Johanna Gardner

“I dove into the deep end of the pool: I spent $1,700 just to get some yarn made from my wool.”

The satisfaction of knitting

A knitter needs the enhanced skills of a carpenter. But unlike in carpentry, every material is slippery, has a bias, can move even after you have attached it to other pieces, and has personality.


Johanna Gardner is the proprietor of Trollhaugen Farm. Her dispatch from the farm recounting the ups and downs of lambing season appeared in these pages in 2022.

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During lambing season, action in the barn

A sheep farmer is, by turns, a pasture specialist, a dietician, a midwife, a strategist, and a detective

Feb. 9: At 4:30 a.m., I swear I hear a pounding on the door. There must be a lamb coming or a ewe stuck in labor. I run down the stairs, expecting to see April, our farmhand, but no one is at the door. OK, so I imagined all...

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So simple and so obvious

‘I have spent a lot of time feeling powerless and worrying over the future of our once-pristine land and our dying oceans. But as consumers, we do have a huge amount of power.’

Those of us who are lucky to grow up in the country learn a lot just from looking at what goes on around us in the garden and on the farm. If you grew up in the '60s, you probably burned your trash out in a bin, but at...

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