Sunny Knoll EcoFarm

The Greenleaf family have farmed here since 2010 and keep a herd of registered Guernseys that is 100 percent A2/A2 by testing or parentage. The cows have access to pasture year round, grazing perennial grasses and clover, and the farm blankets them in hard winter weather so they can stay out in the fresh air rather than on concrete. No growth hormones are ever used. Virginia law allows raw milk only to people who own the cow, so the farm runs a cow share: you buy a share of the herd for a one time payment, pay a monthly boarding fee for the cows to be housed, fed and milked, and collect your own milk in glass jars one day each week from the Milk Cottage Farm Store.

The farm has dispersed its flock of Icelandic sheep but still sells the wool it produced: soft inner coat yarn at 20 to 21 microns, traditional and lite lopi spun in small batches at a specialty mill in North Carolina, handspun yarn, roving, batting, raw fleece, sheepskin pelts and handwoven rugs, all in natural undyed colours. Wool can be collected at the farm or shipped. Sarah Greenleaf grew up milking registered Guernseys on a Virginia family farm, earned a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology, and left a university teaching post to build Sunny Knoll as a working ecosystem in which the animals and the plants complement each other. The family grow around one hundred kinds of vegetables, fruit and mushrooms across about an acre of gardens, orchard and edible forest, without ever tilling the soil, though that harvest is mostly for themselves. Valerie Greenleaf now carries much of the daily herd work and shows the farm's Guernseys nationwide, earning multiple All American nominations.