Join us for a festive Spring brunch at the Rustic Church on Saturday, April 12, 2025 at 11:30AM.
Limited space, reserve your seats today.

Menu
Fresh Fruit Cups
Buttermilk Pancakes Local Maple Syrup
French Toast with Local Maple Syrup
Frittata with Asparagus, Goat Cheese and Herbs
Slab Bacon and Country Sausage
Assorted Muffins including blueberry, banana nut and poppyseed

Served with coffee, juice and iced tea.

Children receive souvenir basket with Bunny shaped Sugar Cookie.

Egg Hunt will follow at 1pm at the garden center.

We so excited to tell you about this amazing night we’ve got coming up!

On Thursday, April 3rd at 6 PM, we’re welcoming The Suitcase Junket to the Rustic Church at Modern Homestead for an unforgettable evening. Live music, great vibes, and a chance to connect with old and new friends. We’ll have concessions, plus craft beer from Short Story Brewing to keep the good times rolling.

Tickets are available now—don’t miss out, it’s going to be a blast!

Join us this summer at the Rustic Church featuring the Cave Twins. Enjoy craft beer by Short Story Brewing and concessions from our cafe.

The Cave Twins is David Mayfield & Abby Rose. Identical twins separated at birth and reunited in song. David Mayfield, a Grammy & Emmy nominated artist grew up in a family band and has toured & recorded with groups like The Avett Brothers, Black Keys, & Mumford & Sons, and made numerous appearances on television including The Late Show with David Letterman & The Grand Ole Opry. Abby grew up alone. With no one to hear her cries. She eventually turned those cries into "songs" and toured extensively with Northeast Ohio supergroup "The Speedbumps" until she found out that she had a long lost twin brother. However, it's not their sordid pasts or even the chilling tale of their separation and journey to find each other that makes them special. No, it's their unique blend of playing instruments and singing words that really sets them apart. Their music has been described as, "A nice mix of short cute little songs & shorter cuter littler songs". 

Join us this summer at the Rustic Church featuring The Wildmans. Enjoy craft beer by Short Story Brewing and artisan pizza by Imposter Pizza.

The Wildmans come from the hills of Floyd, Virginia, in the heart of the Appalachian mountain music tradition. From campsite jamming at festivals and fiddler's conventions and a college level music education comes the foundation for musical exploration that sets this group apart, taking the audience on a musical journey that reflects the growth and passion of these talented musicians.

The group has appeared on stages large and small, performing in festivals such as Red Wing Roots, Chantilly Farm's Bluegrass and BBQ festival, Grey Fox Bluegrass, Floyd Fest, and The Steep Canyon Rangers’ Mountain Song Festival. They also regularly represent young talent along the Crooked Road in regional fiddler’s conventions. Having shared the stage with talents such as Bela Fleck, The Steep Canyon Rangers. The Steel Wheels, Danny Knicely, Sammy Shelor, Sierra Hull, Billy Strings, and more. These young musicians are making their way in the American stringband scene.

Join us for a festive Spring brunch at the Rustic Church on Saturday, March 23, 2024 at 11:30AM.
Limited space, reserve your seats today.

Menu
Fresh Fruit Cups
Buttermilk Pancakes Local Maple Syrup
French Toast with Local Maple Syrup
Frittata with Asparagus, Goat Cheese and Herbs
Slab Bacon and Country Sausage
Assorted Muffins including blueberry, banana nut and poppyseed

Served with coffee, juice and iced tea.

Children receive souvenir basket with Bunny shaped Sugar Cookie.

Egg Hunt will follow at 1pm at the garden center.

Featured on NPR's Mountain Stage.

The Cave Twins is David Mayfield & Abby Rose. Identical twins separated at birth and reunited in song. David Mayfield, a Grammy & Emmy nominated artist grew up in a family band and has toured & recorded with groups like The Avett Brothers, Black Keys, & Mumford & Sons, and made numerous appearances on television including The Late Show with David Letterman & The Grand Ole Opry. Abby grew up alone. With no one to hear her cries. She eventually turned those cries into "songs" and toured extensively with Northeast Ohio supergroup "The Speedbumps" until she found out that she had a long lost twin brother. However, It's not their sordid pasts or even the chilling tale of their separation and journey to find each other that makes them special. No, it's their unique blend of playing instruments and singing words that really sets them apart. Their music has been described as "A nice mix of short cute little songs & shorter cuter littler songs".Craft beer proved by Short Story Brewing. Advanced purchase required.

Join us for Hello June's new record release show at the Rustic Church. Be among the first to hear the new project live at our historic venue. Craft beer by Short Story Brewing and concessions from Trellis Cafe will be available.

About the New Project:
Hello June’s songs are so emotionally open and resonant that they sometimes feel like leaps of faith. The West Virginia indie rock outfit fronted by songwriter Sarah Rudy thrives on interrogating a feeling with a disarming, scalpel-like precision. It’s this clarifying honesty that’s garnered the band rave reviews from NPR and No Depression. It’s also the driving force behind their forthcoming album Artifacts, which is out October 6 via 31 Tigers Records. Across 11 gorgeous and raw tracks, Rudy sings about death, birth, hope, and despair with grace and nuance. “I landed on the title because if there’s one thing we’re left with, it’s memories of other people: artifacts that we take with us through life,” says Rudy. “It’s not just about one thing so if this were just a breakup album, it would be a lot easier. But that’s not the way that life works.” 

That Artifacts is so unflinching and raw is no accident. Following the release of 2018’s critically acclaimed Hello June, Rudy knew she needed to revamp the way she wrote music. “Those old songs are more a collection of almost poems but I wanted this record to be stories that could be told straightforwardly,” she says. “It was definitely scary: the songwriting process this time definitely pushed me in ways that I just wasn’t necessarily pushing myself in the past.” For Rudy, the biggest hurdle was allowing herself to be vulnerable and write unselfconsciously about what was going on in her life. On this LP, Rudy trades abstraction and flowery language with clarity and depth. Here, she finds power in saying what she means.

Lead single “Interstate” encapsulates Rudy’s newfound courage. It’s the first song explicitly about her father’s death six years ago after a long battle with addiction. On the track, Rudy hones in on a sweet moment of laughing on a road trip with her dad. “And I don’t remember what it was that you last said to me / But I should have said I love you / I’m tied up to you – knotted forever / I should have said I love you, either way,” she sings over soaring guitars. It’s the sort of song that stops you in your tracks: one that finds catharsis in understanding regret. Artifacts is an album of urgency and connection to family and to home. “West Virginia is just a piece of who I am,” says Rudy. “Being raised in Appalachia, most everybody has known someone who has been affected by the drug crisis. A big thing that weaves through this album is when you grow up in such an area, you realize life is short.” A melancholic and haunting cover of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” captures this complicated feeling.

Life is finite so you might as well make the most of it and tell people how you feel about them. On the opener “Sometimes,” Rudy nails this sentiment by writing a hopeful song to her newborn nephew. “Sometimes they’ll break your heart and sometimes you’ll break your own / Sometimes it’s an idea that we’re after,” she sings. It’s a roadmap for life and captures the promise of youth. Like “Interstate,” this song came about from a revelation on a highway drive where the promise of her sister’s child and the loss of her dad weighed heavy.  “I wanted to be able to articulate myself in a way that I think I had been afraid to write about it in the past,” says Rudy. “I wanted to capture a feeling of hope, in a way, and insight into the fact that life is full of ups and downs, but usually, things pass.”

Hello June recorded the LP in Nashville at Bell Tone Recording with producer Roger Alan Nichols. “Roger was able to push me in a songwriting sense,” says Rudy. “He’s very lyric-focused and a good listener. He wanted these songs to be the best that they could be too.” The textures and arrangements the band experiments with on Artifacts are warm and adventurous. Take “California,” which introduces New Wave synths to color in the song. It’s a sprawling track that finds Rudy singing, “You called me pretty under street lights / I caught you lookin’ now we can’t look away.”  Elsewhere, songs like “Honey I Promise” and “23” are propulsive rockers that evoke both early Big Thief and Drive-by Truckers.

Artifacts is a brave statement from a songwriter unafraid of reinvention. It’s a testament to pushing yourself further and letting yourself be open. Human connection is the most important thing and these songs are about striving for it, even when it’s fleeting. “If you were to take little bits of my life and put them into mason jars on the wall, it would feel like this album,” says Rudy. “These are stories from different pieces of my life. I was just allowing the songs to define the journey.” 

Join us for a special dinner at the Rustic Church with a menu inspired by Firefly Farms — an artisan cheese producer and retailer in Accident, Maryland. Enjoy a multi-course meal and intimate conversation with the co-founders Mike Koch and Pablo Solanet in our rustic event space and learn more about Firefly Farms. 

More about Firefly Farms:

Mike Koch and Pablo Solanet are co-founders of FireFly Farms, known for their award-winning goat cheeses. They operate a friendly retail store and cheese production facility in Accident, MD near Deep Creek Lake.

 Before making Garrett County their full-time home, they were living and working in Washington, D.C. Mike was a senior leader for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac while Pablo was a pastry chef at New Heights restaurant.

Mike and Pablo originally purchased their Garrett County farm and home as a vacation and weekend getaway. When their neighbor had nanny goats available after completing a 4-H project, they jumped into goat farming. One weekend they experimented with making cheese, and a new business was born!

Menu

Passed Hors d’ oeuvre:
Fresh Goat Cheese, Fig, Jamon Serrano, and Arugula Pizza

Assorted Firefly Farm Cheese Plate, Artisan Meats, Olives and Crackers

Salad Course:

Moo and Blue Blue Cheese with Roasted Baby Beets, Organic Salad Greens, Micro Basil, Candied Walnuts with Balsamic Vinaigrette 

Entree Course:

Roasted Chicken Breast with Fresh Chèvre, Herbs and Sun-Dried Tomatoes with Wild Rice and Roasted Seasonal Vegetables

Dessert Course:

Goat Cheese Cheesecake with Berry Coulis 

or

Apple and Fresh Goat Cheese Tart with Vanilla Whipped Cream

Iced Tea, Water and Coffee

Menu subject to change.

$50/person

We are excited to welcome The Suitcase Junket this summer at the Rustic Church at Modern Homestead. Join us for a fun evening with live music and friends. Concessions available at the show and craft beer by Short Story Brewing. Tickets on sale now.

We are excited to welcome back Honeysuckle this Spring to the Rustic Church at Modern Homestead. Join us for a fun evening with live music and friends. Concessions available at the show and craft beer by Short Story Brewing. Tickets on sale now.

We are excited to welcome Bill and the Belles for their debut show this Spring at the Rustic Church at Modern Homestead. Join us for a fun evening with live music and friends. Concessions available at the show and craft beer by Short Story Brewing. Tickets on sale now.

Join us for a festive Spring brunch at the Rustic Church on Saturday, April 1, 2023 at 11:30AM. Limited space, reserve your seats today.

Menu
Fresh Fruit Cups
Buttermilk Pancakes Local Maple Syrup
French Toast with Local Maple Syrup
Frittata with Asparagus, Goat Cheese and Herbs
Slab Bacon and Country Sausage
Assorted Muffins including blueberry, banana nut and poppyseed

Served with coffee, juice and iced tea.

Children receive souvenir basket with Bunny shaped Sugar Cookie.

Egg Hunt will follow at 1pm at the garden center.

Enjoy Chicago house music all night with DJ David Reyn and DJ Dystract at the Rustic Church to celebrate Halloween. Food and local craft beer will be available. Costume contest and more. Party starts at 7pm.

Tickets on sale. $10.00 advance. $20.00 at the door.

Join us for a special screening of "Born in a Ballroom", a documentary that celebrates a woman’s life as seen through an Appalachian village and the unique restaurant she founded. We have planned a wonderful evening inspired by this unique place. A three-course dinner will be served at our cafe, followed by the screening of the documentary at the Rustic Church with Q&A with the directors Clara and Jonathan Lehmann. Plus, a special dessert will be served from the Hutte Restaurant in Helvetia.

More about the filmThe night of Eleanor’s birth on March 29, 1917, the small log cabin her parents owned caught fire. Her mother ran to the plantation home nearby to give birth to little Eleanor on the ballroom floor. Entering this world with gusto, Eleanor often lamented, “I was born in a ballroom, and I’ve been dancing ever since.”

Eleanor went on to teach, work for the Red Cross, travel the world, raise a family of five, and co-found The Hütte Restaurant in her rural hometown of Helvetia, WV. The Hütte is a Swiss restaurant that is nationally acclaimed both in print and in television (see The Hütte featured on Travel Channel’s “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern”). The Hütte reflects Eleanor and Helvetia’s heritage through its food, decor, and culture. As we explore this exceptional woman and place, we discover, now forty years later, how one woman embraced a community through food and perhaps a dance or two.

Born In A Ballroom Inspired Menu
Sunday, October 23, 2022 | 5pm

Swiss Cheeses Presentation
Homemade Split Pea Soup
Rosti
Zurich Sauerbraten with Noodles
Baked Ham
Homemade Warm Apple Sauce
Sweet Peas with Pearl Onions
Butter and Molasses Cookies
Served with iced tea, bread and coffee

Dessert will be served after Screening
Peach Cobbler with Whipped Cream from The Hütte

"bright, blissful rock that shimmers, even throughout its darker moments"

- NPR -

Hello June formed in the hills of Morgantown, WV after core members Sarah Rudy (guitar/vocals) and Whit Alexander (drums) met as tenants of a particularly communal apartment building. Their debut six-song EP, Spruce, fittingly unfolds as if an expression of self-discovery, where languid reflection is never as far from catharsis as it seems. NPR featured their

single "Dance" on Heavy Rotation and hailed the Spruce EP for its mix of driving, indomitable hooks and ethereal, sustained tones, noting its, "blend of bright, blissful rock that shimmers, even throughout its darker moments." In January 2018, Hello June was featured in NPR Music's first ever Slingshot class, a program where NPR-affiliated stations nominate exceptional emerging bands.

Hello June's self-titled debut album is another shimmering slice of 90s nostalgia that manages to build on the stellar sound of it's predecessor. They announced the new album after premiering its first single "Mars" on NPR Music, who described the single as "a song worthy of national attention... a pulsating slice of 1990s comfort food that will shake the stardust from your heartstrings." Rudy's as assertive as she is compassionate, and you can hear these qualities all over her lovingly crafted, deftly narrated music, which is the world she builds to escape the toils of her daily life. Her hushed vocals endow her lyrics with an irresistible charm while her carefully crafted guitar work builds up single melodies and riffs into surging oceans of distortion similar to Madeline Kenny. This rare combination of guitar-generated atmospherics and lyrical intimacy are at the heart of many of Hello June's tracks, but most notably on the album's two closing tracks "Momma" and "Handshakes." Others, like the album's second single "Candy Rain" and "Stranger," exude that air of relaxed confidence of early Tom Petty.

We are excited to welcome the Oshima Brothers to the Rustic Church at Modern Homestead on Sunday, September 18, 2022. Doors open at 5pm. This brother boy band has been featured on NPR's Mountain Stage and you will love their folk-rooted sound.

Maine-based indie duo, Oshima Brothers’ have been creating music together since childhood. The brothers blend songs from the heart with blood harmonies to produce a "roots-based pop sound that is infectious." (NPR) On stage, Sean and Jamie offer lush vocals, live looping, foot percussion, electric and acoustic guitars, vintage keyboard and bass - often all at once. They want every show to feel like a deep breath, a dance party and a sonic embrace. When not recording or touring they find time to film and produce their own music videos, tie their own shoes and cook elaborate feasts. Maine Public Radio’s Sara Willis describes their songs as “beautiful, those brother harmonies can’t be beat. They are uplifting and, let’s face it, we need uplifting these days.”

Todd Day Wait is a Missouri native with an easy-going, good humored nature that will have you singing along faster than you know the words. We originally met while I was on a trip to New Orleans, and reconnected at Santa's Pub in Nashville one Sunday evening. We talked of this and that, drank cheap beers and had a good time. He even mowed my lawn the next day. That's Todd's secret you see; he's a good guy." - GemsOnVHS

Matt Lorenz's vision, manifest in The Suitcase Junket, developed in the tension between the grand and the solitary. Grand in its imagery, sound, and staging. Solitary in its thrift and self-reliance. What instruments he requires, Lorenz builds from scratch and salvage. What parts five players would perform, he performs alone. The spectacle of his one-man set bears constant comparison to legends of showmanship, brilliance, madness, and invention. 

While audiences are captivated by his solitary form and the show itself, Lorenz, who homesteads with rescue dogs and chickens in rural Western Massachusetts, is most serious about the songs. He has been building a catalog, writing a world into existence. Solitary on stage and on the road, his mind is crowded with characters, narratives, voices, imagery, sounds as wide and varied as mountain throat singers and roadhouse juke boxes, plus newsreels of the planet's destruction and salvage. With this 2020 release, The End is New, Lorenz’s grand vision for the song overrides the how of it. 

"The things I value are under attack," Lorenz writes. "And writing songs and making art are the methods I have for responding. I have tried to use my observations and reflections of the world bent through my fun-house-mirror mind to show what I see; a planet stressed. ... We can do better."

The End is New was produced by trusted friend, producer Steve Berlin of Los Lobos, who produced The Suitcase Junket’s acclaimed 2018 release, Mean Dog Trampoline.

“Most of the time making records for a living is both fun and edifying,” says Berlin “But every once and a while I get rewarded with a simply superlative experience, and making The End Is New was certainly one of those.” He adds, “We had a blast building these ideas into songs, and Matt’s endless inventiveness made each workday a genuine pleasure. His talent is a unique gift.”

"I told Steve I wanted to make a doom-folk record," says Lorenz. "That’s what I’d started calling my music when people asked. He was game. Neither of us knew quite what that meant at the time, but I think we found out with The End is New. There’s a heavy mix of hope and desperation in the sound and lyrically I was trying to be a mirror to society using truth, myth, confessions and stories."

In the strangest of ironies, the production of this album, an artist moving from solitude to collaboration, went forward in a time when Lorenz, Berlin, all their studio musicians, and the entire world were in isolation for the lockdown of pandemic. 

“We had done some tracking in February and felt that we had a good start," says Lorenz, "but things had gotten a bit strange. Steve Berlin, producer extraordinaire, was stuck at home on the West Coast under a newly imposed lockdown and here in Massachusetts the virus was starting to heat up. The bicoastal, remotely produced recording process was bizarre and frustrating but fruitful.  We plugged along, track by track, occasionally commenting on how crazy everything was feeling. Justin, the sound engineer and co-owner of Sonelab, and I had spent time together in the same studio so we figured if one of us had The Virus we probably both did so why not finish the record as safely as we could?  So we watched as the world drastically changed around our little musical haven, unsure of what lay ahead.  We polished off the record bit by bit in the following months, recording overdubs from home with no more studio time to be had. J Mascis made a ripping appearance on ‘Light a Candle’ and Steve Berlin slipped off his producer shoes and laid down some horn parts. I’m so very excited to share these new songs. I think the writing on this album is some of the best I’ve ever done and the production has them sounding huge and cinematic." 

The End is New is an artist expanding his possibilities, collaborating, matching his lyrical power over eleven tracks with the epic sounds and narratives of his imagination. “Black Holes and Overdoses” riffs off the unrelenting news cycle, the numbness that wants for oblivion. “And Then There Was Fire” finds Lorenz reflecting on current events, inspired by the destructive wildfire in Australia, which seems like three years ago at this point, but took place right at the end of last year and beginning of this year. “Light a Candle” is the simmering doom of lost love. “Can’t Look Away” protests the overuse of a planet.  “Jesus! King of the Dinosaurs” is a romp poking fun at extremists and biblical timelines.  

Growing up in Cavendish, Vermont, Matt Lorenz began playing piano at age five, and later took up violin, saxophone, and guitar. During his years at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, he studied music and adaptive instrument design, a pursuit that included building a prototype for a drummer who couldn’t use their legs, where they’d be able to play the bass drum and hi-hat through a system of pulleys. After college, he headed to Europe on a $150 plane ticket, ran out of money in Barcelona, and spent a year playing music in the streets. “That’s where I learned how to sing loud, which got me figuring out what my voice could do,” Lorenz notes. Once he’d returned to Amherst, he formed the band Rusty Belle with his sister Kate and, several years later, started The Suitcase Junket with the aid of a guitar he’d found in a dumpster.  ‘The Suitcase Junket’ is a nod to Lorenz’s longtime love of collecting old suitcases, including an antique that he’s refurbished into a bass drum, and to a secondary definition of junket, i.e. “a pleasure excursion." 

The End is New is Lorenz's sixth full-length album as The Suitcase Junket, his first for Renew Records/BMG.  The sound has become more refined and deeper with each release. Lorenz tours extensively and plans to be back on the road for a waylaid release tour for The End is New in 2021. Lorenz is also a visual artist. In the early years he designed all The Suitcase Junket album art and merchandise and made the music videos generated with his songs. He continues to create the visuals for merchandise, and to produce some of his videos, now with collaborators. He gets very excited about coffee, gardening, bees, dogs, birds, mushrooms, tinctures, making his own wine and maple sugaring season.