WEST SAND LAKE — A rental cabin straight out of “The Hobbit” with a map of Middle-earth is the latest addition to June Farms, the luxury agritourism resort that Matt Baumgartner has developed over the past five years.
How did Baumgartner, the serial restaurateur turned gentleman-farmer, decide to build a Hobbit house as the last rental unit on his farm?
“Over the years, people always give me suggestions,” Baumgartner said.
Along with a treehouse, a Hobbit house is the most common suggestion, he said, so he took it to heart.
The contractors dug and drilled their way into a rocky hill in the forest of the farm and dug a rounded underground cabin, albeit one with a window, black walnut countertops, radiant heating, flickering garden lights and manicured gardens to the front.
Five years after its opening, Baumgartner’s June Farms, which looks more like a patch of verdant forest than a farm, is thriving, welcoming visitors for holiday or weekend “glamping” stays, tours of Wednesday night food trucks and other attractions such as the fiddler who serenades the farm’s heritage livestock.
Soon, all of this activity will likely be showcased in an as-yet-unnamed streaming show about life on the farm, which Baumgartner aims to turn into a more upscale event venue for celebrities and industry influencers. social media.
The show, for which they hope to shoot a pilot later this year, is reportedly inspired by ‘Below Deck’, Bravo’s hit series about the trials, tribulations and antics of young people working as deckhands. aboard a charter. yacht for the rich.
Baumgartner has a lot to do.
Earlier this year, he was looking to hire farm staff/cast members with headshots required for some of the positions.
The unique rental cabins on the farm, including a modernized Airstream trailer and a teepee, will be just as important as the human backdrop.
The Hobbit House, which was due to get its certificate of occupancy this month, will rent for $275 a night on weekdays or $295 on weekends.
As well as acres of forest, walking paths and golf roads on the 120 acre farm, there are fields and cattle pens containing chickens, ducks, Scottish Highland cattle and Tamworth pigs.
Initially, Baumgartner designed the farm as his country home, with the cattle providing farm-to-table food production.
But he didn’t like the idea of killing the animals, so now “they’re just pets,” he says.
It also has miniature Nubian goats, a dog, and barn cats (the “barn” is actually a rustic outdoor dining area with bar).
Baumgartner opened the Bombers Burrito Bar in downtown Albany in 1997, followed by other places including Wolff’s Biergarten and the Olde English Pub as well as establishments in Syracuse and Troy.
But he has since left the restaurant business. He still has four restaurants under contract and the Olde English Pub is for sale.
The decision to transition from restaurateur to rural getaway home was prompted by thoughts during the COVID-19 shutdown and a sense that the management of these businesses is waning. Customers, who seemed increasingly demanding, also played a role.
COVID-19 closures have added to the challenges. And the vast agritourism sector is expected to grow over the next few years.
Straits Research, a business survey firm, predicts that global agritourism will grow nearly 14% by the end of the decade. And the United States is the leader of this trend.
Unlike restaurants where people drink and gobble up, say, big burritos late at night, people come to June Farms to relax.
“A lot of guests use the word unplugged,” Baumgartner said.
That’s not to say June Farms is a retirement gig.
On a recent visit, Baumgartner was on the move, meeting with contractors, racing around the grounds in one of the farm’s golf carts to check on guests and making progress on the finishing touches to the Hobbit home.
Every few minutes he would shout a memo or reminder into his cell phone, such as the need to clean golf carts three times a week.
Baumgartner is taking some time to breathe – the farm is a summer operation and he is spending January through May in Miami to decompress and consider his next business move.
Above all, it looks like June Farm is a place where Baumgartner’s imagination can run wild.
As The Hobbit’s house opened, contractors about a quarter mile away worked on the next set of rentals – a series of four Quonset hut buildings which Baumgartner dubbed the Pig Stuy, an apparent ode to both animal husbandry pig and to the city of Stuyvesant, or Stuy Town, a residential neighborhood in eastern Manhattan.
It will feature hot tubs and a luxury/agricultural theme with what could be plush “pig pens” inside the structures. He’s also considering an A-frame, which is another often-suggested idea, or a Japanese tea house.
Baumgartner relies on two Bethlehem-area entrepreneurs he has worked with for a long time, Phil Rowlands and Tom Brennan, to bring his visions to fruition.
“They’re like artists,” Baumgartner said of the two.
The two men and another worker, Clint Junco, were at the first Quonset hut to be erected and were working on ways to put the trim on the outside of the structure.
These huts are built as utilitarian steel structures, so turning them into whimsical agritourism huts will require some imaginative design and construction.
Brennan said they enjoyed the uniqueness and building challenges that come with realizing Baumgartner’s visions.
“Projects are tough in a good way,” Brennan said. “You don’t just go to the store and buy Hobbit House beams or Airstream doors.”
“There’s nothing typical or standard here and we like that,” Rowlands added.
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