About Us
Our Story
Three Pheasants Boutique Bed and Breakfast in Gotland was established in early 2018 by four people who have lived and worked in Asia and Africa for the last 20+ years: Jerry, Josefina, Paolo and Karthi.
The core team who run the day to day ops, Josefina Bergsten (Swedish born) and Jerry McLean (British born and raised in South Africa) bring their experiences, stories, love of food and collected antiques and treasures that decorate the property to Three Pheasants.
Our philosophy and mission is straightforward: provide seriously comfy, snug accommodation and tasty down to earth food, grown on the property or sourced nearby, in a setting where anyone can feel at home. So if you're a global wanderer, family with children, couple on honeymoon, writer in need of peace and inspiration, or anyone at all! - come stay with us and tell us your story and we'll share a few of ours!
The Property
Three Pheasants Boutique B&B is housed in a lovely 100-year old wooden house with a sprawling garden full of fruit trees. Behind the main house is a large (and ever growing!) veggie garden where much of our dinner menu is picked daily. We also have an old limestone side house that might one day contain more rooms for our guests, and a huge stone barn. The whole property is around 2 hectares of land, and a couple of gorgeous horses normally munch grass in our back field (please note, they love apples and carrots...:).
We are nestled next to a dairy farm to our west, so you may wake up to a gentle moo or two! Ekeby "socken" (parish) is right in the middle of rural-idyllic Gotland, a genuine and non-touristic part of the island where farmers work their fields and cows, horses and sheep graze in the meadows.
Why the name "Three Pheasants"?
We had just arrived to a cold wintery Gotland after a lifetime in the subtropics. We sat nursing a hot cup of tea in our largely unfurnished house thinking about what lay ahead and what to call our B&B. When we looked out the window, as early afternoon quickly turned to night,... three lovely pheasants were gathered eating sunflower seeds in our garden!
Sustainability and Ecology
Our approach since the day we decided to build this business was to reduce our impact in all aspects that we cover. From the wood and materials we used in renovating and restoring the building, to how we design your breakfast or even to how we grow the food we serve at the property.
Food and Soil is a central to what we do and our focus is on low impact, sustainable and regenerative farming methods. This means for the food grown on the property we use no chemicals, pesticides or herbicides as this encourages a healthy self sustaining microbiological soil system which can do all the work that additive based farming tries to emulate. We also do not plough the soil as this releases CO2 into the atmosphere and we try to integrate all of our activities with the least impact to our surroundings. If you want to learn more about this type of farming we recommend you watch Kiss The Ground on Netflix.
Water on Gotland is critical not only to the people on the island but also the fauna, flora and various birds and bugs that create a healthy functioning ecosystem. Plus it's interesting to note that Gotland had hundreds of natural small and large lakes up until around mid 20th Century, Which was key for the masses of migrating birds. Then as farming became more necessary on the island the land was drained and with it the lakes and natural habitats for local and migrating bird numbers went with it.
So, with this in mind with the help of EU funding/miljöinvestering (environmental investing), we built a dam in late 2021. The dam and its surroundings will become a both an ecosystem habitat for birds, frogs, insects and more as well as provide irrigation for the food we grow and the beginnings of a food forest that we aim to establish in the coming years.