Brooklands Farm

Brooklands Farm has been growing things in Muskoka for 150 years.

For a handful of weekends, it grows a wedding too.

Six generations of the Riley family have worked this land since 1876, and the farm is still very much alive. Forty acres remain in production while its historic buildings have found another purpose alongside the harvest.

At the centre of the wedding is the restored 1903 barn.

Up to 140 guests can gather here, but Brooklands hosts only one wedding each weekend, giving the couple private use of the farm rather than fitting their celebration between someone else's teardown and setup.

Wedding morning can begin inside the heritage log cabin, where the wedding party has a place to get ready before the ceremony.

Outside, the farm opens around everyone.

The ceremony has its own scenic setting, while a sailcloth tent gives cocktails somewhere to land and provides a weather backup if Muskoka decides to rewrite the plans.

Couples can add Friday access too, creating time for decorating, a rehearsal and dinner before the wedding itself begins.

Then comes Saturday evening.

The old barn fills.

Harvest tables become dinner tables.

The working farm outside becomes quiet while the party inside becomes anything but.

Later, guests can gather around an evening campfire, and the couple can return to the log cabin for the night rather than immediately leaving the place where everything just happened.

There is something particularly lovely about that.

Long after the wedding decorations are gone, Brooklands will return to its ordinary rhythms of crops, seasons and harvests.

But somewhere inside a barn that has already stood for more than a century, another family story will have become part of the farm.