“The bear pit was my grandmother’s idea,” Dracula tells me.

This is probably the closest I’ll ever get to royalty. Dracula, or at least the man playing Dracula, has what my British friend Becky calls a suspiciously “posh” accent. But, of course, he’s not royalty. He’s the owner of the castle we’re visiting, bereft of the aristocratic title by virtue of the archaic rules that define which bloodlines they can travel down.

This all transpired last October, when Bob and I flew over to Ireland to go hiking. We had come to the decision just as we left to shut our glamping site, a Tentrr site, for good. After five years operating it, our family decided that it was too much of an infringement on our quality of life. Glamping guests typically lack the survival skills of veteran campers, which meant we felt we had more responsibility for their safety and welfare. As we became increasingly worried about Mom’s health last fall, the burden of worrying about campers became too great. Glamping guests needed to be escorted to the site since it was in our upper pastures, which left us sitting around and waiting for them to arrive, typically on Friday evenings, when we most needed to get to bed to be ready to get up early for the cafe. Their presence would disrupt our grazing rotations, caused biosecurity concerns when there would be avian flu flare-ups, and, quite frankly, none of us enjoyed endlessly toting water up to the site, and we especially disliked clearing away the Double Doodie toilet bags. The enterprise was in the black, but it made our moods black to deal with it. So instead we blacked out the booking calendar for good the day before boarding the airplane. And that left us with extra time for vacation.

Since we’d come that far, we added an extra week onto our trip to visit our beloved friends in England, Bob and Becky Bowie. We were school teachers in Japan together when we were all fresh out of college, about thirty years ago. They’ve chosen today’s excursion in the Lake District to Muncaster Castle, a reputedly haunted castle overlooking miles of English countryside that were once in the castle’s domain. We’re here to visit the gardens and do some hiking…Only the genteel castle grounds have been transformed. A werewolf lumbers by and waves at us. Food carts line the pathways, selling an assortment of junk food. Little kids in costume run around playing games while younger siblings call after them from strollers. It’s a little….surreal.

Dracula has popped out of nowhere, observed that we didn’t look like we’d been expecting the current activities, and directed us down some quiet paths to enjoy the gardens and the views.

But I had to know more.

“Is this place …yours?”

Indeed, he was the present…ummm…what would you call it? Lord? Heir?

“Custodian,” is what he prefers. Or, “operations director.”

And the Halloween festival was an important fundraiser for the castle, which has been in Ewan Frost-Pennington’s (A.K.A. Dracula’s) family for over 800 years.

“If you want to get scared, you should see the energy bills for this place,” he confides. “They’re a nightmare! I was working in renewable energy in San Francisco when Mom and Dad called and said it was time to come home and take over the castle.”

“Wow! It sounds kind of like trying to take over the family farm,” I observe. “We’re always looking for new ways to keep afloat.”

And that’s how the bear pit came up. It was Dracula’s — or, rather, Ewan’s grandmother’s attempt at a side hustle to generate revenue. He has since converted it into a solar farm.
I’m guessing that’s a far better return to labor.

Still, as our conversation unfolds, Ewan’s got a tough row to hoe. He points to his face, smeared in white greasepaint, with red smears down the sides of his mouth that I think are supposed to be blood, and rolls his eyes. “I know my face looks bad,” he tells me, “but I just couldn’t swing the cash for a makeup artist this year. I did it myself.”

I take in the size of the castle, the expansive outbuildings, and try to wrap my head around the repair and upkeep. It makes keeping livestock look easy. Ewan lists all the different endeavors he and his crew have pursued to keep the castle and grounds going — vacation cottages, a hawk and owl center, garden tours, a weapons hall, traditional lodging, concerts, drag shows..and, yes, even a few glamping sites (poor guy!).

We have a good laugh, and then we move along to experience the Muncaster Zombie Shootout, with proceeds going to raise funds for the red squirrels, who are as endangered as the castle. And as we amble down an English country lane combatting zombies with water pistols, I think about the different enterprises at Sap Bush that have met with success — the livestock, the wool bedding and yarn, the Airbnbs, the cafe, the honor store….And then all the things that have gone the way of Ewan’s grandmother’s bear pit: Honey bees (the bears kept invading, or the cold was too severe, and Bob was too allergic); the berries (as soon as the bees were gone, the berries gave up on us); homemade soap and tallow and bayberry candles (once I was no longer home with the girls, I didn’t have that kind of time to stand still); handmade wool socks from a reproduction World War I sock knitting machine; handmade baskets; cut flowers; chocolate truffles, various farmers markets, and the latest….the glamping site.

As I reflect on all of it, I have to admit that our choice to let enterprises go wasn’t usually about money. Rather, as we grew and changed, they would begin to interfere with our quality of life. We’ve managed to stay in business for 45 years now. And while that pales to 800 years, I have learned that keeping the family farm going has been about more than making sure everything gets done each season. It has been about the art of surrender, to recognize when something must be let go, because life has changed.

And today, as I reflect on that journey to Muncaster castle and our chance meeting with Ewan Frost-Pennington, I recognize that my life has changed a lot since then. But it hasn’t changed for the worse. Yes, we are negotiating health issues with Mom, but without the stress of unwanted enterprises and responsibilities, we find ourselves able to accept this experience as part of the adventure of life. When we are tending to health matters, we feel grateful for the freedom to prioritize them. When we are tending to our labors, they are only those labors we love most deeply, so they lift our spirits. I don’t think I could face this time of life without uplifting work. And I am grateful for each enterprise we’ve been able to set aside to make room for how fate carries us forward.

I’m especially grateful that most of our enterprises could go into storage in the cafe basement, or up into the loft, or out into the barn, so that Saoirse and Ula can return to them with their own families someday if they choose to. …and that we didn’t need to find new homes for bears.

Interested in learning more about Muncaster Castle?  If you’re a family farmer or small business owner, you might be surprised how much you have in common with them! I strongly recommend a visit. https://www.muncaster.co.uk/

Want to learn more about Ewan’s (Dracula’s) plans for the future?  Check out this piece in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/feb/26/muncaster-castle-plans-cumbria-estate-eco-attraction-carbon-zero

If you enjoyed this, please share this podcast with friends & family to get the ideas to spread.  Better still, you can help make the magic happen for as little as $1/month by hopping over to Patreon and looking up Shannon Hayes.  Or, if it’s easier, you can also donate to support the podcast by sending a check to Shannon Hayes, ℅ Sap Bush Hollow Farm, 832 W. Fulton Rd, West Fulton, NY  12194.

And that’s a really important thing to do, because all of this— the podcast, the blog, the books and the creative recharging that happens over fall and winter—   are a result of the support of my patrons on Patreon.  This podcast operates much like public radio.  It is freely available to all, made possible by the gifts from our patrons.  And this week I’d like to send a shout out to my patrons Tali Richards & Beth Southwick.  Thank you, folks!  I couldn’t do it without you! 

Want to learn more about Sap Bush Hollow Farm?  Find us here.