About Our Farm

Why “Sukkerfjell”? We are a Norwegian American family and in Norwegian, Sukkerfjell means sugar mountain. Our farm is on a mountain in Vermont where we keep honeybees, tap maple trees, and focus on regenerative farming practices to improve the soil health which improves the taste and the quality of the food we grow. When the soil is healthy and loaded with the nutrients that the plants need, the plants produce more sugars and the end result is better tasting fruits and veggies.

We are on 18 acres of land and surrounded by forest. We chose this piece of land because it had much more plant and fungal diversity than the other properties in the area that we had looked at. The land also abuts over 400,000 acres of national forest. We had about an acre cleared so that we could have the house built and have space for the gardens and orchard.

The kitchen garden is 50 feet by 80 feet, totaling 4000 square feet. Not all of the space is food growing space, there are also paths and perennial flower beds in this garden. There is a large strawberry spiral bed and areas for the blueberry plants and raspberries as well. It’s so nice to have a space that can grow and be used for so many different things!

We have built a year round greenhouse that is heated with a wood burning rocket mass heater, allowing us to grow food continuously. That building is 30 feet by 15 feet on the outside and a bit smaller inside due to the thick insulation that we used. I have been using the greenhouse to grow some of our favorite foods through the year, but also to trying to grow other fun foods to see what we can make work or not. The greenhouse is also used for seed starting for the kitchen garden in the early spring.

We also have an orchard with apple, pear, peach, cherry, plum, mulberry, and paw paw trees. The orchard was one of the first big planting projects that we tackled when we moved here, since fruit trees are a bit slow to grow. All of our fruit trees came to us as bare root second year trees, so they were very small! At least, that made it a bit easier to plant them in our rocky, mountain soil!

Our small flock of chickens help us with pest control, composting, and fertilizing the gardens. They also provide us with wonderful, fresh eggs.

Our farm is still in the early stages and there are changes that happen every year. We are excited to see how things unfold and we are glad that you are here to share in this journey with us!