Six years ago we put a listing on the internet and hoped somebody would come.

Somebody did. And then 2,358 more people came!

We finally sat down and counted today. Across the guest house and the chicken coop, 714 separate stays. 2,359 people. That's just Airbnb... we didn't count the campers and van folks who found us on Hipcamp, or anybody who came through VRBO.

714 times, somebody turned off Burbank Road and came up our driveway.

Here's the thing about hosting that nobody tells you before you start. You think you're simply renting out a building. You're not. You're handing strangers the keys to the place you live and asking them to have a good time in it. Every single one of those 714 arrivals was somebody deciding to trust two women they'd never met, out in the country, a half hour from anything, based on a few photographs and whatever the last guest had to say.

714 times, that trust worked out. That's the part we're proud of.

What the numbers actually told us

We learned something staring at that spreadsheet.

The guest house averages four people a stay. Families, reunions, wedding parties, a group of friends breaking up a long drive west. The chicken coop averages two.

Five years of bookings and the number barely moves. It's couples. It has always been couples. People book the coop because the story is funny " we stayed in a chicken coop "  and then they get out here and find a quiet building at the back of a farm with two good beds and a window unit, and it turns out that's exactly what a couple wants on a Friday in October.

It's a fun novelty stay and we are super proud of it.

About that coop

It was built in the fifties on Grandpa's farm, and it housed chickens, which is not a euphemism. In 2008 we hauled the whole building five miles down the road to where it sits now and started the long project of making it livable. A few winters back we added two bedrooms.

Its first guest checked in on September 6th, 2021. Which means in a few weeks the coop turns five, and we'll probably make a fuss about that too.

We've always been upfront that it's an old building. There might be a ladybug in the fall. A fly in the summer. A cobweb in a corner we didn't get to. We put that in the listing on purpose, and every so often somebody tells us we're crazy for advertising our own imperfections. But the alternative is a guest driving four hours expecting a hotel and finding a farm building, and that helps nobody. We would rather tell you the truth and let you decide.

Chickens not included. That part's still true.

The guest house used to be a swimming pool

The space that's now the guest house held an indoor pool back when the kids were young, because Noreen wanted the party at her house so she'd know where everybody was.

Then the kids went to college, nobody dipped a foot in it for years, and we were still heating the thing. So it became a guest house that sleeps eight.

That's more or less the whole philosophy here. Everything at Blue Tin Ranch used to be something else. The coop held chickens. The corn crib held corn. The pool held teenagers. It all got a second job.

What people write down

487 of those 2,359 people left us a review. The average across all of them is 4.87 stars.

The word that comes up most is quiet. That one always makes us laugh a little, because it's the thing we did nothing to earn. We didn't build the quiet. The quiet was here. We just stopped mowing long enough to notice it and figured other people might want some.

The second thing people mention is the showers. Which, if you've never run a campsite, sounds like a strange thing to be known for. But you would not believe how many people pull in off the interstate at ten at night, having driven from Chicago, and find out there's a clean bathroom with hot water and towels waiting. We have watched grown adults get emotional about a shower.

The third is the swings. The corn crib swings get named more than any single thing on this property. Six swings around a fireplace, built out of a corn crib that used to hold actual corn. Everyone's favorite part, and it cost us almost nothing but the idea.

The ones we didn't get right

714 stays and we have not gone five stars every time.

There was a stretch last summer where a storm had come through and the yard was full of debris and boards, and we were so deep in cleanup that the guest experience slipped. Somebody wrote that down honestly and we deserved it. There have been messages we answered too slowly. A weekend where the property was busier than a camper expected and nobody warned them.

We're two people. Noreen is up at six and Kelley is the one still awake at two. We hire help when we can and lean on friends the rest of the time. When we get it wrong, we would rather hear about it than not, and we would rather hear about it from you than read it later.

Every one of those reviews changed something about how we do this.

Thank you

To all 2,359 of you... the road trippers headed west, the families at reunions, the van lifers, the hunters, the couples who booked the coop for a weekend and came back a year later, the man who camped in a tent in the snow in December and filmed the whole thing.

You paid for the showers. You paid for the swings. You are, in a real way, the reason there's still a farm here to visit.

714 stays. 2,359 people. Six years.

We'll leave the light on. It's way too bright, Noreen bought the wrong bulb, but we'll leave it on.

Come stay with us. Call or text Noreen at 605-670-8139, email bluetinranch@gmail.com, or find us on Airbnb, Hipcamp, and VRBO. Thanks for reading, Noreen