Chapter one · 2012
Sixty-six acres of tall grass and ticks.
That’s what William bought in 2012: 66 neglected acres in Schuyler, Virginia. It was, in his words, “actually a working tick farm.”
But the land dated back to 1870, when a hand-built two-over-two farmhouse went up with a full hand-dug stone basement and three fireplaces — one on every level. Over the decades, previous owners had done whatever they wanted to it: walls and a roof over the deck turned into a kitchen and bath, entire roofs installed over old roofs instead of fixing the original, decks added to the original deck so they could still have a functioning deck.
Underneath 50 years of jackleg upgrades sat a beautiful old house with hand-hewn beams, lathe-and-horsehair-plaster walls, and heart pine floors.
“Being the sentimental romantic that I am, I decided to strip it of its redneck engineering — as museum-worthy as it was.”
The plan: restore the original house to its historic grandeur, update it with modern plumbing and electric, add a real kitchen and bath. The stove and refrigerator in the cabin today were purchased for that house. The kitchen stayed at the front of the house, where it historically was — “so the wife could see when the men were returning from the fields.”
By the fall of 2014, the restoration was nearly complete. Windows, electric, and plumbing all replaced. Heart pine floors preserved. Thirty to forty days from finished.
Chapter two · Fall 2014
Then lightning struck. Literally.
William’s builder showed up on a Monday morning and found an important item missing: the house.
“And just like that… my dream was reduced to a smoking hole in the ground.”
He spent the next four months deciding what to do with the property. And arrived at a conclusion that became the whole philosophy of the place:
“It is the land that makes H’Owl at the Moon so special. You can feel it. I’ve arrived in all manner of stressed states only to have them all erased within five minutes of my arrival.”
The path forward: start fresh, build naturally, and put something on Serenity Hill — the building site — that would let him share the experience with others.
Chapter three · The rebuild
Built on a handshake.
It started with a cabin kit from Honest Abe Log Homes in Moss, Tennessee. The site was excavated by William’s friend W.A. Wells, who introduced him to Paul Willis — a master craftsman and third-generation cabin builder.
Together they made tons of changes to the layout: the master bath went in the upstairs dormer (the wall between the downstairs bedroom and bathroom is 8 inches thick just to run the plumbing), the beams stayed exposed, and the downstairs floor is full inch-and-a-quarter pine. “Yeah, it’s soft and it dents, but so what? It’s an inch thick!”
William’s wife, mother, and family donated furniture. His sons helped with labor, painting, and stain. It was a group effort — and they had as much fun building it as they do staying in it today.
“I asked Paul if he wanted a handshake or a contract. He said, ‘I’d prefer a handshake.’ Most people wind up in court with their builder. We wound up friends.”
Chapter four · The name
The apostrophe, dummy.
Until the cabin was finished, everyone just called it “the farm.” Boring. And naming the place turned out to be genuinely hard — everything with Oak, Hill, or Hollow was taken, taken, done, done.
Years earlier, on a trip to South America, William had worked with a native shaman in Iquitos — and his spirit animal was revealed to him: an owl. But “owl” is, as he puts it, “just not a pretty word, in spite of the brilliant animal it represents.” He looked it up in twelve languages. No luck.
Then, on a moonlit night at the cabin, under a full moon, listening to critters howling at the moon — it hit him. The apostrophe. That little grammatical nothing was the mightiest punctuation device ever wielded by a madman in search of a name.
H’Owl. Yeah. That’s it.
And the three-headed wolf in the logo? That’s William in the middle, flanked by his two sons — both of whom adore the place as much as he does. “But what about your wife? She is there. She is the angel in the background. Only she likes to wear black, so you can’t see her.”
Today
Come feel it for yourself.
What started as a tick farm is now 100 acres of meadow, forest, creek, and waterfalls — with a hand-built log cabin on Serenity Hill at its center. Guests arrive stressed and leave different. That’s not marketing copy; it’s the whole reason the place exists.