Retreat for Thanksgiving at Wild Orchard

I love cooking for Thanksgiving dinner. It’s my favorite meal of the year, but it can be a lot of work. If you’re looking to “get away from it all” you don’t have to go far to enjoy a one- or two-night refuge from and enjoy a home cooked meal.

The Wild Orchard Guest Farm in Deerfield, run by owner Molly Grant, is offering a homemade traditional family style turkey dinner with all the trimmings, a crackling fire and a pastoral countryside to ponder over with a glass of red wine.

Sleep tight in one of the six guest bedrooms and enjoy a country breakfast with fresh eggs (from her own chickens), rashers of bacon, cranberry muffins, homemade jam and scones and more.

My daughter and I went to visit the Wild Orchard Guest Farm a few weeks ago to meet their mini horses Silver and Stormy and the resident peacocks: Pharoah, Admiral Bird and Isabella – New Hampshire’s only pure white peacock. We walked away with a few brilliant green and blue feathers and felt as though we had stepped back in time as we walked through the restored 1740’s farmhouse in Deerfield, New Hampshire.

The 100-acre farm is only about half an hour from Exeter and pulls you back in time to an elegant and simpler way of life combining fine American crafts and early American antiques around the house.

I enjoyed our tour of the guest house and learning about all the women they commemorate by naming rooms after women such as Nelly Bly, a 25-year-old journalist, who, in 1889 circumnavigated in 72 days. Or, Eleanor Roosevelt, who they have a letter from because one of the owners of the home wrote to her and got a letter back. Or, Tasha Tudor, the children’s book illustrator.

The property holds on to tradition. Molly’s  and her step daughter continue to make hand-crafted leather shoes, that her husband’s family has been making since the early 1900’s. The Cordwainer Shop also offers private instruction for people learning the craft of shoe making.

For more information go to: http://www.wildorchardguestfarm.com/

For more photos go to www.traceymillerwellness.com