Levy Lamb

West Pawlet, VT 

Levy Lamb, with multiple locations in West Pawlet, Rupert and Dorset, Vermont, hosts 50 Dorper ewes, plus all of their lambs and a few beef cows on 75 acres of grass. The Levy flock is shepherded to new paddocks on a daily basis, with the use of electro netting, solar chargers, and two fabulous guard donkeys. The lambs are raised primarily for grassfed meat for sale locally through direct retail and wholesale markets. Additionally, the tanned lambskins are available seasonally. As Mara writes, “We believe strongly in grazing animals in a way that improves soil and pastures, and protects waterways, and we are constantly working to improve our management systems so that we can be better stewards of the land that we farm.”

An Apprentice will engage in all aspects of the farm during the summer months — moving fence, managing the flock’s health, handling the animals, updating farm records (production records and financial records if interested), cultivating and harvesting crops (on a small scale) — and definitely will be working outside most days. At the cheese facility the Apprentice will work on aging cheeses and keeping the cheesemaking facility clean and the equipment in good order.

Spanning the rolling hills of Vermont's Champlain Valley and reaching into Washington County, New York, the three-hundred acre farm was established in 1864 by a man named Consider Stebbins Bardwell. It was Vermont's first dairy coop, ("The Pawlet Cheese Company") where small farmers in the area brought their milk. Consider made the cheese and they sold it as far as New York City.

Bardwell himself lived in the same farmhouse that the current owners do, making his living in edged tools and the slate quarry he owned.

In the late 1860s, the farm changed hands. The Nelsonville Cheese Factory purchased the property, where they continued the same service that Bardwell had started until the late 1930s, when the Great Depression brought it crashing all down.