Home Dish Newsletter
Bookmark and Share

A farmstead fit for a family legacy

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION


Photo courtesy of Mike McCaw, Space-Crafting

Legacy Farm™ Builders

3800 Neal Ave. S., Afton
$2,790,000
www.legacyfarmbuilders.com


Home Spotlight:

Come home to the farmstead of your dreams. This estate, complete with a “luxury farmhouse,” lifestyle barn, and apple orchard has 20 acres to play. It represents a return to family values and being active in the outdoors.

This home makes an impression even before you first set your eye on it. From the moment you turn into the driveway, you know you have arrived.

It’s not until you curve around the apple orchard that the house, set majestically atop a hill with a red barn, silo, and windmill behind, comes into view. What you feel next might almost be surprising, if it wasn’t so natural: You’re home.

This picturesque estate calls to mind a farmstead that has endured for generations. That’s exactly the idea, even though the house and barn are brand new, explains John Lavander, president of Legacy Farm™ Builders and Caliber Development Corp. His luxury farmhouse and acreage are about values. “What I’m trying to do is put today’s lifestyle into the buildings and structures of yesteryear,” he says.

The home certainly has today’s modern conveniences: Commercial-grade appliances. An open floor plan. A luxurious outdoor kitchen. A marvelous lower level wine cellar.

Everything is deliberate. Sightlines pull your eye through rooms to focal points, so you experience the home as Lavander intended. Ample windows enjoy incredible views of the St. Croix River Valley.

Photo courtesy of Mike McCaw, Space-Crafting

The barn calls to mind pastoral comfort. Inside, however, this “lifestyle barn and silo” are anything but old-fashioned. This is flexible space designed for today’s families: It could stable horses, or house an indoor pool, sport court, or hobby garage. It awaits the whims of its new owner.

The acreage around the home includes a 200-tree apple orchard and space for a future outdoor pool, baseball diamond, garden, and even a small planting of crops. “It encourages people to have an active lifestyle; it encourages people to get outside,” Lavander says of the home’s surroundings.

The home is based on a renovation of Lavander’s 130-year-old family farmstead. This home has similar aspirations; Lavander’s goal is to create homes that become legacies, remaining in the buyer’s family for generations. And it’s impossible to imagine anyone wanting to part with this place. When the home was open for tours during the Parade of Homes Fall Showcase, Lavander says he had never seen people connect with a house so deeply. That’s the kind of home it is—as soon as you enter, you feel at ease and find yourself wanting to linger in the home or on one of the many porches, soaking up the amazing views.

“Many builders approach this as building a home,” Lavander says. “I’m looking at this as a bigger belief system…if we don’t preserve these kinds of farm buildings, in today’s lifestyle they’re going to go away.

“We’re trying to engage the environment, rather than just preserving the environment.”
 

6 ISSUES (1 YEAR)

Only $9.95!
  • 63% off newsstand price.
  • Includes annual HomeBook.

 

Save Big On:
Everything Home. Everything Local.