An innovative, integrated livestock business in Norfolk County was selected as one of 50 winners of the United Nations Good Food For All Competition in the Best Small Business category.
Selected from a pool of 2000 applicants from around the world, Woolley’s Lamb was one of nine winners from the North and Latin American region.
The award honours small and medium enterprises that are contributing to feeding the world in a more healthy, sustainable and equitable way.
Woolley’s Lamb staff were excited and honoured to be among the winners, Carrie Woolley told Farms.com. She’s the livestock operations manager for the business.
The self-nomination process involved “quite a lengthy application,” she said. Applications included written, photo and video submissions.
“Woolley’s Lamb is a part of a larger farm operation, which is Schuyler Farms Ltd., and we’re a mixed farm operation growing corn, soybeans, apples, and sour cherries, and now the lambs,” she explained. “Eight years ago, we got the idea to integrate the sheep into the orchard and that’s where it all started and has really grown from there.”
Woolley and her husband now raise the lambs using orchard grazing and silvopasture, which both involve raising livestock and trees in a mutually beneficial way.
“We can produce meat and fibre and timber and fruit all on one piece of land,” Woolley said.
This article originally appeared on Farms.com, written by Jackie Clark.