BY KADIE TAYLOR
THE OBSERVER
EAST ALABAMA — Expanding to more than weekend visitors, Shoofly Farms is now a place for couples to enjoy their wedding day alongside close family and friends.
Shoofly Farms sits on 200 acres of land with walking trails, an indoor/outdoor gym, a state-of-the-art sports court, a full-sized pickleball court, farm animals and eight different options for buildings/rooms that can fit up to 20 people across the property overnight.
Since buying the property in 2009, owner Louise Cardoza said she began updating the buildings on the property to host visitors and community events like yoga and trail-walking days. When she started opening up rooms for bed and breakfast services 10 years ago, Cardoza said she began with one building and over time expanded to the other buildings on her property to host more guests, creating a community of repeat visitors and locals who participated in events hosted on the property.
“The bed and breakfast grew and grew, and we started getting these wonderful Auburn parents,” she said. “They would come back year after year. I became very good friends with them, and to this day, we write, ‘I miss you, I love you.’ We fell in love with each other. We have so many guests repeat, couples that would send me gifts all the time and it just became a family. They would all meet each other. They met each other here, and they would come back to see each other. It was a very heartfelt type of place.”
With the growth of Shoofly Farms, Cardoza said she is excited to expand the offerings to wedding parties to a part of couples’ special days.
“We’ve had quite a few retreats out here, and it’s just been wonderful,” she said. “That’s what we really love, retreats. Then, all of a sudden, even though we did three weddings, and it was very, very tough learning how to do weddings. Now we feel like we want to do weddings all the time. But to start, I was doing them all by myself, and it’s almost impossible for one person to do the whole wedding thing.”
To help her navigate hosting weddings, Cardoza said she asked her friend Cidy Henderson to join in the fun as venue coordinator.
“We’ve realized that what’s special about weddings at Shoofly Farms is the community aspect,” Henderson said. “It’s coming here, bringing your family… Shoofly Farms works really great for small weddings, anything with 100 people or less, and the 50 to 75 range is just perfect. You can fit them on the porch perfectly. Everybody can sit, everybody can gather.
“There are so many beautiful places on the property. There are several pastures, and there are beautiful wooded areas. So it would be a matter of a bride coming here and really walking and touring the property and deciding what they think and where they would like to get married. Then we can help them and work with them to do that. We don’t coordinate or do wedding planning, we’re just really offering the venue to everybody, but we want to work really closely with the brides, their coordinators and their planners to give them the experience that they want here.”
With decor that combines rustic elements and style with modern art and furniture, while highlighting the beautiful land the farm sits on, Cardoza said she wants to provide a space for couples to have the wedding of their dreams.
“We also want to offer a venue where couples can think out of the box,” she said. “We don’t really want to do the traditional because it’s not a traditional place… Since we bought this land, we’re so happy because there are so many of those beautiful little spots around for visitors to enjoy. We’ve had three weddings here in the past; they’ve all been different, and they’ve all been wonderful.”
With the large Farmhouse that holds multiple guest bedrooms, Cardoza also renovated multiple buildings on the land that had prior uses when the farm was a poor farm in the days before social programs to help those in need. The Apple House was a storage room for apples during the poor farm days, but is now a place visitors can stay with a king-sized bed, full bathroom, small kitchen and a covered side porch with a grill and rustic bar.
“Back in the day and before Social Security, a lot of people couldn’t take care of themselves very well, so they needed help,” she said. “So they would come live on a poor farm, work on the farm and they would be taken care of. It was mostly elderly people, people that were just down on their luck or people just had no family. So they came here.”
For wedding parties, Cardoza said there are many suites and small buildings can be used by the wedding party, with the Penthouse Loft Retreat often being used by the bride and bridesmaids the night before, a Groom Suite for the guys to stay and a Sugar Shack for the couple after the wedding. Close family and friends can also stay in the other rooms and buildings on the property, like the Legacy Cottage, Master Suite, Pasture Suite and Samfort Suite, to celebrate the happy couple.
With the expansion of what Shoofly Farms offers visitors and the growth to host couples’ special days, Cardoza said, “We’re excited to see brides and grooms get married at Shoofly.”
For more information, visit www.auburnbedandbreakfast.com or follow Auburn Bed and Breakfast at Shoofly Farm on Facebook.
