Bovina farm fermentory — a short introduction to this piece.
Bovina farm fermentory: Quick Notes
Have you pored over the handwritten menus and Shaker-style dining room of Bovina Farm & Fermentory and wanted to book a trip to upstate New York? Wait til you hear that the couple at its helm, Elizabeth Starks and Jacob Sackett, are now accepting overnight guests—and unsurprisingly, they have a knack for running a cozy inn.
“The world of hauling laundry baskets, bed making, sneaking treats onto pillows, and rising with the sun to bake bread for breakfast is one which certainly suits us,” Elizabeth wrote to us a few weeks back. With the addition of a new-build guest cottage, a redone bedroom evocatively called the Pasture Room, and two lodgings above the restaurant, those who come to Bovina for home-brewed beer and a candlelit communal meal can tuck in afterwards in linen sheets and bed down by the heat of a wood stove.
By way of background: “We began building the main house and brewery barn in 2019 with the help of a local barn builder and my father,” Elizabeth writes. “We took about two years to reach ‘completion’—completion in quotes because things are constant works in progress around here.” The two welcomed dinner guests downstairs (read more about the restaurant here) and stayed, meanwhile, in the empty apartment upstairs. “Jake and I lived there for a while with no furniture. I remember sitting on a quilt on the floor with our new puppy and reading through old cookbooks weeks before our opening. We were radiating with anticipation and truly couldn’t care less that we were living in a construction zone.”
Fast forward a few years, and the couple has finally finished the lodgings they envisioned. “We wanted the inn spaces to match the simple, airy interiors of the dining room in the farmhouse, but with some extra warmth and comfort layered in. We stuck with the basic staples you might find in an old farmhouse or tavern: striped bedding, wrought-iron candlesticks, wooden stools that serve as bedside tables. There is minimal art or flourish in our spaces, as we like the views down the valley over the cow pasture or out toward the sheep paddock or into the woods and ferns to do the talking.”
Today, Elizabeth takes us on her rounds about the inn. Join for a tour:
Photography by Sarah Elliot, courtesy of Bovina Farm & Fermentory.
The Cottage
“Jake and I built The Cottage from the ground up, mostly just the two of us, but pulling in many friends and my father along the way,” Elizabeth says. “We built out the foundation in the winter of 2023—it was a particularly mild December and January.
Bovina farm fermentory appears here to highlight key ideas for readers.
