The Top 10 Reasons to Join

Top 10 Reasons to Join Plumley House and the Mansfield Family Recreation Association

1. Great People

2. Winter Activities – Skiing, snowshoeing, snowmobiling

3. Spring, Summer, and Fall Activities – Hiking, Canoeing and Kayaking, craft fairs and antique shows, leaf peeping

4. Great place to sit and relax, and get away from it all

5. Convenient to central and northern Vermont

6. Only a few hours from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island

7. Great food at the culinary institute in Montpelier

8. Great value – the most inexpensive second home you will ever own!

9. Use it when you want and as much as you want.

10. Only a limited number of spots available.

11. Did I mention the great people and the great skiing?

What is Plumley House?

What is Plumley House?

The Plumley House is a four season ski and recreation house in Northfield, VT owned by the Mansfield Family Recreation Association.

The Plumley House is best described as a big old Vermont house. The Mansfield Family Recreation Association purchased the house in the 1960’s from the Plumley family estate and has been operating it as a ski and recreation house ever since.

The house has three stories, with eight bedrooms on the upper floors and sleeps a total of 44 people. Additionally, there are several huge dinning and sitting rooms on the first floor and a big old Vermont kitchen.

The house is big enough that you can spend time by yourself or spend time mingling with others.

What is Mansfield Family Recreation Association?

What is Mansfield Family Recreation Association?

Mansfield Family Recreation Association, or MFRA, is a cooperative member run organization that owns the Plumley House and manages it for the benefit of the members. MFRA is also a social organization. The organization has an annual holiday party as well as a spring social. These events take place at the home of our members.

Members of MFRA tend to be families and individuals that like to hike, ski, kayak, and participate in other fun filled activities.

Most of the members live in eastern Connecticut, although some live in New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. These families have become good friends over the years as they share the Plumley House facilities and have spent hours of evening relaxation and conversation together.

In addition, MFRA has a member elected board that handles administrative details of managing Plumley House.

What to expect

What to expect when staying at Plumley House

Staying at Plumley House is more like camping indoors than staying at the Ritz.

Members need to bring their own sleeping bags or sheets, blankets, and pillows when they stay at Plumley. There are some double beds and single beds or bunk beds in each room, but there are mattresses only, so you need to bring your own sleeping bag. There is also a space to store your sleeping bags if you don’t want to carry them each time.

Members also need to bring their own towels, soap and shampoo. There are shared men’s and women’s bathrooms on the second floor with a small half bath on the first floor. The bathrooms have multiple shower stalls, sinks and toilets.

The kitchen is well equipped. There is a refrigerator and several stoves, including a really cool old cast iron stove with a real griddle. There are also pots, pans, plates, glasses, and silverware. Members bring their own food, and you can prepare something as simple as breakfast up to a full course meal in the kitchen. There is no dishwasher, so you will have to hand wash your dishes.

There are three tables in the dining room with seating for about 16-20 people. The living is huge and has a working fireplace and a whole bunch of couches and chairs. There is also a TV room and children’s play area with some games.

If you need the Ritz experience, with neatly folded towels and chocolates on the pillow, being a member of MFRA is probably not going to work for you. However if you are looking for an inexpensive way to enjoy Vermont along with some great people, joining MFRA might be just the thing you are looking for.

How it works

How it works

Once you become a member of MFRA, you and your family members can begin staying at Plumley House.

Plumley House is somewhat of a cross between a timeshare and a bed and breakfast. When you make a reservation for Plumley, you are reserving your sleeping space. That is, beds for you and your family and guests to sleep in. There may be other families using Plumley at the same time. Like a bed and breakfast, the living rooms, dining rooms, and kitchen are shared amongst all of the families staying there during that time. There is plenty of parking right on the property

As a member, making a reservation for Plumley House is easy. You simply notify the reservations chairperson via email or phone when you want to stay, the number of nights and the number of people. As a member, you will have a key. You can arrive as early as you like and leave as late as you like.

For instance, during ski season, many members arrive some time during the day or night on Friday, ski Saturday and Sunday, and go back home on Sunday evening. If the weather turns bad, you are able to go back to Plumley rather than drive home through the storm.

Plumley House is run cooperatively. This means that the members share responsibility for the operation and upkeep of the house. When staying at Plumley, members have to do things like take out the trash, change the toilet paper and paper towels, and vacuum their room and turn down the heat and hot water when they leave. There are also annual spring and fall work weekends where members do light maintenance on the property including things such as painting and racking leaves. MFRA hires out the heavy maintenance to local professionals.

How much does it cost?

How much does it cost?

Membership in MFRA is one of the best vacation values around.

The annual fee for MFRA families is $400, which is paid $200 each in January and July.

This $400 annual membership fee is then used to offset your usage of Plumley House. The nightly usage fees vary with the season, are discounted for children, and increased for guests. Currently adult members are charged $15 per person per night in the winter season and $12 per person per night in the off-season. Children are $10 per night, and guests are $18 per night in season and $15 per night off-season.

Each night you stay at Plumley House, your usage charges are deducted from your membership fee. For instance, if two adult members stayed at Plumley for two nights in season (at a cost of $15 per person per night, or $60 total), the $60 would be deducted from the $400 membership fee, leaving $340 remaining.

If you use the property more often than your annual membership fee, we simply bill you for the overage during the next billing period.

New Members are charged a $450 initiation fee to join MFRA. These fee may be paid all at once or may be spread over three years.

In addition, because Plumley is cooperatively run, it is important that members either participate during one of the two work weekends (spring or fall), or there is a $400 charge for not participating, which the association uses to offset the costs of upkeep of the property.

How Do I Join?

How do I Join?

MFRA currently has a limited number of memberships available.

To join, please contact our membership chairperson, Keith Wilson. Keith can be reached at (860) 429-3698 or via email at kwilson3698@charter.net. You can also complete the attached membership application.

Because we know Plumley House is not for everybody, we like to invite prospective members to come up Vermont and join us for a free stay at Plumley. There is typically a new members open house during one of the weekends in October. At other times, we arrange your visit to coincide with times that one or more of our member families will be at the house.

In the event that there are no memberships currently available, you can ask to be added to our waiting list