A Living Landscape: Farm Animals and Wildlife at Clermont

Clermont Farm is more than a historic site. It operates as a working farm with cattle and sheep that help support its agricultural mission. It hosts large colonies of honeybees, its “third herd”. The land is also home to a variety of wildlife, including deer, coyotes, foxes, rabbits, squirrels, groundhogs, skunks, and American mink (in the creek bank), and over twenty species of birds. Clermont is one of the area farms working with volunteers of the Virginia Society of Ornithology to host special boxes to promote habitat for American Kestrels (the nation’s smallest falcon), and its silos are now habitat for owls. All of this life creates a vibrant environment already shaped by centuries of care and cultivation.