9 Hotels on Working Farms Where You Can Berry Pick, Hang Out With Animals, and Eat Fresh From the Field

Put your clogs on and become one with the land at these farm stays around the world.Farm-to-table seems to be the restaurant style of choice for many hotels around the world, but not every hotel sources ingredients (or toiletries and floral arrangements, for that matter) directly from the property. Even fewer go a step beyond, getting guests involved in the agricultural process. The nine farm stay hotels on this list are each a world of their own, surrounded by acres of land and with a range of programming that reflects the region’s distinct terroir. There are Tennessee farms where you can pick your own berries and roam on-site apiaries, sprawling reserves in New Mexico teeming with bison, and rustic estates in Portugal’s Alentejo region that teach you how to transform wool into yarn. Some are smaller, like Puerto Rico’s El Pretexto, which invites guests to explore its chicken coops and coffee agroforestry, while others resemble private Italianate villas surrounded by olive groves. Whether you fancy getting down in the dirt or simply enjoy a countryside view, below are nine hotels on working farms around the world for every kind of traveler.The Newt in SomersetWhy we love it: Harvest suppers, cider tastings, composting workshopsThere’s so much to love about The Newt, it’s difficult to know where to start. Made up of Hadspen House, a Georgian mansion of Somerset sandstone with 13 rooms, and former outbuildings providing another 10 rooms, each accommodation is quirky, individual, and always the height of luxury. Room One in the main house overlooks the ancient tree avenue and has a glorious marble-lined shower, while the stables rooms offer four-poster beds in the stalls and serene white-shuttered rooms in the loft. There’s a spa with an indoor-to-outdoor pool, too, and the surrounding woods, orchards, gardens, and deer park are free for guests to roam around. A lovely bar overlooks the croquet lawn, and tastings are offered in the “cyder” cellar. Then there’s the food. The open kitchen offers a tasting menu and à la carte options in the Botanical Rooms restaurant, which combines the brightness of a Victorian greenhouse with the elegance of a gentleman’s club. Look out for the sugar snaps with smoked roe and mint and the delicious roasted eggplant. In the morning, gorge on enormous croissants from the Newt baker. You just can’t go wrong with a stay at this West Country idyll. —Jane KnightRead Full ReviewSouthall Farm & InnLocation: Franklin, TennesseeWhy we love it: Special farm suppers, Sunday farmers market, apiary toursSouthall Farm & Inn feels all of the 25 miles away it is from the hubbub of Nashville’s neon-lit honky-tonk scene. In fact, its 325 acres are a different world entirely. This bucolic setting is a sustainable oasis designed for a resort-style immersion experience. You’ll abandon your car on arrival and instead get around on foot, bike, ATV, or by staff-driven golf cart, allowing you to explore the property at a leisurely pace. Soak in the plunge pool, get centered in a sound bath, take the kids for a zip line, eat s’mores on the deck of your cottage, and never once leave the property. (Although if you choose to, historic downtown Franklin is less than four miles away.) Amenities are designed to make the most of the land and preserve its natural beauty. Take time to notice the details, such as custom wallpaper, glazed clay plates, and freshly cut flowers. —Margaret LittmanRead Full ReviewBabylonstorenLocation: Franschhoek, South AfricaWhy we love it: Daily garden tours, wine tastings, Soetmelksvlei experienceIs it a farm? A garden? A spa hotel? It’s all of the above. Since 2010, Babylonstoren has drawn day-trippers and luxury farm stay seekers to its sun-kissed swathe of land in the Cape Winelands, with whitewashed Cape Dutch architecture, monumental gardens with incredible biodiversity, and delectable farm-to-table dining. Across its 2,600-acre spread—holding everything from edible gardens to cheese rooms and wine cellars—the options to spend your time are near-endless. There are 33 sets of accommodations at Babylonstoren, and each cluster offers something a little different, but they all retain historic details like farm doors, fireplaces, thick stone walls—and a whole pile of romance. One of the latest additions to the property is Soetmelksvlei, a refurbished 1890s Cape-style farmstead that functions like an interactive museum exhibit where guests are encouraged to interact with craftspeople going about their daily chores. It’s a short drive away from the main farmhouse and offers a range of experiences that include milking cows and churning butter, but also has a restaurant where you can stop for a hearty farm lunch and a shop for old-world keepsakes. —Arati MenonRead Full ReviewWildflower Farms, Auberge CollectionLocation: Gardiner, New YorkWhy we love it: Take-home harvests, animal feedings, apiary toursStep onto this picturesque Auberge Collection campus, in a meadow in the shadow of New York’s iconic Shawangunk Mountains, and you feel almost as if you’ve entered the world of a Hudson River School painting. It’s that pretty. And for all its comforts, which are considerable—the instant it opened its doors in 2022, it became the premier luxury escape in the Catskills—the hotel rightly recognizes that nature is its greatest amenity. Located on a 140-acre site that was once a tree nursery and a dairy farm, Wildflower leans into the region’s agricultural heritage with a working farm that supplies ingredients for cooking classes, the hotel’s progressive New American restaurant, Clay, and many of the treatments at the excellent spa, Thistle. Guests can swing by to tour the crops, feed the animals, and collect eggs from the chicken coop (to take home or pass along to the kitchen staff at Clay to prepare for breakfast). Just 4% of the property has been developed, leaving an extensive network of forest trails for visitors to explore on their own or to visit with a guide for ramp planting or forest-bathing experiences. And it’s easy to continue drinking in the beauty of the place from the 65 rooms, all freestanding cabins, cottages, and suites. In addition to offering fireplaces, well-­curated minibars, and a stylishly warm, natural design aesthetic, they have extensive private terraces and floor-to-ceiling windows framing a view of woods, meadows, or mountains. —Jesse AshlockRead Full ReviewRosewood Cape KidnappersLocation: Te Awanga, New ZealandWhy we love it: Bird watching, shepherding experience, garden workshopsFly into the little regional airport at Napier, drive through the city's Art Deco downtown, and continue along the coast and up into the hills until you reach Rosewood Cape Kidnappers, a 6,000-acre coastal country retreat and working farm perfect for unwinding in luxury. Many guests come here to golf—the Tom Doak–designed course is legendary. But this is also an ideal spot for wildlife lovers. Rosewood Cape Kidnappers is home to Cape Sanctuary, which brands itself as “New Zealand's largest privately owned and funded 'mainland island' conservation project.” Thanks to a predator fence, pest control, habitat restoration, and species reintroduction, this is one of the best places on mainland New Zealand for native wildlife, notably birds, including kiwis.—Stefanie WaldekRead Full ReviewSão Lourenço do BarrocalLocation: Alentejo, PortugalWhy we love it: Ethnobotanical walks, wool-to-yarn workshops, olive harvestsA morning saunter through this 2,000-acre estate in Portugal’s Alentejo is a sensory journey back in time. Paths carve through the montado landscape, where wildflower meadows are punctuated by cork, oak, and olive trees. Lusitano wild horses mingle with cattle; the medieval hilltop town of Monsaraz looms in the distance, and granite dolmens give a glimpse of the region’s pagan past. Although it’s just 90 minutes from Lisbon, it’s conceivable that these views haven’t changed in centuries. The same cannot be said for São Lourenço’s luxurious lodgings. Balancing the rustic and the refined, the agricultural and the artful, this elegant 40-room hotel and organic working farm excels. Humble, whitewashed farm buildings have been sensitively transformed into sophisticated suites centered on a geranium-lined courtyard. The guest activities—beekeeping lessons, foraging, and stargazing (the region is a Dark Sky Reserve)—are almost as old as the surrounding hills. Two centuries of winemaking heritage make São Lourenço a key stop-off on Alentejo’s rota dos vinhos, which winds through the region’s best wineries. Here, robust native varietals have been skilfully tempered down and pair beautifully with polished takes on traditional dishes—gazpacho, migas, and cozido stews—that are as nourishing as late nights by the firepit. Effortlessly stylish yet wholly unpretentious, this rural retreat provides a compelling case for swapping Portugal’s coast for its countryside. —Ben OlsenRead Full ReviewSon Vell MenorcaLocation: Menorca, SpainWhy we love it: Farm-to-table dining, organic gardens, horse ridesIn any setting or landscape, Son Vell would stand out—it’s an imposing 18th-century Italianate villa surrounded by olive and fig trees, holm oaks, chestnuts, palms, and luxuriant formal gardens. In its actual setting and landscape, amid the gently undulating agricultural fields at the western edge of Menorca, it stands out all the more. Charming as they often are, it’s probably safe to say none of the island’s other farmhouses possess this kind of dreamy, exotic elegance. The pale lusciousness of the exterior provides the basis of the design scheme throughout the 34 bedrooms—6 in the main house, 28 in 5 bungalows—and is complemented by neutral-toned textiles, limewashed timber beams, and well-judged metallic accents. The views from the villa’s upper stories are wonderful, across treetops and gardens to the ruggedly dramatic coastline, which—if the temptation to relax by the pool or feast in one or other of the superb restaurants can be overcome—cries out to be explored on foot or on horseback. Son Vell was the first hotel to open under the family-owned Vestige brand, and since then, it’s opened five more properties across Spain. If Son Vell is anything to go by, the arrival of Vestige is nothing but good news and marks the beginning of an extremely interesting period for the Spanish hotel scene. —Steve KingRead Full ReviewEl PretextoLocation: Cayey, Puerto RicoWhy we love it: Long table dinners, cooking classes, garden toursOpened in 2018 after the devastating hurricanes, El Pretexto, a celebration of Puerto Rico’s agriculture and natural beauty, was a labor of love by the young entrepreneur Crystal Diaz. Winding mountain passes edged with greenery lead the way to a mini farm, where the second thing you notice—after the breathtaking view, of course—is the beds of lettuce, tomato, and corn plants, and banana and avocado trees. Enjoy the scenery and the fresh mountain air, laze around in a hammock, or read a book. Four villas feature wood and stone elements; all have kitchenettes. Some have terraces that offer front-row seats to a chorus of coquisl; all embrace the surrounding mountain views. This is a one-of-a-kind experience in Puerto Rico. Even the most die-hard city slickers don’t mind a few days of being a country bumpkin here. —Kathleen SquiresRead Full ReviewVermejoLocation: Raton, New MexicoWhy we love it: Conservation efforts, bison expeditions, greenhouse toursVermejo is the closest thing to a private national park. Part of Ted Turner's conservation-driven reserve portfolio, the property spans a staggering 558,000 acres—roughly twice the size of Grand Teton National Park—across the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico. The terrain rolls from shortgrass prairie to 13,000-foot alpine peaks, its valleys populated by herds of bison, elk, and horses. Unsurprisingly, there's much to do here, and it's all included in your stay: On-site ambassadors shape itineraries for guests, drawing from more than 45 guided activities. Mornings might mean a horseback ride across open grassland or casting for Rio Grande cutthroat trout in a mountain stream; afternoons, mountain biking on forest trails or shooting skeet at the range; and evenings, a wildlife drive that rivals an African safari. Lodging spans historic cottages, mountain cabins, and grand private residences with dedicated chefs. Evenings end around the fire, under skies unspoiled by light pollution—there's perhaps no better place to disconnect and relax. —S.W.Read Full ReviewJessica Sulima is a Commerce Writer at Condé Nast Traveler, where she covers hotel and booking content, as well as travel deals. Originally from New Jersey, she attended the University of Pennsylvania, where she holds a Bachelor’s degree in English with minors in Spanish and Art History. Previously at Thrillist, ... Read More