The house was built in 1742 as a traditional Low German house and is the oldest farmhouse in the Lüneburg Heath Nature Park. In 1907 the building was dismantled in Hanstedt and reconstructed in Wilsede by the teacher Bernhard Dageförde as a farmhouse museum. The museum is affiliated with the larger open-air museum Freilichtmuseum am Kiekeberg (near the southern border of Hamburg). Since 2004 a renovated sheep shed on the Emhoff farmstead is used for exhibitions.