Barn This Way

When a young Brooklyn family fell hard for rural Connecticut, an unprepossessing dairy farm turned into a busy, bustling home away from home.

- Chloe Malle

It’s 8:45 a.m. and a pre-camp frenzy has taken over Sylvana and Adam Durrett’s country house in Washington, Connecticut. Calls come from the ship lapped mudroom for rackets. The couple’s three kids—Henry, 11, Grace, 9, and Millie, 6—hustle sneakers on, as Sylvana deftly threads Millie’s loose blond locks into a taut ponytail. They hug their mom goodbye in succession like von Trapps in tennis whites, and are bundled out the door and into the family car by Adam. Suddenly, the rambling farmhouse descends into calm.

But not for long. Vogue photographer Norman Jean Roy has just arrived with pastries from his Hudson Valley bakery, Breadfolks, and sets them on the kitchen terrace. In an instant Sylvana yells “Blue!” because the family’s 90-pound yellow Lab has launched himself onto the weathered farm table and, like a breaching whale, sinks his maw into a loaf of sourdough.

Sylvana’s accustomed to this. The 42-year-old CEO of Maisonette, a beloved tyke-targeted online emporium, which itself has made ample use of this 102-acre property for photo shoots, is comfortable in a bit of chaos— having grown up in Los Angeles with her mother’s nine siblings and their families often visiting from San Jose. “It’s never really quiet here,” says Sylvana. “Everything was designed with guests in mind. It’s like a hotel in the summer.” Between the main house, the barn, and guest quarters tucked down by the pond, she can happily accommodate three families—all the kids’ beds have trundles, per their own request—and the Durretts recently purchased a generous six-bedroom gabled farmhouse across the street for further (and future) spillover.