Saying ‘I Do’ to a Country Inn Can Strain a Marriage

So you’re thinking about quitting the urban rat race and opening a little country inn in Vermont.

Six years ago, George and Joanne Hardy, fearing imminent burnout as Cleveland social workers, did just that.

They bought a 160-year-old converted farm house, the Hill Farm Inn, along a fishing stream a few miles south of the bustling metropolis of Manchester. The energetic Hardys, both 54, preside over 13 rooms and four cabins on a country lane off Route 7.

George, a beefy, rumpled 6-footer, and Joanne, a short, wiry ball of energy, both grew up in the country--he in New Jersey and she in Oregon--so forsaking the city lights for Vermont was no sacrifice.

You would have to put them in chains to force them to move back to Cleveland.

So you’re convinced you want to buy an inn?

Wait a minute!

That’s the advice from Larry Hyde, who used to be an innkeeper himself. Now he’s a consultant, along with his partner, William Oates, in Brattleboro, Vt., where they run seminars--at an inn, of course--for would-be innkeepers each spring and fall.

“After our 2 1/2-day seminar, about 80% decide they shouldn’t be in this business,” Hyde said.

As for couples who fantasize about going into the business, Hyde contended: “It’s a serious life-style change. Most couples have never spent any significant time together until they retire. Then they realize they are together all the time.”

Oates’ wife, Heide Bredfeldt, a psychotherapist, tells the potential innkeepers that husband-and-wife teams better know themselves quite well before they get involved in a 24-hour business.

“Most males dominate,” Bredfeldt said. “When they come home from work, they tell their wives how they dominated, were in control. The wife is in control of her own stuff.”

That might be OK when they have different jobs, but, warned Bredfeldt, “when they share the same job, running an inn, there is no other outlet for frustration except each other. They can really get into a lot of trouble.”

“It’s no place for a fragile marriage,” added George Hardy, noting that he and Joanne clearly divide responsibilities. Joanne is in charge in the kitchen, and George is the inn storyteller as well as the gardener. His crops are used in Joanne’s tomato soup, for example.

Their personalities also complement each other.

“George is the dreamer; I’m the practical one,” Joanne said.

George and Joanne don’t have a lot of time off. Work is their elixir. Not do only they toil seven-day weeks at the inn, but George was dragooned into becoming the town tax collector.

“I got the job because I was a flatlander (non-Vermonter) and didn’t have any relatives here,” George said.

Joanne takes off one night a week from her cooking chores--guests have to fend for themselves on Wednesdays--but she hardly has time to take it easy. She is chairwoman of the town school board.

But despite the difficulties, the Hardys love it. And they have a lot of paying guests who love it, too--about 10,000 over the past six years, Joanne estimated.

Some come back year after year to fish in the Battenkill River, which literally flows through the back yard, or to hike or ski in the nearby Green Mountains. A Connecticut doctor, who is a fishing fanatic, has been returning each spring for 35 years when the insects are hatching and, therefore, the fish are allegedly biting.

One key reason why the Hardys are so successful is that they listen to each other.

“It’s most difficult to honor and respect each other after working together for 12 hours,” Bredfeldt said. “There is a lot of confusion about sharing power. You must be very disciplined and aware of each other’s need for privacy. Some nasty dynamics are involved.”

One thing that Bredfeldt has learned from the seminars is that inn-keeping is not for her.

“I don’t think we could do it together yet. Maybe in 10 years,” she said. Bredfeldt figures that she and Oates are “too successful separately.” And besides, she likes to talk to people in some detail. “Guests at inns ask the same questions over and over, and there’s not much time for any in-depth conversations.”

Hyde ran a 73-room inn, working from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week, until he decided to slow down and become a consultant. He has a couple of caveats: “Don’t expect to make any money for the first couple of years,” and “If you like to play, don’t be an innkeeper.”

But Joanne Hardy puts it another way: “Never has so much work been so rewarding. When guests continue to return and bring their friends to enjoy my cooking, then I know it’s definitely worth the effort.”