Werner Tree Farm

06/19/2026

Want to grill something special (lamb chops!) for Father’s Day?

Come by the farm at 429 Painter Road in Middlebury tomorrow and buy some from our farm store.

Need a simple grilling recipe? This blog has a few different options for flavors plus all the timing and temperatures you need:

These fall-off-the-bone lamb chops are tossed with fragrant rosemary and cooked on a sizzling hot grill. They're tender, flavorful, and so easy to make — let's get grilling!

06/17/2026

Check out all those beautiful tapholes! Spotted a few that were placed too close together. Must have been the easy to reach side of the tree.

If you’re looking for high quality locally milled boards, send us a message. We have green and seasoned local Vermont wood.

06/14/2026

A swarm of honeybees moved into the swarm box we have on the side of the driveway. They’ve been relocated to a hive on the beeyard. If they settle in and like their new home they’ll be hive number seven. Looking forward to a bigger honey crop this summer!

06/12/2026

Sending out more wool through the Shave ‘Em to Save ‘Em program. The The Livestock Conservancy promotes buying and crafting with wool from endangered livestock breeds to help keep the breeds in existence.

Our flock of Shropshire sheep helps keep Shropshires on the watch list (safer than threatened or critical). Watch means there are fewer than 2500 annual registrations and fewer than 10,000 in the world.

06/11/2026

One of our junipers is covered in berries- we’re already planning on how to use them in wreaths this Christmas season.

06/10/2026

A long hot day of mulching trees and making hay.

05/31/2026

It’s always great to have come out to get the wool of our sheep. They make it look easy 😁 and the sheep appreciate how quick and smooth the process is.

We’re skirting and sorting fleeces, which means in the next week we’ll have both raw and washed fleece available. We’re part of the program if you’re looking for Shropshire wool.

We also have yarn and processed core wool. We’re currently sold out of roving.

05/28/2026

This week on the farm: lots of mulching trees in the fields. The prediction is for a hot dry summer- and mulch is like a cool wet blanket over soil.

We built and put up swarm boxes. Hopefully we won’t have a hive swarm this summer- but if we do, these boxes should be an inviting place to go live.

Lucian learned how to back up a tractor. Next time he wants to drive the excavator.

It’s mushroom foraging season. We love wild oyster mushrooms. Haven’t found morels yet this year.

05/27/2026

We don’t worry too much about aphid damage in our choose and cut trees.

Yes, they can make needles on new growth deform. But we keep the damage in check through some natural control methods-

1. We plant a variety of trees and with different bud breaks. This means the aphids never have a two week feast of 20,000 trees all growing at the same time.

2. We encourage (and in the past have supplemented with) lady bugs.

3. We’d rather see some deformed needles than spray our trees with an insecticide. For the most part, we appreciate the bugs that live around us. (Except the ticks. And the black flies. And the mosquitoes. Maybe we don’t really like bugs all that much 🤔.)

Since it’s mainly an aesthetic issue, we tend to let nature take its course.

05/25/2026

Tried to get nice photos of the ewe lambs we have for sale. Instead I got Snowball. And bad pictures of the ewe lambs.