Bed, Breakfast & Beyond: Twenty Years of Kooky Guests, Gentle Ghosts, And Horses in Between

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Prologue

There I sat, cross-legged on the plaster-covered floor, gazing up at the jagged hole in the ceiling. The phone rang. I crawled across the floor, picked up the receiver, blew off the plaster dust, and sneezed.

Bless you! said a cheery voice. Is this Fairwinds Farm?

Um, yes?

I would like to book a room in your bed and breakfast.

My eyes flew to the gaping hole and around the empty room.

Hello? came the voice.

Oh, sorry, sorry, um, yes, could you hold on a minute?

Leaping from the floor, I ran out to the office and grabbed the first piece of paper I saw—a Home Depot receipt. On my way back to the phone, I snatched a square-tipped carpenter’s pencil from the bottom of an overturned five-gallon bucket.

Could I have your name, please? I said in my best innkeeper voice.

My name is Betty Wagner. I’ll need two rooms and two stalls.

Scribbling frantically on the back of the receipt, I decided to come clean.

Well, Mrs. Wagner, you know, we aren’t quite open yet.

Oh, I know, she said cheerfully. I got your name from that nice girl in the tourism office. She said you were opening a bed and breakfast that could also accommodate horses, so I wanted to get my name in early.

Oh, I see, and just when is it that you need the rooms and stalls?

The first weekend of October.

October. This was March. Peering again at the black hole above, I counted the months quickly in my head.

No problem, Mrs. Wagner, I said, crossing myself. Could I have your phone number, please?

About ten minutes later, Ted came in, carrying a two-by-four. I took it out of his hand (and out of his reach) and put on my best smile.

What’s going on? he asked suspiciously.

Guess what?

His eyes narrowed. My husband of fifteen years knew me too well.

What?

I stepped back and flung out my arms. I just booked a room! (No point in mincing words.)

WHAT? WHEN?

Not until October. Plenty of time! Oh, and it’s two rooms, actually. And two stalls. Wow, what do you think of that? Two rooms booked already and we’re not even open yet! And two stalls!

Ted blinked rapidly like he always does when he’s having an anxiety attack. He simultaneously sighed, shook his head, and rolled his eyes. Retrieving the two-by-four, he trudged into the living room, where a second gaping abyss yawned above.

It was crunch time.

For the next seven months.

Chapter 1

A Sure Thing?

Almost from the beginning of our marriage Ted and I had talked about someday owning a bed and breakfast. Meanwhile, we lived in a two-bedroom trailer on my parent’s dairy farm. The dairy barely supported one family, let alone two. Realizing after about three years that milking cows twice a day wasn’t going to pay the bills, we submitted a bid to operate a county horse park in return for free lodging within the park.

We had already launched a horse business from the dairy farm consisting of one old pony that we schlepped around to birthday parties and fairs, giving rides for fifty dollars an hour. This was the same pony my father bought me at age seven when he decided he needed help rounding up the heifers from the back field. He led the pony up to the house, called me out, picked me up, and put me on the pony bareback. He opened the gate and, slapping the pony on the rump, ordered me to go round up the heifers. This was how I learned to ride.

Lady was her name. The feisty, four-year-old chestnut-and-white pinto turned out to be a gem. I spent many a childhood hour on her, galloping around bareback and shoeless (me, not her), going for day-long adventures through the woods and fields along with my best friend, Mary, and her pony, Kiss & Tell.

Lady was a spitfire with a heart of gold. A friend from middle school once brought her little sister over to the farm and asked if she could ride Lady. The girl was stick thin, a blue bandanna partially covering her near-bald head.

She has a brain tumor, my friend whispered.

The girl, who looked like she might blow away if the wind picked up a little, gazed at me solemnly.

Oh, I don’t know if that’s a good idea, I said. Lady could hardly stand still long enough for me to mount her, and she loved to take off at a gallop just for fun. But with those eyes on me I couldn’t resist. I fetched the mounting block and held fast to Lady’s bridle while my friend helped her sister onto Lady’s bare back.

Hold her tight, I said nervously.

I needn’t have worried. My spirited pony somehow knew she carried precious cargo. For the first time in her life, she stood perfectly still as the girl settled onto her back and then tiptoed around the paddock as if on eggshells.

By the time Lady reached retirement age she had settled down considerably and was put to good use as our pony ride mount. Adding to our equestrian enterprises, Ted and I purchased a battered but potentially stylish horse-drawn carriage. We packed it off to an Amish village in nearby Intercourse, Pennsylvania, for restoration. The Amish also supplied us with a Standardbred horse named Whippoorwill. We were told he could really put in the miles. We began offering our carriage service for weddings, transporting the bride and groom from church to reception.

Armed with this extensive knowledge of all things equine and a twenty-seven–page proposal hammered out in a week, we won the bid to run a sixty-horse county equestrian park in northern Delaware, fifteen miles from the home dairy farm.

We moved our paltry possessions from the trailer on the farm to our new home, a small two-bedroom house attached to the horse stable at the county park. This had been the former caretaker’s house on what was once a DuPont estate. One kitchen window overlooked a stall. A door upstairs opened directly into a hayloft, inviting a constant stream of jokes about Ted and I having a roll in the hay. The house was obviously not suitable for a B&B, and the county administration would not have allowed it anyway. Our dream would have to be put on hold.

For the next thirteen years.

One weekend, about seven years into our tenure at the county park, a couple of our boarders asked if I could transport their horses to a show in Cecil County, Maryland. The name of the stable was Fairwinds. The show happened to fall on a rare Saturday when I had some spare time, so I agreed.

Arriving at Fairwinds, I strolled around the farm property, checking out the two barns—one was a thirty-by-one-hundred foot cinder block structure with eighteen stalls, the other an old bank barn, formerly used for milking cows (I could tell by the adjacent milkhouse) with nine stalls. The farm’s breathtaking setting included a one-acre pond, four fenced-in pastures, and a Victorian-style house. The one-hundred-by-two-hundred foot outdoor riding ring was filling with riders about to begin the first class of the day. I sidled up to one of our boarders watching along the rail.

I’m going to have a place like this someday, I said with conviction.

Fast forward six years: A new county administration came in and unceremoniously kicked us out, thinking they could make a profit running the park with unionized county employees. (They were wrong, but that’s another story.) Given six months to find a new home/business/farm for ourselves and our two sons, Nick, aged nine, and Zach, thirteen, we began searching.

Ted, determined to stay in Delaware, discovered several properties downstate. Enthusiastic at first, we set out to inspect them. A few were so ugly I refused to get out of the car. One sported land so low that we never made it up the flooded farm lane; beneath the puddles were potholes that threatened to swallow our jaunty little yellow Rambler.

We were getting nowhere, and the fights we were having about each new prospect were taking a toll on us. I decided to save the marriage by taking a day off from farm hunting (and from Ted) to attend my favorite auction in nearby Pennsylvania.

That’s when fate stepped in.

Hill’s Auction is legendary for its estate sales and I am a frequent customer. That Saturday in June I happened to be standing near a wagon piled high with a portion of someone’s lifelong possessions, wondering absentmindedly why we gather so much stuff only to have it parceled out at the end of life to the highest bidder. Watching the auctioneer extol the virtues of some precious piece of junk, I overheard someone talking about a farm for sale.

Yeah, it was auctioned on the courthouse steps but nobody bid on it, so the bank has it, he said. I crept closer, all ears. Pretty nice place, too, he continued. Shame.

The man walked away. I followed like a puppy chasing a new toy.

Excuse me, I said, touching him on the arm. I couldn’t help but overhear you talking about the farm for sale. Do you know if it has a name?

Does, he said, scratching his head. I believe it was…

I held my breath.

I believe it was Fairwinds.

Fairwinds. I remembered it well.

Chapter 2

The Fixer-Uppa

My glee at discovering the availability of the Fairwinds property was tempered by the reality of convincing Ted that it was everything we ever wanted. The prospect was complicated by the cruel fact that the house, which had looked so charming on the outside, was a disaster on the inside. My favorite line from The Lion King is when Timon looks out over the parched, cracked, devastated savannah and declares, Talk about yer fixer-uppa! Peering through the filthy windows at the cracked, water damaged, grimy interior of the Fairwinds house, I could relate.

I transported my horse Painted Warrior out to the property several times so I could examine the fifty-two acres surrounding the house on horseback. The lay of the land was just as I remembered it from the horse show—partially wooded, with four beautiful fenced pastures, an outdoor riding ring, an acre pond, a bank barn built into the side of a hill, and another cinder block barn with eighteen stalls. Plus a feature I knew Ted would love—a three-bay equipment shed attached to an enclosed machine shop.

I took it upon myself to explore without the benefit of a real estate agent, so I’m pretty sure my visits would likely be considered trespassing. But I never encountered another soul on the property. There seemed to be no interest in it other than my own.

I say I rather than we because I couldn’t persuade Ted to accompany me on any of my jaunts. His first and most ridiculous objection concerned the location of the farm: Maryland.

I want to stay in Delaware, he declared.

Why? I asked.

Because.

Because why? I persisted, sounding like a third grader.

Because…because…I’m a Delawarean!

Realizing how lame this sounded, he argued the advantages of lower property taxes, no sales tax, and the close proximity of family members. I countered with the benefits of the rural landscape, the superior schools, and the close proximity of five rivers.

Ah, the rivers! I had him there. He dearly loved boating and fishing. The head of the Chesapeake Bay was within seven miles of Fairwinds. Bingo!

It wasn’t as if we were moving far from Delaware, after all. The state line was a mere fifteen miles away. Our new home would be just twenty-two miles from his parents and twenty from my mother, who after my father’s death had moved into a house in suburban Wilmington. Ted didn’t have much of an argument, and he knew it. Still he persisted in searching the real estate ads in our native state. Meanwhile, I was exploring the property at Fairwinds, biding my time.

The day finally came when Ted agreed to take a look at the place. Driving out to the property, I was a nervous wreck. Once there, we strolled around (he had flatly refused to ride a horse), he stone-faced, me humming distractedly. I was careful to avoid the house, hoping to impress him first with the obvious assets of the land. My first ray of hope came when he peered into the equipment shed with attached machine shop and silently nodded.

The inevitable was imminent. As we approached the house I held my breath. Now, just know that the house needs some work, I mumbled, which was the understatement of the year. I led Ted to the window of the dining room, which I knew from prior exploration was the least dismaying of the downstairs rooms, its major flaw being the ragged hole in the ceiling extending down part of one wall. Cupping his hands around his face, Ted leaned in, his nose touching the glass. There he remained for a good three minutes while I bit each of my fingernails to the quick. Finally he stepped back and sighed.

It’s got good molding, he said.

That was it. The place was ours.

Chapter 3

Laying the Foundation

Looking back, I think the idea of a bed and breakfast began brewing in my psyche at an early age. On the dairy farm, a steady stream of hired hands made extra mouths to feed at the breakfast table. My mother fixed eggs in every form along with sausage and bacon brought in from the smokehouse. And then there was scrapple, a regional delicacy consisting of everything boiled from a pig’s head (along with the tail and other unmentionables) mixed with mysterious spices.

Every Sunday, the aroma of hotcakes and sausage wafted up the stairs into my bedroom, tempting me from sleep. Hotcakes, I loved. Ham and eggs, not so much. Mom discovered my distaste for this dish one morning while cleaning out the trash can in the bathroom near the kitchen. To her surprise, she found a quagmire of congealed eggs and sausage, grease turned white, in the bottom of the can. Covering the mess cleverly with Kleenex had not done the job my five-year-old brain expected. My butt received a gentle whack with the yardstick (my mother’s favorite form of corporal punishment.) But my point was made; I was never served that particular concoction again.

The idea that, especially for farmers, breakfast is the most important meal of the day was thus ingrained in me. My father got up at five each morning, pulled on his striped overalls, and trudged to the barn to milk thirty-six Holsteins (and two or three Jerseys thrown in to increase butterfat). After milking the cows and feeding a variety of other farm animals, he returned at eight, expecting a hot and fulfilling meal to last him until noon. Anywhere from one to three hired hands (depending on the time of year) joined him. My two older brothers would be off at school by this time, leaving me sitting with the help, listening wide-eyed to the day’s plans laid out by my father.

When I reached the right age, which by farm standards was about seven, I would meet him at the huge white barn that stood across the pasture field from our brick house. The trip by pickup truck was about one-eighth of a mile. Daddy would drive up the road adjacent to the pasture while Pooch, our shepherd-mix mutt, galloped beside, biting at the hubcaps all the way. It was once estimated that Pooch had been run over at least thirteen times, some of them by tractor, but he never seemed to die from it.

I preferred the adventure of walking to the barn through the pasture field, inspecting each cow plop along the way. Some old and dried (perfect for flinging like Frisbees) and others fresh, green and still steaming. I enjoyed being the center of the cows’ attention long enough for them to lift their heads from grazing to gaze nonchalantly at me while licking the inside of their nostrils with long pink tongues.

Nearing the barn, I stopped at the cement-topped well from which we derived our drinking water. A crack in the round cement cover left just enough room for me to peer with one eye into the black depths below. It was fairly common for a