Relaxing at Shelburne Farms in Late Summer

The beauty of the Vermont landscape takes my breath away! This is the fourth post of several highlighting some of my favorite shots from our trip to Vermont last summer. Above, the view of Lake Champlain and the surrounding mountains, sky and clouds from the shores of Shelburne Farms make me wonder if this could have been the inspiration for all those blues in my crayon box.

Lots more pictures below!

Our trip to Shelburne Farms was our “Girls’ Day Out.” I love this picture of the twins and Paige!

As we were driving up to the farm, I had to stop the car and take this picture of the meadows leading up to the mansion. What a gorgeous place.

Shelburne Farms was created as an agricultural estate in 1886 by William Seward and Lila Vanderbilt Webb. With over 400 acres of woodlands on the 1,400-acre estate, the farm is Green Certified from the American Tree Farm System.

On the shores of Lake Champlain in Vermont, Shelburne Farms is an educational non-profit that hopes to cultivate a conservation ethic in students, educators and families who visit. There are walking trails, a children’s farmyard, a beautiful inn and restaurant, tours and special events. I kept thinking how wonderful it would be to shoot a wedding here! The farm practices rural land uses that are environmentally, economically and culturally sustainable. For information about visiting Shelburne Farms, click here to get to the Web site.

Once we were finished with our Girls’ Day Out, we met up with the boys, and we had fun skipping rocks on Lake Champlain.

And I had fun taking pictures and playing around with various camera settings for film speed, aperture and shutter speed. (I always shoot on all manual settings, which makes it easy to experiment with different settings when I want to.)

The farm is a very relaxing place.

The day we were inside for our tour, there was a girl from some European country dressed in a costume on the tour with us. See her in the back?

The 24 guest rooms in the Inn are decorated with unique furnishings, much of which is original to the Webb home. I took pictures in a few of the rooms. Above, the Louis XVI Room celebrates the French ruler and is decorated in pastels and florals. The furniture was purchased in 1899 and the wall paper pattern and color is based on the original.

This is the Rose Room, the bedroom of William Seward and Lila’s only daughter and eldest child, Frederica. The wallpaper was designed to look like silk fabric of the period. Much of the furniture is original to the room.

This bedroom, known as The Brown Room, belonged to Vanderbilt Webb, William Seward and Lila’s youngest son. Its windows have a beautiful view of the perennial gardens. The furniture features sycamore and holly inlaid in mahogany.

The Webb Room was first used as a nursery and later became Dr. Webb’s bedroom. The spiral staircase was added later to connect his bedroom with his dressing room above. The Renaissance Revival-style furniture originally belonged to Lila’s father, William Henry Vanderbilt. If I were going to be staying in the Inn for the night, I think this room might creep me out a little bit. I had an odd queasy feeling in this room, like the eyes in the portraits were following me. Of course they weren’t, but it felt a little strange and I don’t think I’d be able to sleep in here.

I believe this is the South Room, though the drapery appears different from the drapery shown on the Inn’s Web site for this room. Curious. If it is the South Room, it was originally Lila Webb’s dressing and sitting room. I distinctly remember the view of the barn from this room’s windows causing me to close my eyes for a moment and imagine how a working farm from the 1900s would look different from how it looks today. This is the room I felt most comfortable in. I could sleep here. Ahhhh.

The Green Room’s decorative patterns have an oriental influence from the 1920s. The wallpaper was copied from an original screen.

While we were there with the twins, I asked them to show me some of their games.

I loved how they showed me their songs.

I was trying to capture some of the key moves so they could remember these games when they’re my age. My friends and I used to play games like this when we were young girls too. I would love to have pictures of that. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could see pictures of children playing on the farm from the 1910s or so? I wonder if the girls playing hand-clapping games like this one.

I also love the blur of the farm in the background.

In the house’s attic is a wonderful playroom! We could have spent hours in there, and I am assuming that guests of the inn who bring well-behaved children to stay probably do spend some time playing up there. I remember being amazed that the inn allows guests to stay in the rooms in the first place, and even more amazed that they also invite children to stay! What a fantastic way to immerse children in history, educating them on the past, as well as sharing meals with them from locally grown food. Even more, the restaurant staff happily tells guests all about where the food came from and how it was prepared. It’s a great experience just being there.

The grass-based dairy is based from purebred, registered Brown Swiss cows whose milk is transformed into the fabulous cheddar cheese available on the farmhouse’s property. In the background of this picture of the girls relaxing in comfortable Adirondack chairs, the outside deck is being prepared for dinner in the Inn’s restaurant. Open to the public in spring, summer and fall through October 18 this year, the restaurant features seasonal fare using fresh ingredients grown on the farm’s property and on other local Vermont farms.

I kept picturing the twins as girls from a century ago. That is, until dad called on the cell phone.

I got so many fun pictures of the girls that day!

And lots of nice pictures of Paige with the girls too, which was a really nice way to compliment the nice pictures we had taken of the girls with their dad on their way to the daddy/daughter dance several months earlier.

I love this picture of Paige and the girls on the patio. There is a flaw in the picture though. Can you see it?

If you visit Shelburne Farms, be sure to pick up some cheese and fresh vegetables from the Market Garden, and if you plan to dine in the Restaurant, reservations are required. But you can also go, like we did, just for a tour of the grounds and the building. After our tour, we were treated to a wonderful afternoon tea with delicious homemade cookies and confections. All in all, I fully recommend planning a day-long visit to Shelburne Farms. It’s a beautiful place with written and human guides that educate about the history of the grounds and is well-worth the trip for families, couples and groups.

Click the links below to read each post in my “Late Summer in Vermont” series:
Part 1: Scenes of Late Summer in Vermont
Part 2: Vermont’s Late Summer Harvest
Part 3: Vermont’s Mad River is Brrrrrrrrr
Part 4: Relaxing at Shelburne Farms in Late Summer
Part 5: Late Summer Fun at Vermont’s Sugarbush
Part 6: American Flatbread: The Place for Pizza