The Webb family home, built in 1887, is now The Inn at Shelburne Farms, a seasonal inn with lovely rooms, an excellent dining room and unparalleled setting on the shore of Lake Champlain.

In the 1880s railroad heiress Lila Vanderbilt Webb and her doctor turned railroad owner husband William Seward Webb fell in love with one of the most beautiful pieces of real estate in Vermont – the gently rolling peninsula called Shelburne Point in Lake Champlain just south of Burlington. With a vision of a model agricultural estate in mind, they purchased the 30 farms that had been operating on the point and set about transforming the 3,800 acres into Shelburne Farms with a combination of the cultured life, modern landscape architecture, spectacular buildings, and the latest in agricultural technology.

Shelburne Farms in the late 1800s and into the 20^th century was a place of gracious hospitality as the Webb's entertained relatives and dignitaries from all over the world in their 110-room mansion surrounded by spacious lawns and Lila’s beloved gardens on a bluff overlooking the lake with the Adirondacks in the distance. Other spectacular buildings — the Farm Barn, the Breeding Barn and the Coach Barn — were centers for the Farm’s agricultural activities.

Today the tradition of gracious hospitality continues with visitors experiencing the calming influence of the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed fields, woodlands and vistas, enjoying the hospitality of the original mansion, now known as The Inn at Shelburne Farms, dining on the bounty of Vermont farms and exploring the historic property. The Inn is open from mid-May to mid-October and guests of all ages can transport themselves to the Gilded Age as they relax in bedrooms furnished with original furniture, loll on grand sofas in the library, sip their after dinner coffee in front of a roaring fire in a marble fireplace and stroll through the gardens and down to the shore.

But there are many other ways for a traveler to experience Shelburne Farms because in the early 1970's the great grandchildren of the founders developed a plan to dedicate the Farm, its expansive lands and its historic buildings to conservation education and today, as a non-profit environmental education organization with a mission of cultivating a conservation ethic by demonstrating the stewardship of natural and agricultural resources, Shelburne Farms reaches out to all ages, students, educators, families and the general public.

Miles of trails through the 1,400 acre property give walkers the opportunity to explore fields, woodlands and the historic buildings.

There are miles of walking trails that thread through the 1,400 acre working farm, past grand buildings that have been restored and adapted to new uses. The Farm Barn, a five-story edifice with a two-acre courtyard, houses offices, a bakery, a woodworking business, a private school, the Farm’s cheesemaking operation, the education center and the Children’s Farmyard where children (and their parents and grandparents) have fun meeting the lambs, kids, chickens, turkeys, pigs, milking the patient cow, and learning, in the most gentle fashion, the importance of agriculture in our lives. The Coach Barn, once home to the carriages and sleighs and the teams that pulled them, is now a favored spot for weddings, retreats, conferences and community gatherings.

The graceful roads that lead to the Inn and the lakeshore, pass herds of Brown Swiss cows grazing in the fields, cows whose milk is transformed daily into Shelburne Farms Farmhouse Cheddar cheese, and other signs of a busy farm life – flocks of sheep, the modern dairy with its modern milking parlor and greenhouse barns, and hayfields dotted with the hay bales that will feed the cows during the Vermont winter when they cannot make their daily walks to the carefully maintained pastures.

The importance of agriculture and sustainability in our lives is a theme that runs throughout virtually everything a visitor experiences at Shelburne Farms – and if that sounds stuffy and serious rest assured that life on this farm is fun.

• visiting the Children’s Farmyard and gathering eggs the hens just laid

• thrilling to the sound of milk zinging into the pail as a Farmyard educator gives a child (or an equally delighted adult) a lesson in how to milk a cow

• sitting on the top of Lone Tree Hill and drinking in the peaceful scene — Champlain Valley farmland, Lake Champlain and the distant Adirondack Mountains

• strolling on trails that lead through the fields, woodlands, past the century-old buildings and the market garden where vegetables destined for the Inn’s dining room and the Shelburne Farmers Market are lovingly nurtured, and on to the lake shore … and seeing wildlife from deer and wild turkeys to the many birds that live in the forests.

• watching the cheesemakers as they transform 5,000 pounds of milk, produced by the herd of 125 cows at milkings the previous afternoon and early that morning, into about 500 pounds of cheddar cheese in a seven-hour process, combining science and craftsmanship, every day.

• sampling the cheddar which has been aged for six months to three years (and seeing your kids surprise you by choosing the sharpest, and the smoked cheddars)

In the Children’s Farmyard human families meet animal families and learn about the importance of agriculture in our lives.

A visit to Shelburne Farms can be a day of exploration, a stay at the Inn with its gracious hospitality and fine dining … it can also be an opportunity for a day or multi-day stay to learn and explore. In May a three-day workshop called Pasture to Palate gives foodies or budding cheesemakers a chance to learn about artisan cheesemaking with tastings, visits to cheese producers and a day making cheese with Shelburne Farms head cheesemaker. In late May a field naturalist will lead a weekend of birdwatching, wildflower identification, geology exploration and wildlife observation called “Bedrock to Birds: The Natural History of Shelburne Farms’ Working Landscape” and in June there will be a weekend called “From Bedrock to Bowls,“ an opportunity to harvest wood or clay at Shelburne Farms and create a keepsake bowl under the direction of the craftspeople at the craft school of Shelburne Art Center.

The perfect ending for a day at Shelburne Farms in the summer is a picnic on the lawn at the Inn, listening to concerts by Vermont Symphony Orchestra or the Vermont Mozart Festival. Bring a blanket or a comfortable lawn chair, and a picnic and listen to lovely music as the sun sinks behind the mountains in a spectacular Vermont sunset.

Rosalyn Graham is Director of Community Relations at Shelburne Farms, a long-time participant, with her family, in all its programs – and a big fan of the cheese and the walking trails.