Joan Faulkner, noted environmentalist, horsewoman and conservationist, who, with her late husband F. Sheffield Faulkner, founded Golden Herd Farm in Wilton, Conn., died Sept. 11 in a Norwalk hospital. She was 103.

Joan Fisher Faulkner was born on July 5, 1911, the only daughter of the late publisher and philanthropist Henry Johnson Fisher and Alice Agnew Fisher of Sabine Farm, Round Hill Road, Greenwich. She had horses from an early age and became a well-known horsewoman and expert rider. She rode with her father in Connecticut and at the hunt on their farm, Doverton, on the eastern shore in Maryland. She often accompanied her father on trips to the National Horse Show in Dublin, Ireland, to purchase legendary Irish jumpers. Together they helped found and support the Greenwich Trail Riding Association and established horse trails throughout Sabine Farm property that remain today.

She graduated from Greenwich Academy in 1928 and attended Wellesley College where she graduated in 1933. She attended The Sorbonne in Paris, where she studied sculpture and traveled to Istanbul on the Orient Express with her aunt, Katherine Agnew Auchincloss, to visit museums when she concluded her studies. When she returned from Europe she opened a sculpture studio in Manhattan where she created gallery exhibited pieces in stone, metal and wood.

She and F. Sheffield Faulkner of Rye, N.Y., were married Sept. 30, 1944 in Greenwich, where they lived prior to relocating to their Wilton farm. She and her husband moved to Wilton from Greenwich, Conn., and purchased the 18th-century home and farm property on the top of Bald Hill overlooking Kent Pond in 1953. For the next 30 years they raised Guernsey cows, bulls, vegetables and fruit as well as orchids, Easter lilies and poinsettias on the farm. One of their prize cows, Gingham, won the blue ribbon at the Big E Fair in Springfield and placed second at the National Western Stock Show in Denver the same year.

She never allowed any chemicals to be used on the farm, preferring organic solutions for crop growth, insect and disease control. She religiously recycled newspaper, metal, plastic whenever possible and re-used items including aluminum foil. She was an early environmentalist and supported national and local conservation organizations her entire life. She and her older brothers began sailing and sailboat racing as teenagers at Indian Harbor Yacht Club in Greenwich, a sport and avocation that continued throughout their adult lives.

Beginning in the 1950s, Joan, her husband and family moved to Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard during the summer where she raced Sandpiper, her Rhodes 19 sailboat at the Edgartown Yacht Club, a ritual that continued into her 70s. She was an early, active and expert skier, as was her husband, and encouraged her children and grandchildren to learn and enjoy the sport.

She was a dedicated supporter of the Sierra Club, National Resources Defense Council and New York Botanical Garden. She was a member of the Vineyard Conservation Society, Wilton Garden Club, Wilton Riding Club, Edgartown Yacht Club and Martha’s Vineyard Art Association. She traveled extensively, enjoyed knitting, reading, growing orchids and night blooming cereus and was a Mayflower descendant.

She is survived by a brother, Everett Fisher of Greenwich, Conn., and by her children: Lindsay Faulkner Hagen and her husband Peter of Santa Fe, N.M., Robert S. Faulkner of Manchester, Pamela Faulkner Quinn and her husband Lawrence of Portsmouth, R.I., and Elizabeth H. Faulkner of Warren, R.I. She is also survived by her grandchildren: Robert S. Faulkner Jr. of New York, N.Y., Elizabeth Faulkner Rowe of Gloucester, E. Conor Hagen of Brooklyn, N.Y., Lindsay Fisher Quinn of Burlington, Vt., and Lawrence B.C. Quinn of Portsmouth, R.I. She is also survived by two great-grandchildren, Griffin Rowe and Madeleine Rowe, and by 11 nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by her brothers Bennett and Agnew, and by her nephew Bennett who died at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Her husband died in 1995.

A service will be held at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, 36 New Canaan Road (Route 106), Wilton, Conn., on Saturday, Sept. 20, followed by a reception at her home, 37 Keeler’s Ridge Road, also in Wilton.