Though it’s nestled on the main drag of a quintessential North Fork beach town in the middle of wine country, the Weathered Barn is neither particularly beachy nor particularly wine-centric.
In fact, if you wandered in one day and forgot you were on Front Street in Greenport, you wouldn’t have any trouble believing you were in, say, Savannah or Provincetown or Austin or Saint Paul.
That’s not to say that the shop is anything other than completely tied into the community it has served for the last 14 years. It feels at peace with its surroundings and utterly at home right where it is. But at the same time, it’s also one of those places that creates a powerful ecosystem all its own the second you walk through the front door.
And that’s exactly the way Rena and Jason Wilhelm, the shop’s owners, like it.
“Our store is a reflection of us. It’s not a reflection of what’s around us,” Rena says. “We’re in wine country, but we’re not going to sell you a white Zinfandel candle. And no, we don’t have anything with a mermaid.”
“I’ve been tempted to keep a plastic lobster under the counter,” adds Jason. “Then I could just pull it out whenever somebody asks for something
beachy.”
Eschewing the seagulls-and-sunsets vibe, the couple instead specializes in bath and body essentials, home fragrances, candles and aromatherapy products, all of which they make in their workshop in the back of the store.
“Sometimes in the summer when our door is open, you can smell the shop from a half a block away,” Rena says. “People just float in.”
While handmade personal products, candles and fragrances are the core of the store’s business, there’s also an eclectic selection of home decor items, artisan gifts and odds and ends peeking out from the fully stocked but never overcrowded shelves and display areas.
Loose tea from Taos, New Mexico shares space with ceramics from Sugar Loaf, New York. and a selection of olivewood charcuterie boards from Tunisia. A series of locally produced custom sheaths for high-quality Japanese knives hovers near a stack of cards featuring Rena’s original artwork. Jewelry created by a local Greenport artisan is made with leather, but also with garfish scales and other unexpected materials. Other surprising elements come together in a series of collages created from debris collected at Glass Bottle Beach in Brooklyn. The works are encrusted with large chunks of weathered sea glass, rusted bicycle pedals, lamp parts, shards of china, even a toy gun.
knives are a store specialty.Bob Giglione
At any given time, the couple estimates that the store will feature a full complement of Rena and Jason’s work along with merchandise from approximately 10 different artisans, all of whom have an intensely personal connection to the store.
“The whole store is kismet,” Rena says. “It’s based on all the relationships we’ve formed with artists and small suppliers.”
The Weathered Barn is the product of a harmonious collaboration between two people who have been romantic partners for over 25 years and business partners for almost as long. But the store’s overarching aesthetic is definitely Rena’s thing.
Rena describes her design sensibility as “minimalist and modern rustic.” And while it’s all very tasteful and conceptually unified, her style is also a bit funky and daring, with more than a trace of what you might call benevolent darkness. “I have a light side and a dark side, and I explore both of them,” she says. “I like things that are ethereal when they’re light and eerie when they’re dark I have both of those sides in me – and I need to express that the dark side isn’t an evil side. I just find beauty in darkness.”
The carefully cultivated look of every inch of the space – and the energy that emanates from that look – is a hugely important part of the Weathered Barn’s appeal.
Yes, the store takes aesthetic chances and gently challenges its visitors. But it’s also quite soothing in its way.
“The whole point of the store is not to create any static,” Rena says. “Nothing is too glaring. There are a lot of things in the store. You need a little bit of time to make sure to check all the nuances. If things are hot pink and red and garish and loud, it’s like, ‘get me out of here. I don’t have the time to be overstimulated.’”
As compelling and inviting as the store’s visuals are, they’re only a part of the story. The shopping experience at the Weathered Barn is always at least partially informed by the way it smells.
And to say that the place smells good is an understatement of absurd proportions.
The fact is, it smells fabulous – amazingly, invitingly yummy.
“It’s a combination of essential oils and synthetic fragrances, but it never smells fake,” Rena says. “It’s just pleasing. As soon as you walk in, you’re transported. The scents that we tend to like are the same sort of notes, but in different combinations that are harmonious.”
The place smells so good that the couple routinely gets requests from customers who want to emulate the olfactory experience of the store in their homes.
Those requests ultimately spurred Jason to create Formula 237, which he describes as “a combination of maybe half the scents in the store all mixed together.”
Formula 237’s name is not an accident. Throughout his life, Jason has always felt a connection to the numbers 2,3 and 7. Citing just a small handful of what he says are many significant appearances of that particular numerical pattern over the years,
Jason points out that 237 were the first three digits of Rena’s phone number when the couple began dating, and that he was born on 3/7 and he lived off of Exit 37 of the Long Island Expressway while growing up in Syosset.
Before opening the Weathered Barn, Rena studied at the New York School of Design, worked in retail merchandising and spent time in the corporate world as an in-house designer for Ethan Allen. She also ran her own interior design business in Westchester County, where she grew up.
Jason has a related background in interior installation and furniture restoration. The couple met online back when that was still something of an uncommon way to
hook up.
“We met on Love@AOL,” Rena recalls with a nostalgic giggle. And they began working together fairly early in their relationship. After 14 years of running the store, the couple is thankful for their success, pointing out that from June through November, they spend large chunks of their days just ringing up purchases.
The holidays are also important for Rena and Jason business-wise but in a different way. While the store does a solid holiday business, Rena points out that the Christmas season tends to be about fewer people buying more merchandise than the typical spring and summer customers. Unlike during peak season, an average holiday purchase often consists of a customer buying multiple gifts for their family and friends.
The store also has a robust online presence, but Rena describes the social media aspect of the business as supplemental.
“We’re the kind of store where you need to come in and smell it and touch it and feel it,” she says.”You don’t get that kind of sense online.”
After almost a decade and a half of doing their thing in Greenport, Rena and Jason have found a rhythm that makes sense for them.
“Jason could be making candles today – or he could be constructing boxes for me to pour my soap into,” Rena says. “He still does construction, carpentry and candles, and I’m still doing retail merchandising, internal style, health, drawing… we’re lucky that every day we come to work is a little bit different.”
This article appeared in the March 2025 issue of Behind The Hedges magazine. Read the full digital edition here. To read more from the Master Craftsman column, click here.
