Travelers will be hard-pressed to find a home more lovingly tended than the Shadows, a 1913 stone farmhouse, serenely set in a grove of old cedars on the road between Orange and Montpelier. Pat and Barbara Loffredo, refugees from New York, where Pat was a police officer, have filled their house with a cheerful collection of country Victorian antiques. Prize pieces include an intricately carved Civil War—era hunt board, an old pump organ, two claw-foot tubs, and Maxfield Parrish prints wherever the eye rests. The house is perhaps best described as Arts and Crafts style—a modified bungalow built of wood and local fieldstone. It has lustrous oak floors and windowsills around which lace curtains flutter. The four spotless guest rooms upstairs have standard Victorian trappings.
All the tangibles here are pleasant enough, but Pat and Barbara, their skills honed over a decade in the business, put the Shadows overthe mark. Theirjoy in the home they share with guests and a friendly small dog named James Madison—in honor of the former president whose estate is just a few miles up the highway—is infectious. The Loffredos delight in coddling guests, overwhelming them with country gourmet breakfasts of French toast soufflé and poached pear with sherry cream. Guests may also appreciate the old barns and hay fields that dot the inn’s 44-acre plot, especially when fall colors near their peak.
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