Joe Tennis
Diane Vogt visits Christian the Llama.
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.
Storybrook Farm features a handsomely decorated home with a piano and three guest rooms. INSET: The farm includes a chicken house, where the Vogts collect fresh eggs for their breakfasts.
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. For more like it, subscribe today or log in to the digital edition with your active digital subscription. Thank you for your support!