The History of Herrbrook Farm
Herrbrook Farm is a nineteenth-century Century Farm located in the heart of Lancaster County, just five miles south of Lancaster, that had been in the continuous care of the Herr-Houser family from 1883-2011.
Built by Martin B. and Anna Shenk Herr in 1883 (see datestone in gable end of house and on barn wall) as a wedding present for their daughter Susan upon her marriage to Harry Leaman Herr, it came with one caveat: that this would also serve as the retirement home for Martin and Anna!
Price tag was $4,000 for the house and $3,800 for the barn. Economical, to be sure, given that it was also home to Susan’s two sisters, Martha and Anna, prior to their marriages. (Later they each received a gift-farm as well.) At one point, when Susan’s brother, Isaac Shenk, returned from California, a two-story addition was added to the back of the house for him, with its own rear entrance.
This Pequea Township farm, surrounded by orchards and farmland, lies within an agricultural preservation district and offers a desirable blend of farmland, restored meadow wetlands, well-maintained buildings, a cold storage apple/potato cellar, attic smokehouse, and a sweeping “30-mile view” hilltop vista. The spacious barn, originally housed a small dairy operation that had glass milk bottles, with raised letters spelling Herrbrook Farm, New Danville, and its own inscribed dairy wagon.
The property offers the charm of an 1883 farmstead with its unique local history, including its role as a turn-of-the-century stagecoach and trolley stop. Vestiges of the stone culvert and trolley bed can be seen on the property today. A small family history written by Vera Herr Garber, daughter of Susan and Harry, documents the turn-of-the-century life within the walls of Herrbrook. The Life Of Papa and His Folks creates vivid details of family activities with its many black and white photos. The three Herrbrook children—Vera, Elvin, and Elizabeth—all walked up the road to the brick schoolhouse that still stands by the curve in the New Danville Pike.
Upon the deaths of Susan and Harry, their daughter Elizabeth and husband Harry F. Houser, paid off the farm’s Depression mortgage by creating three apartments in the farmhouse. Over the years these living spaces have been used as apartments, eventually in 1965 becoming the primary home where their son Rodney E. Houser and wife Mary Lou Weaver Houser lived. They created on this acreage with an intentional community with more than a hundred others over a period of 40 years, from the early 70’s until their move in 2011.
Herrbrook Farm became a haven for people in transition, for friends with whom they gardened, preserved food, shared childcare as well as a tractor, second car, garden rototiller, and laundry. One family built a passive solar house on an acre of ground near the large vegetable garden where they lived for the next thirty years, raising two children along with the Housers’ son and daughter. Shared living and a spirit of community continued the extended family household of Rod’s Herr relatives.
For 23 of those years, hundreds of people retreated to the rustic Herrbrook Farm Retreat Cottage created in the former garage where Harry L. Herr’s Hudson resided. They came for aesthetic quiet and spiritual renewal--to write, compose music, and create art. The two-story chicken house, which had been renovated to be a simple residence for singles, later became an art/yoga studio shed for retreatants to enjoy.
Extensive gardens and a 65-foot-diameter, eleven-circuit labyrinth provided healing spaces for those seeking the hospitality of Herrbrook. Mary Lou, a former high school educator, offered spiritual guidance for those on retreat and other individuals from 1998-2011 in her private practice in the farmhouse.
Selling the farm to Winner’s Circle Center Inc. seemed like a way to extend the healing spirit of Herrbook to benefit an entirely new community of individuals and families seeking well-being. In September 2011, at the home-coming farewell for all who had resided there, Mary Lou offered these words:
After 46 years on ancestral land in New Danville (PA), leave-taking has been a poignant process for the couple who came as newly-weds to the front three rooms of the 1883 farmhouse. To this brick house carrying the family name, Herrbrook, they had come to pursue a quiet teaching life with simple order and pleasures—kitties, people, and gardens. How could they have imagined the ensuing years--the 100-plus people who would enter their lives and share this sacred acreage, the hundreds of retreatants who sought shelter in the cottage and healing beneath these trees, the labyrinth where feet-treading-upon-ground leads home? Truly, did they tend gardens? or were they tended by the working of good earth? And in the forming of relationships, they might know gratefully it was they who were formed . . . and forever changed.
Rod and Mary Lou Houser, bound for New England honeymoon, 1965
