Construction is underway on Bellwether Farm
GO Logic is pleased to announce groundbreaking on Bellwether Farm, a 140-acre summer camp and year-round retreat facility centered on a working organic farm. Designed for The Episcopal Diocese of Ohio, the project reflects a vision of community focused on sustainable agriculture, land stewardship, education, and spiritual enrichment. The planning for the site and structures is animated by those same values, highlighting the beauty of the rural landscape while pursuing net-zero energy performance project-wide. A place of retreat, learning, inspiration, and personal growth, Bellwether Farm will serve also as a forward-looking model for environmentally responsible development and sustainable food production.
Entry view of salvaged timber frame
Worship Barn, with salvaged timber frame
Completion of youth cabins in the trees
Dining and Meeting Building from the north
Steel framing nearing completion at entry cantilever
The project is sited at an oxbow in the Vermillion River, on a former soybean farm that rises to a bluff overlooking a forest of beech, maple, and sycamore. The master plan, developed in collaboration with Maine-based landscape architecture firm Ann Kearsley Design, maintains the existing upper fields for farming, preserving open agricultural space and views of the river below. Buildings, recreation fields, and other infrastructure is concentrated at the edge of the bluff, a more sheltered location that nevertheless provides easy access to the fields above.
When complete, the project will include 36,600 square feet of new buildings: a summer youth camp for 96 campers; an adult retreat center with 40 double-occupancy sleeping units and accessory meeting spaces; a community building with a commercial kitchen, dining room, and meeting rooms; a repurposed, three-season worship barn; and staff housing.
All of the year-round buildings will be constructed to the Passive House standard, utilizing superinsulated building-shell assemblies, continuous air-sealing, and energy-recovery ventilation. The smaller buildings will employ light wood framing; the community building, a non-combustible steel framing system.
With construction now underway on the cabins, worship barn, community building, and farm structures, the project is on track for completion in late 2018.
