Nordic-inspired country retreat with wood fired tub 25-minutes from Madison, WI

Our complex lives make so many competing demands on us. We are harried. We are separated from those we care most about. And we lose touch with the person we want to be.

The Orchard House at Pied Beauty Farm provides a respite from the unrelenting pace of electronic inboxes, piles of laundry, commutes, pickups, and drop offs. The Orchard House is a beautiful, simple place where guests can be refreshed, reconnect with ones they love, and find space to reimagine the life they want to live.

The House - Simple, Beautiful, True
The Orchard House marries the best ideas of traditional architecture with the clean, simple aesthetic of modern design to create a place of comfort, peace, and inspiration. The house takes its exterior cues from the strong geometry and beautiful proportions of the many tobacco barns that have stood in the Dane County countryside for more than a century. Inside, it draws on modern Nordic design principles to create an uncluttered and welcoming retreat.

The interior employs a simple palette of contrasts between white oak and black walnut, white paneling and black steel, white wool and black leather. The restrained design showcases the house’s many windows as a rotating gallery of landscape paintings: the blaze of autumn leaves, winter’s falling snow, spring bloom, and the many shades of summer green.

A vaulted ceiling in the living room, kitchen, and dining area provides a space of imagination and freedom while the nest-like bedroom is a place of privacy and refuge. Floor to above-head-height windows all along the house’s south wall admit sun in a play of light and shadow that works its way across the floors and washes the walls throughout the day. Morning light filters through tree branches and leaves into the bedroom’s eastern window. Evening sunsets fill the dining area’s bank of western windows. Views of the surrounding meadows, orchard, and forest are available from any vantage point in the house. Windows and doors swing wide open to create a permeable boundary between inside and outside and provide cross ventilation in warm seasons. A wood burning fireplace anchors the living space and is the vital heart of the house in cool and cold weather.

The Orchard House’s finishes are made of traditional, natural materials - oak, bronze, steel, walnut, glass, cotton, wool, leather, clay - and they are used in ways they reveal their character rather than obscuring some other material.

Forest Bathing
From April through December, the Orchard House offers a wood fired tub set in a forest clearing. The two-person tub is close enough to the house to make a cold weather run in a bathrobe. It is far enough though to be a completely private escape. Bathing in the tub is a multi-sensory experience: woodsmoke wafts out from crackling and popping wood in the firebox, starlight filters through tree branches swaying overhead, brisk air washes your face while heat rises up out of the water.

The Location
The Orchard House’s location in southeastern Dane County, Wisconsin provides all the advantages of a country retreat with the convenience of close access to the town and city. The house is five minutes from Stoughton’s art galleries, home boutiques, brewpub, third wave coffee shop, and opera house. It’s also less than thirty minutes from the Capitol Square in Madison and the city’s many dining and entertainment options.

The Orchard House is named after the 300 young heirloom and cider apple trees on the farm. The trees bloom in April and May, and guests are welcome to pick apples and raspberries during their August, September, and October stays. Beyond the orchard, thirty acres of woods and meadows provide both privacy and room to roam.