Evansville Courier & Press

Wednesday, August 15, 2001

By Judy Davis
Courier & Press Staff writer
464-7593 or jdavis@evansville.net

PHOTOS BY Elizabeth Fisco
Courier & Press

Rosa Lee Sheard gathers basil from one of the circle herb gardens at her Mary Rose Herb Farm. Behind Sheard is one of the yurts which she and her husband, Dick Betz, built to be used as a classroom and store where they will give lessons on the uses of herbs.

Escaping Rate Race

Yurts, herbs make for peaceful living

BRISTOW, Ind. -Tired of the rat race? Mary Rose Herb Farm offers an escape from he pace of modern life, but the respite comes at a price.

"Once people come here, they don't want to leave," said Rosa Lee Sheard. She and her lusband, Dick Betz, are following their dreams in developing a 208-acre farm.

Sheard and Betz left successful marketing careers in Seattle in search of peace and quiet.

"I was from this area," said Sheard, who grew up in Elon, a town now under the waters of Patoka Lake. "I thought Dick would love it here."

Betz agreed. "I love it," he said. "You can't hear the freeway, planes are very high overhead, a far cry from living in the city. I used to spend an hour on the road to travel eight miles to work.”

Their new home is on a gravel road. The traffic count per day seldom exceeds five, Sheard said, including the postman.

"So far, it's a resting place, herb farm, home, business -we keep finding new things we want to do," she said. "We're having fun with it.

"It hadn't been lived on for 10 years when we came here," Sheard said. "Weeds were taller than our heads."

That was in 1999. What they've done since has made the farm a local conversation piece.

"Some locals think we dropped down from Mars," Sheard said. "I'm sure we're the talk of Perry County."

Neighbors in corn-soybean-cattle country were bemused by the "crops" of herbs, vegetables and test plantings in raised beds guarded by folk-art scarecrows, a flock of guineas, a pair of peafowl and 12 cats for livestock and the croquet court. They were astounded by the yurts.

The yurts, which borrow features from tepees, tents and houses, are loosely based on shelters used by Mongolian nomads. Although common in other parts of the country -they are being used as an Olympic Village in Utah and for migrant-worker housing in some areas -yurts are traffic-stoppers in Perry County.

Mary Rose Herb Farm has three - two 21-footers and a 30-foote - all visible from the road.

When Betz was building the platform for the biggest yurt, a passerby stopped to ask what it was.

"He said, 'Is it a dance floor? I just love to dance,'" said Betz.

The yurts, furnished with Shaker and Amish furniture and decorated with quilts and folk art, are being field-tested for comfort and convenience by family members who volunteered to help develop the farm.

"I told them if they stayed more than a week, they had to work," said Sheard. "Some of them have come back two or three times, and some want to move here."

Sheard makes up a list of work that needs to be done each morning, she said, and everyone pitches in.

Betz is looking forward to building more yurts. "We're building a retreat, remote and with rustic facilities," he said. "It'll be like a camp for about a hundred people. They'll sleep in yurts."

Remote means way off the beaten track. The farm backs up on three sides to Ferdinand State Forest and faces hillsides grazed by cattle on the other. Rustic means no electricity or phones and a separate shower/restroom facility.

Sleeping in a yurt means waking up to bird songs and coyote calls, seeing deer, rabbits, foxes and wild turkey up close, watching keen-eyed hawks circle over watchful groups of guineas and experiencing a quiet communion with nature.

Guests can hike along old logging roads in the woods, which are being cleared and covered with a layer of wood chips, fish or canoe in 6-acre lake or sit in the back pasture, which native trees are being allowed to reclaim, and watch a forest grow.

"Some sisters from the monastery (Monastery of Immaculate Conception) told me they want to come here for their individual retreats," said Sheard.

"We're also talking with business executives in Jasper. It's great for anyone who wants a quiet place to think, or to get away and just experience the beauty of nature."

The big yurt will house a different kind of nature- a store called It's Our Nature, where Sheard will sell herb plants, dried herbs, arts and crafts from local artists, locally produced wines and whatever else catches her eye.

The store will be a classroom, too, where she will teach medicinal and culinary uses of herbs and organic gardening principles.

Sheard and Betz are committed to doing things the natural way and "leaving a soft footprint on the earth."

"The last owner was a woman ahead of her time," said Sheard. "Her family homesteaded this place in 1854. Her name was Mills.

"She used no chemicals on her farm -this was back in the '30s and '40s. The farm used to be called John's Gait (gait means farm in Scottish).

"A man I talked to who once worked for her said she always made him sit on the porch with a glass of tea and watch the sunset. She said it was important to take time to appreciate the beauty around us."

The old homestead house was too fragile to renovate, but the fireplace, built with stone from the land, the concrete slab from a porch Mills added when she lived there and a summer kitchen remain.

"We're going to use the fireplace for cooking outdoors," said Sheard. "I'm planning to pave the place where the cabin was with more stone and plant herbs in between.

"When people walk over the herbs and crush them, the scent is released. It's going to be a gathering place."

A large heart carved into the concrete porch slab has its own story. "She (Mills) put that there so love could enter her home," she said.

"I feel like she would approve of what we're doing."