The easels go up in a field, not a studio. On the evening of September 29, 2026, a small group will gather at Fold of Liberty Farms in Spanish Fork, Utah, set their canvases on open seating, and try to paint a Highland cow while actual Highland cows wander nearby, watching. When the brushes are put down, each painter gets a handful of treats to feed the shaggy animals that spent the evening as both subject and audience. The class runs from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m. and costs $55 per person, with all painting materials and the cow treats included. Seating is limited, and there are no refunds for no-shows.
The painting itself has a specific subject: Marigold the Highland cow, according to the instructor's event listing. The class is run by Art With Aynn, a Lehi-based art instruction outfit whose paint nights are built around step-by-step guidance for beginners and enthusiasts alike. But the setting is the real draw. This is not a rented banquet room with a photo of a cow taped to the wall. It is a working regenerative farm, and the herd is right there in the field.
That herd exists because of a family that never planned to run a tourist attraction. Fold of Liberty Farms was purchased in 2021 by Vernon Stout after he sold his online training company. The Stouts set out to farm it regeneratively, using a mix of plants and animals to restore the soil. Vernon had almost no farming experience beyond a dairy-farming grandfather, and the learning curve has been steep and occasionally painful. One summer he planted 600 trees across five varieties and discovered the hard way that you cannot flood-irrigate trees; only about 15 survived. He has said he intends to keep planting until they have enough.
The cows were part of the regenerative plan, not the attraction. Scottish Highland cattle, with their long shaggy coats and sweeping horns, graze and fertilize the land. But they are impossible to miss from the road, and drivers kept stopping to ask if they could visit. After roughly a hundred people had come by, Vernon and his family had a realization. "After maybe 100 people came and visited our cows, we were like, 'I wonder if more people want to do this? It kind of feels that way,'" he told the Standard-Examiner. "So we just said, 'Hey, if you want to come, we'll let you come and help pay for some food.' And then after a little bit, we realized maybe this is actually a real deal."
The early version was informal and open-ended, and it worked almost too well. "At first, we were just like, 'Hey, come when you want to.' And we had so many people come," Vernon said. "We're like, oh, the cows are overwhelmed by too many people. So we have specific time slots that you can sign up for, and we have 20 people at a time." The farm built a website and a social media presence, word spread through visitors' own posts, and a formal business took shape under the name Utah Cow Cuddle. Today the standard offering is a 30-minute session in which visitors can pet, brush, and even hug the Highland cows and calves. Sessions run by appointment Monday through Saturday, year-round, and the farm is blunt that this is not a petting zoo: guests may walk anywhere from 300 to 1,200 feet over uneven ground depending on where the herd is grazing, and closed-toe shoes are required because mud, manure, and mosquitoes are all part of the deal.
The cows have names and personalities, catalogued on the farm's website. There is Annabelle, born in October 2022, described as a bit of a drama queen. There is Aoife, a bundle of energy who loves being brushed. There is Bailey, who arrived on September 5, 2024. There are bulls named Ewan and Finn, and a Highland-Angus cross named Clementine with longer legs and a playful streak. The farm calls its herd a "fold," which is the traditional Scottish term for a group of Highland cattle, and also the word for the open-air stone shelters farmers once used to keep them. It is a fitting name for a place whose whole identity is built on a breed that is the oldest registered cattle breed in the world, with pedigrees recorded in a herd book dating to 1885.
Highlands are known for being calm and friendly toward humans, which is what makes an experience like cow cuddling possible at all. Vernon has described the work as therapeutic for himself and his family, and the farm frames the proceeds from its cow experiences as going toward food, care, and infrastructure for the animals. The paint night is a natural extension of that same idea: bring people onto the land, put them close to the animals, and let the encounter do the teaching.
There is more on the property than cows. Fold of Liberty Farms is also home to a military museum housed inside a barn, with a collection of 20th-century artifacts and restored vehicles spanning World War I and II, Vietnam, Korea, and the Cold War. The name of the farm, the museum, and the cow cuddles all trace back to the same impulse: that people should understand what freedom costs and where it comes from.
For the paint night, the practical details matter. It is open seating, and the class starts promptly at 5:30, so guests are asked to arrive 10 to 15 minutes early. The farm is at 4197 W 5200 S in Spanish Fork; the instructions say to look for the big red barn and the fluffy cows. Seating is strictly limited and payment is due at registration, which is why the event tends to fill. At $55 a head, it is not a free afternoon at the park, and it is not designed to be. It is a small-group, ticketed evening on a real farm, with a real herd, and a painting that participants take home.
What makes it unusual is not the painting. Paint nights are everywhere. What makes it unusual is that the model is standing a few feet away, chewing, watching, and waiting for the treats that come at the end. The cows are not a backdrop or a theme. They are the reason the easels are in a field at all, and by the time the last brush is rinsed, the people holding the canvases will have fed the animal they just tried to capture.