Front Door

Patchwork Farm Retreat is on 103 acres of wooded mountainside just 20 minutes from downtown Northampton in western Massachusetts. The forest of red oak, sugar maple, beech, ash, white, yellow and black birch, white pine and hemlock trees is laced by several miles of beautiful walking trails.

One trail leads to a small wildlife pond, another to a row of giant oaks flanking a natural, stone Poet's Seat, and yet another to a high clearing with its Hermit Hut, which invites camping, sitting around a fire, or watching the wind stir towering red oaks.

High in the center of the land, looking southeast to the Holyoke Range and the Pioneer Valley, sits the little Cottage where we hold creative writing retreats and where we eat delicious meals. The cottage is occasionally available to rent, fully furnished.

Recent visitors to the cottage include a gyre of seagulls, two pileated woodpeckers, a 3-legged doe, ruffed grouse in the sumac, coyotes on the compost pile, a momma Moose with baby, and a one-eared Black Bear known locally as "Lefty". Chickadees, tufted titmice, nuthatch and goldfinch regularly clean out the birdfeeder; and juncoes, bluejays, wild turkeys and squirrels - gray, red and flying - vie for what's left on the ground.

Downhill from the cottage is the Lower Woods cabin, available to those seeking a peaceful, simple and lovely place to work, dream and meditate.

Prayer

by Michael Leunig

We give thanks for places of simplicity and peace.
May we find such places in ourselves.

We give thanks for places of refuge and beauty.
May we find such places in ourselves.

We give thanks for places of acceptance and belonging.
May we find such places in ourselves.

May we begin to mend the outer world.
According to the truth of our inner life.

From A Common Prayer, Collins Dove (Harper Collins Australia Pty. Ltd.) 1990.