Why buy a home when you can build a fairytale?

Hi, I'm Curt. My wife Ani, son Fitch, and I are your average, everyday nonconformists who have been running an experiment. We are trying to figure out if a family can use their own hands and some grit to handcraft a life that you don't need a vacation from. Or better yet, that you would vacation to. Have we done that? You be the judge.

About 4 years ago we left our South Florida handcrafting furniture business to pursue this new goal. We set out to build an inspiring experience in simple, eco-friendly living that would find a harmony between some of the old fashioned world that we'd found ourselves missing, and the handful of modern advancements that were actually beneficial. All while keeping it classy.

At Heirloom Hamlet, you will see us designing unique, functional cabins, installing solar, composting, planting, and building toilets that are better for our environment. We're bread baking, pasta making, timber milling, woodworking, clay-forming and metal pounding. The goal is to evolve into a small world of self-reliance and harmony with nature. Ani and I are big believers in being mindful and respectful of our environment wherever reasonable. So, we are incorporating both alternative and municipal utilities as they can fit into our homestead design and limited budget.

Through good design, our goal is to show just how "normal" small living can feel. We all have personal priorities and those will vary greatly, and that's okay. But no person should be so self-absorbed that we have completely shut out the importance of being respectfully mindful to the earth and to our fellowman. After all, if we don't have that, what do we have?

To be completely transparent, though, the creatives in us also would like it if we inspired onlookers to possibly look at their own space and life a little bit differently. We've personally found it to be so fulfilling to distinguish real desires and needs from the ones we've been groomed to pursue, and then work to make them a reality. We've found it energizing to witness our fellowmen and women pursuing a dream. We'd like to be a stimulating memory along any person's journey.

Visiting with us, we sure hope our guests don't expect to find a corporate approach to life here, and that they can appreciate some of our old-fashioned ways. That, as our paths cross, we won't be held to a business-first standard that we have worked hard to remove ourselves from. We realize everyone has a right to be themselves, but our presentation at Heirloom Hamlet has been purposefully designed to be a refreshing hideaway from the norm.