Cultivating an oasis on the farm
Instead of a cottage, a couple opts for Confederation-era farmhouse with fields and pond
Jim Sleeth and Dana Sinclair hadn’t meant to buy the farm. The couple was, in fact, looking for a cottage where they could spend summers with their two daughters. But after checking out properties on various Muskoka lakes, the cons outweighed the pros: high cost, no land, short period of use and next-door neighbours as close as they are in the city.
So they started thinking farms — Sleeth had happy memories as a kid spending weekends and summers on his family’s farm north of Cobourg. Around the same time, his father decided to sell the 50-acre farm with its lovely, red brick, 1867 farmhouse. So they bought it, plus the adjacent 17-acre hardwood lot and two other, nearby parcels. “It’s a real working farm,” Sleeth says of the property he and Sinclair bought about six years ago. “We have hay in all fields, some acres are leased to beef farmers. My parents bought the 50 acres withthe original red brick house in 1979, that’s how long I’ve been coming here.
“My parents did the same thing as we did — they didn’t want a cottage, which you can only use eight weeks a year, and you don’t get much land and the cottages are close together.”
The Confederation-era farmhouse needed a lot of work and, without a heritage designation, the couple could have torn it down.
But they loved its typical southern Ontario features: big front porch, peaked gable in the front, wide plank floors, high ceilings, deep window sills and beautifully proportioned rooms. So they installed new bathrooms, energy-efficient aluminum-clad windows, restored the original hardwood floors and freshened up the colours over a four-month stretch.
A few years later, after getting used to the space over summers and weekends, they tore down the 1,500square-foot1970s addition that had replaced the original summer kitchen and rebuilt it, on the same footprint, over the course of nine months.
It had to be modern, but with materials that would seamlessly integrate heritage and new.
“We love both old and modern architecture, especially when they exist side by side,” Sleeth says. “We’ve seen it done very successfully in European cities, as well as Toronto.”
They hired an architect for the drawings, then Sleeth acted as general contractor to execute them, leaving Toronto at 5 a.m. to arrive at the farm in time to get everything organized and then returning to the city for work at Human Performance International, the sports psychology and performance firm he and Sinclair own and operate.
Once the single-storey addition was framed, they knocked out the rear wall of the farmhouse — saving the old wood and bricks.
A new chef’s kitchen straddles the old and new, with one side open to the new family room and home theatre area, and the other with a secret door to the heritage part of the home.
A breezeway at the end of the addition leads to Sinclair’s office that can be closed off with two outside doors. As a noted professional sports psychologist — Sinclair has worked with teams in the NHL, NFL, NBA and MLB — “she needs to make quiet, confidential calls,” Sleeth says.
There’s also a master bedroom in the addition, freeing up the bedrooms in the heritage building for their daughters, — or for the out-oftown guests and clients who sometimes stay.
“When we work in the office here, I look out on the green fields and it’s different, I have a clarity of thinking, and become more creative.” JIM SLEETH HOMEOWNER
Exterior materials have been chosen to blend with the old building: black aluminum windows in the addition come from the same manufacturer that produced those in the heritage home, and corrugated tin cladding matches that at other local farms.
The addition is “clearly a contemporary-looking building,” explains Beth Lowenfeld, co-owner of Four Blocks South design and decor, “but it refers both to the heritage structure, and its location as a working farm. Those were two important features in terms of the exterior.”
Colour goes a long way in smoothing the transition between the two spaces, Lowenfeld says. Only Farrow & Ball paints were used because of their historically correct palette, although more contemporary shades were chosen to provide a cleanerlooking palette and as an appropriate backdrop for the couple’s significant art collection.
The views all around — but especially from the addition at the back — are magnificent, Sleeth says. “In winter, it’s beautiful out there, the sweep of fields blanketed in snow and the woods in the distance.”
Also visible from the house is the half-acre pond, developed by the Ducks Unlimited organization, which attracts ducks and other wildlife. A neighbouring otter visited all last year, eating up all the trout they stocked, Sleeth says.
Although both their daughters are now at university, the farm remains the family’s oasis — as it was for Sleeth in his youth. During summer months, they’re at the pond, swimming and on paddle boards; in winter they skate. Hunter, 22, and heading to the U.K. for a master’s program in publishing, is an avid horseback rider. Morgan, 20, is studying for her BA and on U of T’s field hockey team. The girls come by their sportiness honestly: Sinclair was captain of Canada’s field hockey team, and Sleeth was on the Canadian national canoe team and is a former assistant captain and coach of England’s Cambridge University Ice Hockey Team.
Although the farm is a place of respite and retreat, it’s also where Sin- clair and Sleeth hope to spend more of their working time. If it has the ability to calm them both, they know it will benefit some of their athlete clients, as well. They are working with architectural firm SuperKül on a separate lodging for visiting athletes. As well, they are spending more time at the farm writing a perfor- mance psychology app they will soon market.
“When we work in the office here, I look out on the green fields and it’s different, I have a clarity of thinking, and become more creative,” Sleeth says.
Sinclair feels the same. “An oasis is somewhere calm and relaxed where I can slow the pace down.”
And when she travels with teams, it’s not their Yorkville house that Sinclair yearns for but, rather, the peacefulness of the farm.
“When away, I have an image in mind — the fields, the rolling hills, the pond and getting cosy in that nice house.”