When we’re getting ready for a retreat at Big Raven Farm, the week before is usually a little crazy around here. Darin is planning meals and buying groceries, I’m getting projects and supplies ready, beds are being made, rooms are being checked, and the workroom slowly goes from looking like a regular room to a place where 14 or 15 people can happily make a mess for the next few days.
By Thursday afternoon, we’re usually looking around for all the little things we might have forgotten. Is there enough coffee? Are the dietary requests covered? Did I put everything out for tomorrow’s project? Are there enough towels? Where did I put that one thing I know I bought?
Then our guests start arriving, and all of that preparation disappears into the background. That’s actually what we want to happen. When you come here for a retreat, you shouldn’t have to think about the grocery shopping that happened on Tuesday or how long it took to get the workroom ready. You bring in your bags, find your room, get settled and start meeting the people you’ll be spending the next few days with.
But I think all of that invisible stuff is also part of what makes it difficult to look at the price of a retreat online and know exactly what you’re paying for.
A creative retreat isn’t quite the same as booking a hotel, taking a class or planning a weekend away. It’s all of those things bundled together. From Thursday evening through Sunday morning, you’re staying here at the farm, eating seven meals here, learning and working on your projects here, and depending on the retreat, many of the materials you’ll use are already waiting for you.
Once you’re here, everything happens in one place. Your project can stay spread out on the table overnight. Dinner doesn’t require a restaurant search or reservation. The tools you need are nearby, and when you’re finished for the evening, your room is right here.
Since a retreat is an investment, I think it’s worth pulling back the curtain a little and showing you what actually goes into one.
It Starts With Having a Place to Stay
Everyone stays here at the farm. There’s no classroom in one location and hotel across town. Nobody packs up at five because we have to lock the doors. Once you unpack your bags on Thursday, Big Raven Farm is home until Sunday morning.
Our rooms are part of the farm, and depending on your reservation, you may also be staying in our little cabin tucked along the edge of the grove. People settle in surprisingly quickly. Shoes start appearing by doors, coffee cups migrate around the house and sweaters get draped over chairs. By Friday, the place feels lived in.
That makes the weekend feel very different from attending a workshop and staying at a hotel. There’s no daily transition between “class” and the rest of the trip. If you want to work on something after dinner, you can wander back into the workroom. If you’re done creating for the day, you can head upstairs, sit outside or find somewhere quiet. Your bed is already here waiting for you.
Meanwhile, Darin Has Been Thinking About What You’re Going to Eat
Food starts being planned long before anyone sits down at the table.
Before a retreat, we collect dietary restrictions and allergies from our guests, and Darin starts figuring out the menu. Then come the grocery runs, the prep and the inevitable moment when we realize we need one more thing.
Your retreat begins with dinner on Thursday evening. Friday and Saturday include breakfast, lunch and dinner, and we finish with breakfast Sunday morning. That’s seven meals over the course of the retreat.
What I like about having meals here isn’t only the food. It changes the entire pace of the weekend. Nobody has to stop what they’re doing at lunchtime and decide where to go. Twelve people aren’t trying to agree on a restaurant for dinner. There’s no driving somewhere, waiting for a table, eating, driving back and trying to get yourself interested in the project you abandoned two hours earlier.
Instead, there’s a natural rhythm to the day. People work for a while, we eat, everyone wanders back to whatever they were doing, and eventually another meal comes around.
By Saturday, conversations that started over a project have usually wandered into books, families, travel, gardens, jobs and all kinds of things that have absolutely nothing to do with what anyone came here to make. That’s just what happens when people spend a few days together.
The Workroom Looks Very Different by Saturday
Before everyone arrives, the workroom is ready and organized. Tables are cleared, chairs are where they belong and supplies are waiting.
That lasts about as long as you’d expect.
By Saturday afternoon, there are projects everywhere. Paintbrushes are sitting in jars, scraps have accumulated, somebody has something drying, and tables that looked enormous on Thursday suddenly seem barely big enough. The room looks like 15 people have been happily making things in it for three days, which is exactly what I want it to look like.
Having a dedicated workspace for several days gives you a kind of freedom that can be surprisingly difficult to create at home. A lot of us make things on dining room tables, kitchen counters or whatever other surface we can temporarily claim. Eventually real life needs the table back.
Here, you can leave your project exactly where it is. Sometimes walking away is actually the best thing you can do. You go have lunch, walk outside or sleep on it, and when you come back the next morning, you suddenly see what the project needs.
You also get to work around other people. Ideas travel around the room. Someone tries something interesting and suddenly three people want to know how they did it. Someone gets stuck and another guest has an idea. You see materials and techniques being used in ways you might never have considered on your own.
It’s hard to explain how much working around other creative people changes things until you’ve done it.
A Lot Happens Before a Project Ever Reaches Your Table
The instruction varies depending on which Big Raven Farm retreat you choose.
Some of our retreats focus on a particular creative medium, including things like watercolor, art journaling, embroidery, cyanotypes and eco-printing. Our Pick Your Project retreats are a completely different animal because guests choose their projects ahead of time, and everyone may be working on something different.
Either way, there’s quite a bit happening before you ever sit down to make something. Projects have to be planned and tested. Supplies have to be gathered. Materials need to be ordered and organized. Sometimes I make something and discover that a step that sounded perfectly reasonable in my head does not work nearly as well in real life, so it’s back to the drawing board.
That testing matters because when you’re here, I want you spending your time making rather than discovering that the materials don’t cooperate or that an important tool is missing.
Once the retreat starts, the teaching becomes part of the making. There are demonstrations and instructions, but there’s also a lot of walking around the room, answering questions, helping solve problems and figuring out what to do when somebody’s project takes an unexpected turn.
And they always do. Paint behaves badly. Measurements are off. Something gets glued backward. A project that looked simple suddenly decides it has other plans. That’s part of making things too.
Supplies Can Be Sneakily Expensive
Exactly what’s included depends on the retreat, and we make it clear ahead of time if there are things you’ll need to bring.
For many projects, though, the materials are already here. We also have tools and equipment that would make very little sense for someone to purchase just because they wanted to try a technique once.
Anyone who has ever signed up for a seemingly inexpensive class and then received the supply list knows where I’m going with this. The $75 class suddenly needs six bottles of something, three brushes you don’t own, a particular kind of paper, a cutting tool and one strangely specific item that apparently exists at only one art supply store in America.
By the time you’re finished shopping, the class wasn’t $75.
Having materials and tools here also gives you the chance to experiment without deciding whether you’re ready to invest in all the equipment required to do it at home.
And Then There’s the Farm Itself
Thankfully, the setting is one thing we don’t have to prepare. Big Raven Farm sits in the Driftless region of southeastern Minnesota, surrounded by rolling hills, wooded ridges, fields and limestone that make this little corner of the state look very different from what people sometimes expect Minnesota to look like.
There’s a two-mile trail here, along with gardens, woods, chickens and plenty of places to wander when you’ve been staring at the same project for too long.
And here’s something people never expect when I tell them: we don’t have mosquitoes. I know that sounds nearly impossible for Minnesota, but for whatever reason, they just aren’t a problem here. You can actually sit outside in the evening or walk the trail without spending the entire time swatting at yourself.
Fall is especially beautiful. The hills start changing color, mornings get cooler, and the floors get cold enough that I start reminding everyone to bring slippers.
At night, you might hear the owls or coyotes farther out. During the day, you can walk outside for twenty minutes and then wander right back into the workroom. The setting is simply part of being here.
What Would It Cost to Put Together a Similar Weekend Yourself?
After looking at everything that goes into one of our retreats, I got curious about this myself. What would it actually cost to put together a similar three-night creative weekend if everything were purchased separately?
Using current Rochester, Minnesota travel rates and the cost of a comparable three-day Minnesota creative workshop as a rough comparison, it might look something like this:
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Three nights of lodging at about $125 per night: $375
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Three breakfasts at about $20: $60
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Two lunches at about $22: $44
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Two dinners at about $33: $66
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A comparable three-day creative workshop: about $500
That puts the weekend at about $1,045 per person, and we still haven’t added project materials, supplies, specialized tools or a dedicated workspace where everything can stay spread out for several days.
Could you put together a less expensive weekend? Of course. You could find a cheaper hotel, bring some food from home, choose a less expensive class or use supplies you already own. You could also very easily spend considerably more.
I’m not suggesting that every three-day creative getaway costs exactly $1,045. What surprised me when I started looking at the pieces separately was how quickly they added up.
A retreat price can look very different when you compare it with the price of a single workshop. But a workshop isn’t really what you’re buying here. You’re buying the room, the meals, the instruction, the workspace, the supplies that are included and the experience of having all of it happen in one place.
Sources: For this comparison, lodging and meal estimates are based on the U.S. General Services Administration’s FY2026 Rochester, Minnesota rates. GSA lists Rochester lodging at $127 per night, breakfast at $20, lunch at $22 and dinner at $33. I rounded lodging down to $125 for the comparison above. The three-day workshop estimate is based on The Atelier in Minnesota, which lists a three-day 2026 workshop at $500. Pricing accessed September 2026.
Source links to add on the website:
U.S. General Services Administration: FY2026 Minnesota Per Diem Rates
The Atelier: Workshops
And Then There’s the Part That’s Harder to Price
Most of us are constantly planning something. We’re figuring out dinner, making appointments, buying groceries, answering emails, coordinating schedules and keeping track of the dozen small things that need to happen next.
When you’re here, we’ve already taken care of a lot of that, and for a few days your list gets pretty simple:
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Make something you want to make.
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Eat when the food is ready.
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Go outside if you need some air.
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Go back to your project when you’re ready.
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Stay up late or turn in early.
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Get up tomorrow and do it again.
There’s room in our retreats that we deliberately don’t fill. I don’t want people leaving Big Raven Farm feeling like they need a vacation after their retreat. There should be time to work, but also time to wander outside, talk to someone for an hour, sit somewhere quiet or decide that you’re done being productive for the day.
If coming by yourself is the thing making you hesitate, we recently wrote about why so many guests come to Big Raven Farm alone. People do it all the time, and sharing meals, workspace and a few days together has a way of taking care of that initial awkwardness pretty quickly.
So What Does a Big Raven Farm Retreat Actually Include?
When I look at it from our side of things, I see a lot more than the retreat schedule.
I see the groceries coming through the door and Darin figuring out where he’s going to put all of them. I see stacks of supplies waiting to be sorted, freshly made beds, clean towels and a workroom that is briefly, beautifully organized before everyone arrives.
Then I see what happens to all of it.
The beds get slept in. The food gets eaten. The workroom looks like 15 people have been happily making things in it for three days. Projects that didn’t exist on Thursday are packed into cars on Sunday. People who didn’t know one another a few days earlier are saying goodbye in the driveway.
That’s the part I wish you could see when you’re looking at a retreat online.
A Big Raven Farm retreat is an investment, and I don’t think there’s any reason to dance around that. But it also isn’t simply the price of taking a class. It’s three nights here at the farm, seven meals, creative instruction, workspace, supplies and materials where included, tools, the setting, and a few days where somebody else has already thought about a whole lot of the details for you.
If that sounds like the kind of weekend you’ve been needing, take a look at our upcoming Big Raven Farm retreats. Come with a friend, or come on your own.
We’ll be getting the farm ready for you.