About Knoll Farm
Contact information: 802-496-5685. Email helen@wholecommunities.org.
Knoll Farm is a family-owned and operated organic farm overlooking the Green Mountains in the Mad River Valley of Vermont. Our land and buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places, and conserved by the Vermont Land Trust. Knoll Farm is also the base for Center for Whole Communities, a learning and retreat center founded in 2001 by the owners of the farm, Peter Forbes and Helen Whybrow.
Farm Products
BLUEBERRIES
We have seven varieties of organic blueberries, on a gorgeous hillside overlooking the valley. We are open for Pick-Your-Own berries from mid July through August. Hours are everyday, 9 am to 3 pm. We have pre-picked berries at our farmstand, open everyday 8 am-6 pm. We are located at 700 Bragg Hill Road, just 1/2 mile from the village of Waitsfield. Call 496-5685 for picking conditions and directions.
Purebred Icelandic Sheep for Breedstock
For nearly a decade now we have been breeding purebred Icelandics for size and for parasite resistance, and last summer we saw really positive results in our flock. We sent lambs to slaughter at 7 months and had hanging weights averaging 45#. We wormed some of the foundation ewe flock after lambing; some not at all. These traits are particularly important to us, along with quality fleece, calm temperament, excellent mothering, milkiness, color and pattern, and general vigor. Our flock shows all of these traits in abundance, and, other than a few parasite issues over the years, we are proud to say we have been disease-free.
We intensively graze our animals in small paddocks to improve the health of the soil and give them the maximum nutrition, moving them as often as once a day through the summer and fall. In the fall and winter they are fed hay and kelp inside a shelter and are able to move around through the snow and forage for grass whenever possible. They lamb outdoors in the late March – late April.
More about the Icelandic Sheep Breed
Very few Icelandic sheep have been exported from Iceland since Viking settlers brought the breed there 900 years ago, making Icelandic sheep one of the purest breeds in the world. Renowned for their exceptional fleece (which is marketed in this country as Lopi yarn), and “gourmet” meat, Icelandics are an excellent all-around breed that is becoming increasingly popular around the US.
Icelandics range in color from white to blue-gray to deep brown to black, spotted and mouflon. Other desirable traits include easy births, multiple births common, excellent mothers, highly alert and curious dispositions, fast growth, delicious meat, naturally docked tails, and very hardy. We have found that they are excellent for bringing back the fertility of land, as they love to forage and thrive even on rough pastures. We also love that they do well during pregnancy and lactation without supplemental grain because it allows us to raise them as organically as possible.
For more about Icelandic sheep, visit the Icelandic Sheep Breeders website at www.isbona.com.
Why is our Meat and Wool Not Certified Organic?
There is one time in the spring when the parasite load is at its very peak, and that is right after the lambs hit the ground. We have found that we can keep our pastures cleanest, and avoid problems with sick, weak, parasite-laden animals down the road if we worm the mothers who need it once after lambing and before they transition out of their winter paddocks into the summer rotational pastures. This is a critical worming – important for land and flock health. We use the wormer approved for foundation ewes. However, the organic regulations also state that to raise a lamb entirely organically, you may not worm its mother when the lamb is still nursing. We do not worm the lambs, but if we worm a mother before her lambs are weaned, we cannot call those lambs certified organic. All of our other practices follow organic standards, and we do have more and more families that are showing strong parasite resistance.
Grass-fed Lamb
Our meat is available year round, at our farmstand. In the fall, you can also order a whole or half lamb. Orders fill fast in the fall, so we recommend you order before October 1. We will have specifics and order forms on this site soon; for now email helen for more information.
Icelandic meat is said to be one of the mildest, “gourmet-tasting” types of lamb on the market. Our sheep do well on a grass only diet. We feed them some hay in the early fall before they go to market at about 6 months of age. The only other supplement they have in addition to the grass is kelp and mineral salts. We do not use antibiotics or hormones, and our fields are organically managed.
Our reasons for producing grass-fed lamb are many. Ruminants have the unique ability to harvest plants and turn them into protein. Feeding themselves out in the sunshine makes for happier, healthier animals and also means that we take better care of our land. It forces us to be more observant of what grows in the pastures and how we are taking care of those pastures through good rotational grazing. It means that the animals can improve the health of the soils by distributing their own manure, exposing the plants to more light, and trampling plants to increase moisture pockets. And we save fossil fuels by not mowing.
What’s more, meat raised on chlorophyll in sunshine and open air is much healthier for humans to eat. There’s now plenty of evidence that meat produced using only grass contains higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acids (CLAs) than conventional grain fed meat. Omega-3s and CLAs have been linked to reduced risk of heart disease, some cancers and adult onset diabetes.
