Thirty-four years, one family.
Walter and Bente Goldstein bought this land in 1992 — thirty-four years ago. Their youngest child was four. Their oldest was eleven. They wanted a place where the kids had to work.
The two older children dug fence posts and planted the orchards by hand. They cleared brush and rebuilt pasture line. The youngest had his own list of chores from the time he could carry a bucket. Over the years the farm has carried sheep, chickens, family dogs and cats always around the house, eventually a milk cow, a stretch with hogs, and other animals along the way — the kids took care of whatever came with their stretch of the place. None of it was symbolic.
For more than twenty years, the family rented a portion of the back acreage to Walter's Mandaamin Institute for organic seed-breeding research plots — careful trial work that is still in the soil. Bente founded Farmwise here and has run educational programs from the barn and orchard for more than two decades — biodynamic growing, animal husbandry, and how to read a season, taught to children and families on the same land. Hundreds of Airbnb guests and farm-school visitors have come through in the years since.
This isn't a farm someone rented out and stepped away from. A family has lived and worked it every season since 1992.
The children have been out of the house for more than twenty years. In that time, Walter and Bente have kept the place running themselves — the orchard, the gardens, the Airbnb, the Farmwise programming, the research-plot lease — a quieter, more curated chapter of the same farm.
The Goldsteins plan to move back to Norway in 2027. The exact timing is set by IRS primary-residence rules — they need to keep the home as their main residence for a specific window before the sale to preserve the home-sale tax exclusion. They are not in a hurry, but the family would entertain the right offer before then. Before this farm goes onto a public listing, they wanted to put it here first — quietly, for the right person.
The Airbnb has been temporarily paused while the property is held as a primary residence ahead of the sale. The listing, the reviews, and the operating history all remain — ready for the next owner to switch back on.
The brand equity is the real asset. A 4.94-rated, 427-review Airbnb listing is not something a new operator can buy or build quickly — most new hosts take three to five years to reach that level of social proof. With the CUP in place and the listing already on the platform, the next owner can re-open bookings and pick up where the reputation already is.
