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John and Diane Vogt fled Chicago about 30 years ago for the mountains of northeast Tennessee, tagging along three children, then ages 2, 5 and 8.
“We just wanted a different way to raise the kids,” says Diane Vogt, 65.
This family lived near Milligan College for a couple of years then bought their Storybrook Farm at Jonesborough, Tennessee, in the early 1990s, homeschooling their children, landscaping the property and building a couple houses, all a little bit at a time.
“In Michigan and Wisconsin, I just always worked on farms, lived on farms,” John Vogt says. “Basically, I just love looking at open space.”
Storybrook Farm Bed & Breakfast (423-262-7995) opened to overnight guests in 2011.
Today, John, 66, is the breakfast chef, serving German pancakes with peaches from his orchard. “And it’s like eating a big peach pie with a sponge cake,” he says with a hearty laugh.
The Vogts named their 25-acre farm “Story” in honor of the National Storytelling Festival, held on the first weekend of each October at Jonesborough. That gathering coincides with a variety of natural fall color at the Storybrook Farm—“orange, red, yellow, deep purplish,” Diane Vogt says. “And then our trees in the woods all turn colors.”
This farm includes a chicken house, where the Vogts collect eggs for their breakfasts, plus a couple of well-loved mascots: a horse named Chase and a llama called Christian.
Guests can also discover the fruits of this land and sample what’s ripe, says a smiling Diane. “Sometimes people will go walking, and they’ll say ‘Oh, blueberries.’ So it’s more like an agri-tourism-type thing than a working farm.”
TRAVEL PLANNER
Farm & Stay: Storybrook Farm Bed & Breakfast, Jonesborough, TN. storybrookfarmtn.com. Includes three luxurious rooms.
Do: Fruit orchards and animals on site; walk among gardens.
Eats: Breakfast served at farm. Lunch at Boone Street Market, 423-753-4722, Jonesborough, TN
The story above is from our September/October 2019 issue.
