Strong ties to English royalty in lovely Union

This tiny northeastern Connecticut town is home to a farm with surprising ties to both King Charles III and “Peter Rabbit” author Beatrix Potter. So, what’s going on in Union, with a population of under 1,000 residents?

The connection is purebred Herdwick sheep, raised on Judith Hooper’s Grass Hill Farm. Grass Hill is one of a handful of farms in the country raising Herdwicks, the breed found in England’s mountains and popularized by Potter, who bred them until her death in 1943. And King Charles is a patron of the Herdwick Sheep Breeders Association and has supported the breed for two decades.

Judith, a Ph.D.-trained research scientist with a background in genetics and biochemistry, became interested in raising sheep on the Union farm more than a decade ago, primarily as a hobby. She decided to focus on wool sheep, learning about the Herdwicks through a trade magazine.

“I thought, ‘These are so cute. This looks so interesting,’” she said of the Herdwicks, a particularly hardy breed originally from the Lake District in the United Kingdom. Herdwicks have expressive faces, often looking like they’re smiling, and “tremendous” personalities, she said.

Judith started her Herdwick flock back in 2013, thanks to an Oregon farmer who was the first to import Herdwick semen into the United States in 2008. But for about a decade, with restrictions on imports and exports, all the Herdwick sheep in the U.S. came from the same genetics as the original source. It became “a study in inbreeding,” she said.

Things changed about five years ago, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture changed regulations to allow sheep semen and then sheep embryos to be imported from the U.K. “Once the borders opened up, people could start to rejuvenate and rehabilitate their flocks, and maybe start a new breed-up program,” she said.

Judith partnered with veterinarian Rachael Gately of Tufts University, an expert in assisted reproductive techniques, who in January 2025 implanted purebred fertilized embryos into seven of Grass Hill Farm’s ewes. Six of them became pregnant, five with twins, and they delivered their lambs five months later. They were the first purebred Herdwick sheep born in the United States.

“We’ve been very successful with the embryo transfers at Tufts. They’re just amazing,” Judith said.

Judith now has 29 sheep, six that are considered geriatric and will live on the farm as “sanctuaries” through the end of their lives. She has six ram lambs for sale, and eight ewes, four of which are purebred. Another three ewes just gave birth to new lambs in April, she said, and she’s hoping to sell the rams and keep breeding to get more ewes.

“Ideally, what I’d like to be able to do is to offer little family groups to people who want to raise Herdwick,” she said. She has a list of people who want the Herdwicks, with interest mostly in the Northeast and the Midwest.

The audience is different from people who might be looking for a breed like Valais Blacknose, Judith said, sometimes referred to as “the cutest sheep in the world,” with fluffy white coats, black noses and black “knee pad” markings.

“When you start getting into some of these heritage or rare breeds, it can start to attract people who are more collectors than they are conservationists wanting to help establish a breed here,” she said.

Herdwicks have thick fleece – wiry, warm, and waterresistant, suitable for the cold winters they’re used to. Its fiber is most likely used in outerwear like coats or woven into rugs.

“It’s prickly, as you might imagine, and this is part of why Herdwick fiber is not so great for a sweater you want to wear next to your skin,” she said. “But it is fabulous for a sweater that you’re going to wear outside, or weaving fabric, because it’s got this loft to it that is so sturdy. The fiber itself is also just very strong; it’s not a brittle fiber.”

Judith hand-weaves rugs from the professionally shorn fleece and also sells the fleece and core-spun yarn. She works with Still River Mill in Eastford – “one of the best fiber mills in the country, and it’s right down the street,” she said – which produces the yarn for her rugs.

She said she’s hoping to see continued interest in the Herdwick breed across the country, in landscapes that make sense for their hardy genetics where they could thrive and adapt to their location.

“I don’t personally plan to be raising sheep, let’s say, 10 years from now, because I’m getting too old for that,” she said. “And I’m doing it alone, so physically it’s going to start getting impossible for me.”

“My personal goal is to start to downsize and just have a nice small flock of purebred Herdwick that I can use as seed stock, but that also I can support the other breeders, try and help create us a community of people who are helping each other with this breed,” she said.

Learn more at grasshillfarm.org
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