Wool sweaters to climate change, Lila’s Mountain Farm does it all

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GREAT BARRINGTON — “Mary, you’re in charge tomorrow,” Lila Berle, 83, said in 2019, to her daughter, Mary Berle, about the family’s 400-acre sheep farm.

It was then that Mary Berle shifted away from her career in education to embrace her family’s 400-acre sheep farm.

Nestled on land between Great Barrington, Alford and Egremont, Lila’s Mountain Farm, got its start in 1984, when Lila Wilde Berle bought her first four sheep.

Mary left the Berkshires for Harvard, where she earned degrees in environmental science and education. She was a project director, senior researcher and curriculum developer for TERC, a math and science education research and development firm, before moving back to the Berkshires to raise her children. She spent 13 years in the Berkshire Hills Regional School District, including four years as principal of Muddy Brook School. In 2018, a year before her mother turned over the farm to her, Mary Berle joined the Norman Rockwell Museum as its chief educator, a position she left in early 2022.

Back in 2019, when she first took over with her partner, Len Tisdale, she realized there was a lot she needed to learn. She needed to do “a lot of listening and observing,” as she put it.

Berle, now three years into forging a path to running a sustainable farm, is trying her hand at wool sweaters.

LOCALLY PRODUCED

Her belief in local partnerships has forged relationships with Green Mountain Spinnery, in Putney, Vt., which washes the farm’s wool and turns it into rich yarns, before passing it on to Muriel’s of Vermont, a farm-to-closet garment company, where it is fitted onto a Japanese 3D knitting machine that knits the sweaters. When the sweaters come back to Berle, she sells them directly. The collaboration has come full circle as 40 years ago, Lila Berle gave David Ritchie at Green Mountain Spinnery a $500 loan to get started.

Small-scale, local production can’t be made cheap. Each 100-percent wool sweater will cost between $190 to $210. Instead of a cheap garment though, you pay for something high quality and made within a 150-mile radius.

“We don’t want to lose the capacity to make locally made clothes,” Berle said. “I love putting on our sweater and knowing that it hasn’t traveled far.”

HARD WORK FOR A SHEPHERD

Sweater making has changed how Berle sees her animals. More than ever, she feels like a partner of the farm’s staff of Great Pyrenes — Duke, Mia, Ajax, Thor and Beya.

“It’s really important that they stay connected to the sheep,” she said. The dogs are the farm’s last line of defense when it comes to coyotes.

Sometimes, it is not the coyotes that disturb the sheep the most. People driving by, Berle said, find it fun to have their dogs bark at the farm’s guardians.

This makes the dogs think that a threat is coming from the road, which tires them out during the day and makes them less effective at night, when they need to be the most alert.

This problem has gotten worse in recent years, she said. The farm used to be surrounded by other farms. Now, there are mainly houses, creating a much more suburban landscape.

“I think people are getting so disconnected from nature in the landscape. We are now farming in the suburbs.”

Elementary Parallels

On the farm, Berle finds parallels with her previous work in local schools.

“I was the principal at Muddy Brook elementary. [The farm] is similar to a school environment. I’m working so everyone can have a good, calm and productive day,” she said.

The looming pressure of climate change adds to the daily threats, with a weather both wetter and drier.

“Everything’s a little more extreme,” she said. This year, their second hay cutting was terrible — they got only about a quarter of what they planted. “I think it’s changing faster than any of us would have imagined,” she said.

One of the biggest challenges this year was water. The drought prevented natural water sources from staying filled, so Berle had to take more drastic measures. During the summer, they had to haul 500 gallons of water to the sheep in the pickup truck every day so that they wouldn’t move elsewhere to drink water.

To adapt the farm to warming temperatures, Berle’s son, David Berle Carman, will plant a few hundred trees this spring, so the sheep have cooling shades in every pasture.

Now it is the frigid winter that poses a challenge. On some nights, the temperatures and air are so cold, water coming out of the spigot freezes immediately. One night, Berle had to take three lambs that weren’t able to regulate their body temperature into her home. The day after, she reconnected them with their mothers.

“These animals have a really good life. And that’s the thing that we’re focused on,” she said. “I don’t eat meat, but I do eat our meat, which I know every animal has had a good experience.”

All of this hard work by Berle and her dogs has paid off. Since the winter solstice, 160 healthy lambs have been born, growing the flock by 66 percent.

“I’m really happy to have this. I think it’s nice to have different chapters [in life]. And I love not going to meetings,” she said laughing looking at her sheep. “These are my meetings.”

More information: lilasmountainfarm.com