Woolley’s was one of 50 selected from about 2,000 applicants submitted for the Best Small Business award.
The award honours small and medium enterprises that are contributing to feeding the world in a more healthy, sustainable and equitable way.
Carrie Woolley, livestock operations manager for the business, said she was impressed by some of the other winners, such as a business in Nigeria that uses solar panels to power food refrigeration.
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 told a reporter for Farms.com.
“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.
