Snow days

We are booked every weekend through March 3rd, but have plenty of mid-week availability.  For our blog followers and Facebook fans, we are offering Green Gate Guest House at $99/night weekdays until the snow is gone!  The alpine, snowboarding, nordic, and snowshoeing trails are all open and groomed to perfection, so schedule a ‘sick of … Read more

Perfect ski conditions on the Iron Range!

One of the things that attracted us to this property is the close proximity to Giants Ridge- I believe we are the ONLY residence with ski-in, ski-out access to the nordic trail system.  Once the snow is adequate (usually by Christmas, but a little later this season!), we are able to use the snow-covered Mesabi … Read more

Things to do on the Iron Range- Laiskiainen Festival

If you’ve been craving some ethnic comfort food and perhaps a slide down an ice luge, you’re in luck- come to Palo MN this weekend for the Finnish Laiskiainen Festival!  This annual event on the Iron Range has a lot to offer both indoors and out.  Hometown Focus, our local paper, wrote this article about … Read more

Building the Solar Behemoth- a slideshow chronology

We’re very pleased that our solar heating project is getting so much attention- thousands of hits on our construction blog tells me that the interest in renewable energy is there!  One of the goals of the project was to demonstrate the feasibility and performance of do-it-yourself solar heating projects in extreme climates like northern Minnesota.  … Read more

Coffee sack curtains

Check out our “new” curtains in the silo.  We got some burlap coffee bean bags from a friend in the coffee business and upcycled  them into rustic window treatments.  My mom and Grandma did the sewing  (they even made handwoven tiebacks from the same material), and I made the hangers from wooden dowels.  The earthy, … Read more

Things to do, places to go….

The Iron Range Tourism Bureau (funded by lodging tax revenue), has developed two impressive internet sites to help you plan your next trip to our area.  There’s lots of great information on things to do nearby, so check them out at http://ironrange.org/ and http://www.explore.ironrange.org/

Building the dream…

We get a lot of questions about our unique guest house and how exactly it came to be, so we put together a slideshow chronology of the entire process. 4 years and 10,000+ manhours of labor compressed into about 2 minutes! You can see the deconstruction of the original hay barn, construction of the ‘new’ guest house, … Read more

Let’s Ride Bikes!

One of the reasons we live here is for the fantastic cycling routes, both on and off-road.  For starters, we are just a few blocks off the Mesabi Bike Trail- one of the longest paved bike trails in America.  For years, we have been the end-of-the-line, as the trail terminates at Giant’s Ridge Golf and Ski resort … Read more

Dining in a silo

To accomodate seating for 6-8 people in the small silo, I created a booth-style dining room.  The seat is made from thin maple strips formed into a curved butcher block arrangement.  The table was built using a cedar tree trunk and pine lumber salvaged from the garage we deconstructed last summer.  The dining room is ready for … Read more

Welcome to our new Website!

We are mobile device friendly and we look better! We will be open soon, so make sure to continue following our story. Hope to see you soon.

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