill Farm in Hartland, rents a bedroom on her farm with Vacation Rentals By Owner.
“It’s hard to make it straight farming,” said Stedman who knows Kaplan and Heyman through the Hartland Farmers’ Market.
Kaplan and Heyman are determined. They’ve wasted no time since they moved in March.
They planted thousands of pounds of vegetables, covering an acre of property.
“You name it we pretty much grew it,” said Heyman.
They grew unique food like shishito peppers and husk cherries, which taste like cross between a tomato and a pineapple.
They wanted to try everything their first year to see what worked best.
“We don’t get much time off,” Kaplan said.
Sometimes they’re outside as late as 10 p.m., gardening with headlamps.
They cleared trees, restored a barn that was falling down and had local contractors build a milking area for the sheep.
They have five sheep now and eventually want 15. Kaplan plans to make goat cheese, ice cream and butter — next year’s projects.
“I grew up in the suburbs of New York City and always dreamed of living on a farm,” Kaplan said.
She rode horses — her “escape from mini-malls,” she said.
She was a zookeeper at the Franklin Park Zoo before she joined the Peace Corps, spending two years in Nicaragua, starting in 2004.
She lived among people in the worst of conditions, with dirt floors and no money. The people made and grew their own food and relied on each other.
“They’re the happiest people that you’ll ever meet,” Kaplan said.
That’s where she learned about food. She bought wheat at a market and grinded it into flour to bake bread.
After Nicaragua, she taught English in Japan for two years, where she was a couch surfer, hosting people from all over the world in her home.
“That was another reason I wanted to do something like this,” Kaplan said.
Heyman, a former lawyer, switched careers and became interested in food when he started running, at one point qualifying for the Boston Marathon. He took culinary classes in Austin, Texas and worked at an organic farm on weekends. He went to a farm training at the University of Vermont.
“We both love food so much and we just want to share it with everybody,” Kaplan said.
Their growing season in Hartland is winding down. But they’re busy managing everything else.
“Right now we’re just farming while everything else happens around us,” Heyman said.
This article first appeared in the September 22, 2016 edition of the Vermont Standard.