GALENA, Ill. — Outside the main building at Hawk Valley Retreat & Cottages, bossy blue jays and flashy cardinals jostled for position around a bird feeder.

“I filled that just this morning,” said Jim Shopofski-Walch, chuckling as he watched the twittering birds. “They empty the feeders twice a day this time of year.”

The avian visitors aren’t the only ones who eat their fill at the rural Galena bed-and-breakfast, owned by Shopofski-Walch and his husband, John Walch.

In addition to a daily two-course breakfast served in the property’s renovated 1905 barn, guests can order a variety of from-scratch meals during their stay. If they’d like, they can even check in with a fresh pot of soup, homemade bread and a cheese board waiting for them in their room.

“Our motto is ‘relax, restore and explore,’ and it’s so nice to watch our guests come and relax,” Walch said. “They often come in very tense, and it’s wonderful how, the next morning at breakfast, they are already so much more relaxed.”

The couple has owned and operated Hawk Valley Retreat & Cottages — named for a pair of red-tailed hawks that once nested on the land — for the past five years, but the 10.5-acre property northeast of Galena has a storied history.

In the 1830s, the Garber family owned the property, followed by the Cording family, who farmed the property for close to a century beginning in the 1890s. At the time, the Cordings owned about 500 acres and rented another 200.

“In the 1980s, the bottom dropped out of farming and they lost the farm and went into foreclosure,” Shopofski-Walch said.

After the farm sat vacant for several years, it was purchased by Jane and Fritz Fuchs, who restored it and operated it as both a B&B and an art school.

They were succeeded as owners by Hal and Wendy Gilpin, who ran Hawk Valley for about nine years until Walch and Shopofski-Walch assumed ownership in February of 2020.

“We each look at ourselves as stewards of this property, taking care of what has been a part of this area’s history for so long,” Walch said.

Both Shopofski-Walch and Walch grew up in the Milwaukee area and spent years working in the hospitality and restaurant industries.

Just over five years ago, they sought to open a bed-and-breakfast in the Midwest. After traveling more than 6,000 miles and visiting 16 different options, the couple stumbled upon Hawk Valley and were smitten with the property’s rolling hills and scenic vistas.

Visitors to Hawk Valley can choose to stay in one of three rooms in the main building or one of the four two-person cottages scattered around the property.

“All of the cottages have a different theme,” Walch said, opening the door to one. “This is the Pines Cottage, and this is done in a Northwoods style … We really lean into that natural, rustic aesthetic.”

Hawk Valley does not accept children except when groups rent the entire property for a wedding or event. Walch said about 85% of Hawk Valley’s guests are couples, although the property has also welcomed single travelers, friend groups and family reunions.

“We’ve had authors come here and work on books. We’ve had nature photographers,” Shopofski-Walch said. “We’ve had traveling zoologists, massage therapists, people who work for the forestry department and are doing studies on different plants and insects. We get a very varied clientele.”

The couple had operated Hawk Valley for scarcely a month when the COVID-19 pandemic struck the tri-state area, forcing them to close for about 10 weeks.

However, during that time, Walch was able to focus on many renovation and update projects that the couple originally anticipated would take them more than a year.

Chief among those projects was the renovation of the barn, which was completed in March of 2022.

It now is an event space that hosts weddings and gatherings for up to 40 people but also serves as the breakfast room where guests enjoy breakfast.

“We (make our food) from scratch here, and we incorporate things that we grow on the property into our meals,” Shopofski-Walch said.

The couple is licensed to serve eggs from the 30 chickens they have on the property, and they produce their own honey for both cooking and separate sales courtesy of the approximately 150,000 bees they keep in hives.

Hawk Valley also is home to six geese and four goats, the latter of which are happy to accompany guests on walks around the property’s trails. Other natural amenities include a pond stocked with bass and bluegill for catch-and-release fishing and a forest with more than 2,000 pine trees.

In addition to the outdoor offerings, Hawk Valley’s location eight miles east of downtown Galena — or “two turns to Galena,” as the proprietors like to say — makes it easy for guests to take a day trip.

“We specifically wanted a place that people could come and relax and escape all of the noises of the city and life, using this as a central base to enjoy so many things in the area,” Shopofski-Walch said. “You can easily venture into three different states in 45 minutes’ time.”