There are plenty of places at Olde Homestead Farm where it is easy to forget you are on Cape Cod. Across more than six acres in Marstons Mills, alpacas graze, chickens and ducks wander freely, a llama surveys the activity and Walter, the farm’s notoriously mischievous emu, occasionally tests the limits of his freedom. But behind the property’s historic 18th-century home, Joan Spiegel has created a landscape that leaves little doubt about its Cape Cod origins.

She built a beach.

At its center is a long, rectangular in-ground pool, completed in early fall 2025 and tucked into the “L” formed by the original house and the towering post-and-beam structure connected to it. Just beyond a large mahogany deck—with its own luxurious enclosed outdoor shower—the pool stretches toward Crocker Pond, its clean geometry softened by sand, ornamental and native beach grasses and pale natural stone.

“You know, it’s funny, I’m not one to sit around,” Spiegel says, “but I do love the sound and the different landscape the pool provides and, of course, on a hot day, a dunk to wash off the farm is always nice.”

Sitting still has never figured prominently into Spiegel’s routine. When she isn’t working in Boston as the peri-surgical head of anesthesia at Beth Israel, she and her partner, Russell, are often up before dawn tending to Olde Homestead Farm’s extensive menagerie. So naturally, when Spiegel envisioned a place ostensibly devoted to leisure, she and Russell planted more than 50 pots of grasses themselves.