home that a family would live in,” Annette says. Richard & Annette had an Amish crew take it down, load it onto a semi and reassemble the logs on their property in Walkerton, located 25 miles from South Bend. The 1830 log home features three bedrooms (can sleep up to 12), a modern bath, antique décor, fireplace, gas & oil lights, rope bed, a 40-piece cast iron cookware collection, and a 1901 Kimble player piano that belts out 100 different tunes. The couple also erected a smaller primitive log cabin that lacks electricity and running water. It has a loft that sleeps seven, a wood cook stove, Hoosier cabinet, old “ice” box and a Sietz bath. “It’s perfect for anyone who wants to really get back to the Little House on the Prairie feel,” Annette adds. The Hesters continue to live in their ranch home on the property and rent out both cabins for weekend or week-long family getaways. Back in the early 1990s, their rental properties were quite popular, particularly during Thanksgiving, Christmas and football season.
The Charm of the Farm Hesters Farm Log Homes Invites Guests to Embrace Simplicity Writer / Christy Heitger-Ewing Photography Provided
If you’re looking to step back in time, visit Hesters Farm Log Homes, a dairy farm/bed & breakfast that has been around since the mid-1970s. “My father always wanted to have a log home and a pond,” says owner Annette Hesters, who runs the farm with her husband Richard and son Ted. “My brother had the pond, but there was no log home
on it so Richard and I hunted and finally found one in Marshall County, just south of Plymouth.
“We had doctors and concert pianists from all over the world come to Notre Dame games,” Annette says. “As South Bend has added hotels in the downtown area, it’s been hard to compete because they offer so many modern amenities, but for anyone looking for simple, old-fashioned farm simplicity, we are the perfect choice.” In 2016, the couple added to the property with a new structure.
“My mom and I had gone to Ireland in 1999. I told my husband that if we ever went back, I’d like to stay in a castle overnight,” says Annette presumes that the structure was once a trading post or weigh station given its Annette, whose ancestors inhabited Ireland location in the Twin Lakes of Plymouth as it 150 years ago. Though Annette never made would have been a marketing area between it back, when Annette’s 99-year-old uncle, a WWII Bataan Death March survivor, passed Indian tribes and the traders who came away, he left her an inheritance. through in the early 1800s. “Plus, it’s four times larger than a typical log
“He told me not to put it back into the farm so I built a castle instead,” she says. “It’s
thelakesmagazine.com / MAY 2020 / THE LAKES MAGAZINE / 51
