Psithurism House: A Country Retreat Taking Shape on Family Land

Psithurism. Say it sith-ur-iz-um.

It means the sound of wind moving through leaves and trees. Most people have never heard the word. Almost everyone has heard the sound.

For me, it is the sound. It is the one I associate with every genuinely good day I can remember — the kind where nothing in particular happens and you would not trade it for anything. Wind through leaves means the afternoon is long, the weather is kind, and there is nowhere I need to be. When we started thinking about what to call this place, nothing else came close.

That sound is the whole idea behind what we are building.

Fifty-Four Years in the Same Place

In 1972, Chad’s parents, Lanny and Marilyn Croskey, bought a piece of land in the country southwest of Millersburg and built a home on it. Chad grew up there. It is where the family gathered, where the seasons turned, where a lot of ordinary life happened over five decades.

Both of his parents have since passed. The land stayed in the family, and over the last several years we have been bringing the home back — about half of it fully gutted and rebuilt so far, room by room, as time allows. Last year we completed a full exterior renovation: carbon grey board and batten siding, bronze trim, a timber frame front porch.

Psithurism House is going up beside it, and it will match. Same siding, same bronze, same timber frame porch. Two structures that look like they belong to each other, because they do.

There is something fitting about that. Our first property, Suite on Jackson, is a 1900s building in downtown Millersburg that we spent a year and a half restoring. This one is family land. Different settings, same instinct: take care of a place that already has a history, and let people stay in it.

Why the Country, After Downtown

We love what Suite on Jackson is. It puts you in the middle of things — walk out the door and you are steps from shops, restaurants, coffee, and a brewery, with your car parked and forgotten for the weekend. Guests tell us constantly that the walkability is the best part.

Psithurism House is the other answer.

It is not about a dramatic view. We aren’t on top of a hill. Ware tucked into a bowl of land out here, and we are honest about that. What it is about is quiet, and space, and the particular kind of rest that only happens when there is nowhere you have to be and nothing you have to hear.

What Slowing Down Actually Looks Like Here

A firepit, and evenings long enough to use it properly.

A grill, and dinner that takes as long as it takes.

Seating on the front porch — the kind you sit on for an hour without meaning to, because you got to talking and forgot to go inside.

No shared walls. No hallway. No one above or below you. A private home in the country, with the door closed and the evening entirely your own.

If you have been meaning to reconnect with someone — a spouse, a friend, yourself — this is the kind of place built for it. Not because there is a program of activities, but because there is deliberately nothing pulling at you.

What Is Taking Shape Inside

There will be a full kitchen, so you can actually cook rather than eat out three nights running. Electric fireplaces, warmth without any fuss.

The bathroom is the part we are most excited about. Rather than one room doing everything, it is being laid out as a small suite: a separate closet for the toilet, a sink and dressing table of its own, and then a pocket door opening into a spa-like space with a large shower and a hydromassage tub. If you have stayed at Suite on Jackson and loved the soaking tub, this is that instinct, carried further. We want to create a space that multiple people can use, but still have your privacy.

Earth tones. Natural textures. Nothing loud.

Built by Amish Hands

The structure is being built by Pepper Builders, an Amish remodeling company here in Holmes County. If you have spent any time in this part of Ohio, you already know what that means for the workmanship. It felt right that a house going up on this land would be built by the people who have been building in this county for generations.

Minutes From Everything, Far Enough to Forget It

Psithurism House sits on Township Road 305, roughly a mile and a half southwest of Suite on Jackson. That puts downtown Millersburg minutes away, with the rest of Ohio’s Amish Country — the cheese houses, the wineries, the bakeries, the backroads worth driving slowly — spread out in every direction from there.

When we open, guests will have access to the same curated travel guides we have built for Suite on Jackson guests: sixteen of them, covering where to eat, what to see, and the places we actually send our own visitors.

Close enough to do everything. Far enough that you can choose not to.

We Are Not Setting a Date Yet

The structure is going up right now. Framing, weather, the ordinary pace of building something properly — we would rather open when it is genuinely ready than name a date we have to walk back.

So we are not putting one out there. What we can tell you is that it is happening, it is well underway, and we will share it as it comes together.

Founding Guests Get 15% Off

Join the Psithurism House waitlist →

If any of this sounds like the kind of place you have been looking for, join the waitlist.

Here is how it will work. We will list Psithurism House before it officially opens, with the calendar blocked through our prospective opening date. When we are ready to open the books, waitlist members hear first — a notification before the dates are released to anyone else. First look, first pick.

You will also get 15% off your first stay — our thank-you to the people who booked before there were any photos of a finished room or a single review to read.

That is a real leap of faith, and we do not take it lightly. Founding guests set the tone for a property. We would like ours to be people who understood the idea before they saw the pictures.

— Kelly & Chad

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