Business Profile: Wollecru
Kirsten Liebl with her sheep. Photo courtesy of Wollecru.
What does your business offer?
-We are a sheep farm and small garden driven nursery, offering lamb, sheepskins, woven blankets, other woven woolen goods, yarn, and in the spring and summer of 2025 we will be open on Saturdays selling plants: annual veggie starts, flowers, herbs, and garden proven hardy perennials.
Where can we find your products this holiday season (any markets? online..essex farm, etc) (and the rest of the year)
Anytime on our online store (www.wollecru.com), at the Grange Holiday market in Essex on Dec. 14, 11am-3pm, Winter Faire at Lake Champlain Waldorf School in Shelburne on the evening of Dec 6.
Describe your background and how it led you to living and working in Westport.
We both moved here in the winter of 2014 to work at Essex Farm. Taylor has an education and background in horticulture and agriculture, and Kirsten came to Essex Farm after having worked at various veggie farms and botanical gardens. Essex Farm introduced us both to raising livestock and specifically sheep. We then both moved to Echo Farm in Essex, where we ran the farm and Taylor worked as the head chef for farmstead catering for 7 seasons. During the pandemic we were able to buy the farm we now have in Westport, and moved our sheep there. Kirsten learned to weave in college and had been experimenting with weaving with her own fiber since she got the first sheep in 2016. In the last three years we have brought it all together, expanding the sheep operation, refining the dyeing and weaving practice to have a stock of beautiful blankets for sale each season, and getting a greenhouse and nursery operation up and running to support the plantings and gardening that we are doing at our own farm, and now also to have plants to sell to the public.
What do you see as the biggest advantages of running a business and living here?
We feel extremely supported by the farming community around us, helping with shared equipment, advice and customer referrals. We also love the nature and wilderness around us, we see the broader living web of biodiversity as supporting all the life that we are nurturing on our farm. We also love being able to access the lake, and all the hiking trails around the area. We value being part of a small community who wants to support local businesses, and hope that we can continue to feed our neighbors either with lamb or plants to fill your gardens!