Lilla Bjers Gårdskrog

The story

Crafted with passion, served with love

A farm that has fed people for 2,500 years

The name Bjers comes from Old Gutnish and means mountain – a small one, as the full name suggests. Lilla Bjers sits seven kilometres south of Visby in Västerhejde, on a piece of Gotland that has been worked for at least two and a half millennia: a Bronze Age cooking pit found on the property is proof enough. Margareta and Göran Hoas now tend these same fields with a philosophy that is as straightforward as it is rare – grow it here, serve it here, waste as little as possible.

What self-sufficiency actually looks like

The farm covers 19 hectares, and the breakdown tells the story better than any slogan: 1.25 hectares of asparagus, half a hectare of strawberries, a hectare of vegetables, roughly a thousand fruit trees, 750 vines, three growing tunnels for tomatoes, melons and ginger, around fifty hens, five beehives and a 9,000-square-metre irrigation pond. Meat and dairy come from neighbouring islands. Fish does not appear on the menu – a deliberate choice, giving the Baltic Sea population time to recover. The farm has held KRAV organic certification since 2001, and that certification extends to the restaurant (gold level), the shop, processing, greenhouse and beekeeping.

Lunch under the cherry tree, dinner in the orangery

White Guide has recognised Lilla Bjers at a very fine level, describing the experience with unusual precision: when the strawberries blush slowly, when new potatoes arrive and asparagus bends in the wind, summer has come to Little Bjers – and so have the locals, settling in for lunch outside under the cherry tree or for dinner in the orangery. That rhythm, dictated entirely by what the land produces rather than a fixed menu concept, is what makes the restaurant genuinely singular. The EU Organic Awards named it the best organic restaurant in the EU in 2022, and White Guide had previously cited it for 100% circular practice that same year. The recognition spans more than a decade, from sustainability prizes to a diploma from the Gastronomiska Akademien.

Rooted in place, open to visitors

The farm shop is open year-round, selling the same produce that reaches the restaurant tables. A cycle path runs the full distance from Visby, and a bus stops at Bjers Allé – small details that reflect the same unpretentious practicality running through everything here. Organic, vegetable-forward, and deeply tied to this particular patch of Gotland limestone soil.