Here are some photos of lambs born since our last newsletter installment during the big winter storm of January-February.

And as of last weekend we have five new baby goats!

Congrats to all these mamas! Many of them are first-time mamas.

This little doeling was born by C section. So far her and mama are doing well, despite the medical trauma. Another “W” for Dr. Rachael…

Elijah is getting good at catching baby goats - life skills!

…

We finished shearing the Shetlands and have started sending groups out for rotational grazing. It’s been a really dry April so the grass has a slow start this year.

Where can I buy Magpie Hollow Farm products?

This year we are focusing on lamb and duck eggs. We do still have ground pork available, as well as a few rabbits. And other seasonal produce such as lavender bundles and garden/orchard surpluses, and our famous pet beds stuffed with sheep’s wool.

We sell on-farm by appointment: call or text Josh at 336 902 2543.

You can also catch us at the Downtown Hickory Farmers’ Market every Saturday from 8 AM to 1 PM.

Also - Saunders & Sons Grocery near Statesville carries our lamb and duck eggs.

A winter weather sequence came through bringing deep cold, then a couple inches of snow/ice mix, then more deep cold, then about eight inches of snow.

We took measures to keep the sheep and goats’ water tanks (at least partially) unfrozen, and made sure they had plenty of hay to eat, straw for bedding, and shelter from the wind.

Three of our girls gave birth during the last big snowstorm. Three sets of boy-girl twins joined the family.

Mama Lhotse was first.

Then Mama Annapurna.

We suspected Annapurna’s babies were born in a difficult delivery. They were a bit pitiful and weak, and their bowels were not moving well. So they spend their first day under a heat lamp in the bath tub. Dr. Rachael got their bowels moving and tube-fed them some of Mama’s milk/colostrum.

Then they got sweaters and a nice nest in the barn.

Shallot was third in line.

The barn is starting to get crowded.

Two-plus weeks of bitter cold, eight to ten inches of ice and snow, and six new lambs (so far)! Winter is crazy!

Meanwhile, over the same time period our three dozen houseguests outgrew their brooder in the office and had to be moved to the shower.

Luckily we have Elijah to help with care and feeding of the ducks!

We will be posting info soon about the pasture raised meat and eggs we’re selling this year. There will be many options to buy from us including direct from the farm, at a local farmers’ market, and through a new online platform we’re trying out.

We will also have information available soon about our spring Farm Day (mid-April).

Be sure to check out our daily sunrise livestream. If you don’t catch it live you can watch later in the day.

Also, be sure to follow and like us on Facebook.

Thank you for your support!

We’re bringing our delicious pasture raised meats to new venues this year. Among other things, we’re expanding lamb production and ramping up duck egg production big time. Keep an eye on our “Farm Products for Sale” page.

We’re working on getting our social media more set up and streamlined. In the meantime, you can connect with us everyday via our new Sunrise Livestream on You Tube! Join us everyday around sunrise for a hot cup of coffee and ruminations on small ruminants.

Happy New Year!

Join us in 2026 to celebrate local regenerative agriculture!

Get in touch to reserve your meat, for delivery this fall. Don’t worry - you have time to make space in the freezer!

Delicious lamb raised on grass by regenerative rotational grazing

In September we’re doing our last lamb processing of 2025. We will have a few half-shares available. If you would like to reserve a half-share, please get in touch ASAP.

Here’s what’s included in a lamb half-share:

Pork sausage from happy pigs raised in forest silvopasture

We are processing our last pigs for the foreseeable future this October!

We will have country (breakfast) sausage and Italian sausage in 1 lb packs. And when they’re gone, they’re gone until…???

The pigs have done their work clearing the overgrown perimeter around our sheep and goat pastures, effectively creating more idyllic partially shaded grazing areas for our sheep and goats. Accordingly, this winter the pig zone is getting retrofitted into a cushy new nursery paddock for sheep and goat mamas and babies - just in time for lambing/kidding season 2026.

Currently we don’t know if or when we’ll get pigs again. So this is the last pork sausage that we’ll have for the foreseeable future.

Get it while you can!

Country sausage and Italian sausage - normally $8/lb, special price $7.50/lb for orders of 10 lbs or more.

To re-cap:

• Lamb half-shares $280, available for pick-up or arranged delivery late September/early October.

• Pork country and Italian sausage, $7.50/lb for orders of 10 lbs or more, available for pick-up or arranged delivery late October/early November.

To make a reservation call, text, or email Josh:

• three three six - nine zero two - two five four three

• joshuakearns [at] protonmail [dot] com

We will take 50% down as a deposit to secure your reservation, and the balance on delivery.

SHEEP & GOATS

Summer is here with hot humid weather and frequent rain storms! The grass is growing and the sheep are grazing.

We have rotational grazing groups on our land as well as on three nearby properties, for example this group of wily Jacobs wethers…

…and a big group of Shetland, Katahdin, and Shetahdin mamas and babies not far away.

We also have new goats in the family, including this Kiko buckling who is still awaiting a name...(suggestions?)…

Dependable mama Clarice had triplets (!) recently.

We were having dinner with some friends at the picnic tables near the goat paddock and Clarice decided to go into labor. It was an exciting evening! Two girls and a boy. All three kids are doing great.

Production is in full swing and we have a wide array of lamb and goat cuts available: leg and shoulder roasts, rib and loin chop medallions, kebab/stew meat packs and burger, ribs, shanks, bone pack for making broth, and organ meat. See our meat products page for ordering info.

We also have a variety of pork sausage, rabbit, duck and chicken eggs, a range of seasonal produce, and farm handicrafts (sheep wool pet beds!) and swag available. See our farm products pages for more detail.

LAVENDER

Our lavender harvest this June was about twice what we got in June 2024. Thankfully we had some great volunteers out to help with the harvest and making bundles.

Our lavender was a big hit at the Downtown Hickory Farmers’ Market Lavender Fest!

Through careful research we found that we can graze the sheep in the lavender fields and they will eat the grass but leave the lavender alone. This is a great way to stack functions and get multiple high value products out of one small plot of land. We’re planning to expand lavender production and offer additional services like seasonal photography (for weddings, engagements, etc.).

FUN WITH DUCKS & CONSTRUCTED WETLANDS

Our duck eggs have been another big hit at local farmers’ markets. But anybody who has raised ducks knows that they are messy. They poop everywhere! A lot! Especially in the water.

I’m actually grateful that they poop so much in their water tub, since I use the poopy duckwater to “fertigate” fruit trees and berry bushes and grape vines. For example, my pear saplings planted four years ago are loaded with fruit thanks in part to duck-poo fertility.

So the ducks are for fertilizer - the eggs are a bonus.

But I am always trying to find clever ways to get more out of our agroecosystems, and I can’t resist a try-it-and-see water project.

Here I have rigged up a 12 volt DC wastewater macerator pump (commonly used in RVs and marine applications) to suck up the poopy duckwater and pump it into a mini constructed wetland.

The pump is powered by the two PV panels shown in the photo above, and is controlled by a programmable DC controller unit wired up through the box on the wall.

I put a couple water hyacinth and water lettuce plants in the wetland tub a few weeks ago and they have started to multiply bigtime! (Note that these are invasive plants and so shouldn’t be used if there is a risk to a nearby water body).

The water hyacinth and water lettuce take up nutrients from the poopy duckwater. This partially cleans it before it flows by gravity back into the ducks’ water tub. Make-up water is supplied by gravity flow from rainwater tanks.

Ducks love to eat water hyacinth and water lettuce so I am using their wastewater nutrients to grow a portion of their food, thus cutting our feed costs.

I’m still working kinks out of the system to get it operating seamlessly. Once things are optimized and in steady-state I will do a water quality study to quantify how much actual improvement is happening.

Once I’m happy with everything I will do a detailed how-to write up and post it here in case people want to replicate or adapt the system.

HANDS IN THE SOIL

I had a moment to reflect while working one morning recently on all our hard work here over the past few years. This place was an overgrown wasteland/dump when we took over in 2020. Vision of the possibilities plus a lot of hard work are starting to pay off. While harvesting potatoes from our backyard kitchen garden recently I had a profound, almost spiritual experience of witnessing what it means to build soil, and by extension to build local resilience.

A raucous and rambling podcast conversation with the preeminent global exponent of the emergent discipline of Transition Engineering, Prof. Susan Krumdieck.

I hate to use a pretentious sounding term like portmanteau but that’s what we’ve done here, merging Shetland with Katahdin.

We are not the first farmers to cross Shetland and Katahdin sheep breeds, but we might be the first to name them “Shetahdin.”

Shetland sheep originate from the Shetland islands in the North Sea, north of Scotland. The weather there is terrible and the terrain is rocky and rugged. Accordingly, Shetland sheep are known for their hardiness and their ability to thrive on marginal landscapes. They develop thick wool and must be shorn at least yearly.

Katahdin sheep (named for Mount Katahdin in Maine, the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail) are a breed of hair sheep - i.e., that develop a fuzzy winter coat that sloughs off and doesn’t need to be shorn. Katahdins possess genetics from tropical breeds (African and Caribbean) adapted to warmer climates, and they are larger and grow faster than Shetlands and thus yield more meat.

Here in Wilkes County NC we experience hot and cold weather extremes with the seasons. Our “Shetahdins” are ideally suited to the variable seasonal challenges, combining the cold weather toughness of the Shetlands with the hot weather tolerance and growth rate of the Katahdins. Both breeds display good parasite resistance, particularly in rotational grazing systems that break the “parasite cycle.” Our hybrid flock is intended to produce an advantageous mix of quality fleece and well marbled meat with a delicious neutral (not “gamey”) flavor. They are relatively calm (sheep can be skittish) and accustomed to handling and being led by humans, and adapt well to electric netting enclosures.

All that technical stuff is nice, but the real reason we raise them is that the lambs are unbelievably cute!

Our first member of this newly-named class of sheep is little Helene, born during her namesake hurricane last fall:

Helene’s half-sister-cousin arrived earlier this month, a healthy big lil ewe lamb we named Jemima:

Both of these girls born to sister Shetland ewes have Katahdin Abe as their dada.

And Shetland ram Moh, not to be outdone, has given us a ram lamb from Katahdin mama Everest. Rachael named him Yeti.

One night Shetland Priscilla blessed us with Shetahdin twins (girl and boy) also from dada Abe.

Our first crop of spring Shetahdin lambs have formed a fun little playgroup.

Then mama Shallot produced this humongous stonk of a ramling, that because of his size and splotches we are naming Holstein.

Meanwhile, Shetland parents Moh and Canela have given us a precious little purebred Shetland ramling, Champurrado. (Who may end up becoming heir to Moh’s kingdom someday…)

And then from our spicy subcontinent line of Shetahdins, Shetland mama Masala brought forth Shteahdin baby Chana…

And finally as warmer weather approaches a gratefully shorn Dobie gives birth to this lil Shetahdin eweling, rounding out our Spring lambing season…

With all the Shetahdin focus we can’t neglect that during Lambapalooza ‘25 our dependable goat mama Miranda gave birth to triplets…

And don’t worry our herdsman-in-training is making sure the new goatlings feel welcome and loved…

Our five-year anniversary farm day is coming up last Saturday in April. Hope you can make it! Tell your friends!

And be sure to check out our farm products for sale.

The Ol’ Winter Weather Whipsaw. This year with a heaping helping of mud - an endemic seasonal phenomenon in southern Appalachia well described by our Roane County, TN co-conspirator, farmer, and author Brian Miller:

Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer

Mud

The curious thing about mud is that it is only dirt pending the addition of water. Mud is all around us, waiting patiently to show itself for much of the year. It is to be found beneath the grass under your feet as you walk through the rounds of chores during the day. It is in the dry corrals of compacted clay and mixed in with the desiccated …

Read more

a year ago · 15 likes · 9 comments · Brian Miller

Clever things

The First Place Cleverness Award for this month goes to these mama rabbits:

They each gave birth to litters during the recent period of oscillatory horrendous weather. These warm season pasture girls overwinter in a split-level hutch reminiscent of the 70’s suburban housing model. The litters came about 10 days apart. The first mama nested her babies in the lower level of the hutch. The second mama made a tidy nest on the upper level.

When the most recent viciously bone chilling wet-cold ice storm hit the girls pooled their resources and made one uber-cozy nest in the lower level, with the second mama bringing her babies one-by-one from the upper nest and tucking them beneath the larger and furrier baby nest from the first litter in the lower level straw bed. That plus the body heat from both the mamas working together surely saved the lives of the younger babies as they were too small and vulnerable to withstand the harsh cold and freezy-wet conditions.

Honorable Mention for Cleverness goes to Ms. Dakota, who despite being a total spazz managed to bring two healthy kids into the world. Here are the lil buckling and doeling with the mama at three days old, let out of the barn once the weather had finally warmed up a bit:

I give Dakota a hard time, but really she’s my baby. Literally. I bottle raised her. She was born by C-section and orphaned because sadly Dr. Rachael could not save her mama, Ms. Alabama. And Alabama was OG Magpie Hollow, a member of our first group of sheep and goats on the farm.

Dakota has shown herself to be a great mama so far. She and these two kids are Alabama’s legacy on our farm. So far we haven’t named the kids yet. (The buck is the black and white one, and the doe is the tan little one.) Name suggestions? Put them in the comments.

Last Place for Cleverness this Month goes to me!

I have a new invention that has clever potential. It’s a solar powered thermal mass heater used for off-grid thawing of livestock water tanks.

Great idea - in principle! Needs more work though.

It does seem to help melt ice (slightly) faster

More to come…

I personally have tried a number of methods to combat this challenge that could all be described as ‘cockamamie.’

Case-in-point, here I’m ratchet-strapping my beer brewing setup into the back of a Toyota so that I can drive around the farm and melt the animals’ water troughs with boiling water delivered from a brewing kettle set atop a propane burner. (You can’t tell from the photo and the sunny conditions are deceptive but when this picture was taken it was about 7 degrees Fahrenheit (-14 C).)

That was an enormous hassle.

So - no kidding - what we do now is to hook up a few hundred feet of hoses to the hot water tap on our washing machine to dispense hot water to melt the animal’s water tanks out in the various pastures.

[It’s not as bad as you think. We get all our heat and hot water during the cold season from a wood fired boiler. It’s fueled by firewood sustainably harvested on our land to supply the energy to make hot water and melt water tanks. It’s local and not environmentally harmful, but neither is it efficient from a time and labor perspective for this purpose.]

OK, so what then?

Have you ever run hoses all over the place to get your animals water? Have you tried to keep those hoses unblocked by ice during cold periods? Has that been a real pain-in-the-ass despite your efforts to drain hoses when you anticipate below freezing conditions are on the way?

If you are sufficiently frustrated then my idea here might start to look attractive…

What about a thermal mass battery that is off-grid powered by sunlight to provide minimal heat to melt ice so that your animals can get a drink of liquid water for at least a few hours per day during the cold season?

OK so here’s a first test of my invention melting ice (slightly faster under the ambient conditions shown) as proof-of-concept:

I don’t have a more dramatic test result to show at the moment because since I designed and assembled this system we haven’t had bad enough weather to give it a more rigorous test. And TBH I’m not out here wishing for worse weather…

So this is a work in progress. The principles are sound but YMMV.

Here’s all there is to it:

A DC electrical system run off of inexpensive solar panels, e.g. this 100W x 2 set:

A common water heating element such as this

The water heating element is encapsulated using common threaded metal pipe fittings for example:

Then the heating element assembly is embedded within a thermal mass of sand, e.g. in a ~6 gal bucket as shown

Electrical connections are made using high temperature silicone wire like this…

…and covered by high temperature rock wool insulation like this

Common solar wiring connectors are used for making the connections, such as

The idea is that the solar panels heat the sand “battery” (i.e., thermal mass) which melts the ice and retains heat for a period of time so the animals can get a drink of liquid water for a few hours during the late day/evening. It will probly re-freeze overnight, but then re-melt late the next day once enough solar energy has re-accumulated in the sand battery again. And so on.

You might have to play around with the ratio of solar panel capacity to sand battery mass and water tank volume to suit your local weather conditions. I’m going to keep messing with these ratios to improve next versions of the setup.

Will it work when the sky is overcast or during a snowstorm? Um, probly no.

If you have a very cold day that is clear and sunny then the system will work provided you have enough power coming in from the solar panels. My little test here in western NC during February used two cheapo 100W panels. If you are in a colder climate it would likely take more Watts (i.e., bigger and better PV panels).

You will probly have to experiment with what works in your situation. If your winter climate is both very cold and very overcast this probably won’t work for you. But if you have periods of sunny-but-cold days like we do in NC this could be a solution that saves you some headache keeping a supply of liquid water available to your animals for a least several hours per day during a subfreezing episode.

This Spring marks five years since we went all-in on a disused marginal hill farm in the Brushy Mountains of Wilkes County, NC.

Save the Date: Saturday April 26, 3 PM - sunset

Come celebrate with us! We’ll have plenty of food and refreshments, games (e.g., cornhole), farm tours, nature walks in our woods, goat snuggling, a bonfire, all sorts of good times.

Photo collection from Aprils past: 2020, 2021, 2022

Playtime!

With all these fall babies we’re up to about 30 sheep and 9 goats.

Keeping up with farm logistics can be a challenge! We have two breeding groups - one captained by our Katahdin ram Abe and the other by our Shetland ram Moh. We’re going for cross-breeding as well as production of some “pure” lines.

The mobile shelters we made from salvaging the old trailer have been a real blessing this year. So far they have withstood a tornado and a hurricane! Next test, a blizzard?

Just before New Years we gathered in all the maybe (hopefully) pregnant girls to over-winter in the home pasture with the fall babies and their mamas. We consolidated all the wethers (castrated boys) into one mega grazing group to finish off to processing weight over the next few months. We’ve updated our meat sales information - you can find it here.

Demo Daze

A few days before Christmas we made a major push to demolish the old trailer foundation in preparation to build a workshop.

Our friend Mike the millwright came over with a track hoe and a skid steer and we went to work making one helluva mess!

I salvaged as much of the good concrete block as I could to use for other projects (along with the good sections of metal I-beams and axles from the trailer frame). We used the broken block to repair part of our road and drainage ditch washed out by Helene and other storms.

Now we’ve got a nice blank spot to build my workshop/laboratory/office. We managed to save the root cellar that was under the trailer and I am incorporating that into the design of the workshop. Very excited about this project!

Even Elijah got some training time in with the skid steer!

We’re planning a five year anniversary on the farm party for sometime this spring. When we get some of the details firmed up I will send out a notice. Hope you can make it to the party, or anytime for a visit!

We’re on top of a mountain instead of down in a mountain valley so the risk of catastrophic flash flooding here is minimal. High winds and trees knocked over are our main vulnerabilities. And we did have a few trees brought down over pasture fences. Most of these have been cleaned up and repaired by now.

The biggest of the downed trees took out a pasture fence as well as our power lines. This happened on Thursday evening before Helene arrived in full force. The lines shorted, causing a violently arcing fireball that sent the goats into PTSD. Eventually the power line melted and snapped, cutting off our electricity.

Luckily we have plenty of rainwater storage and a backup generator we used for a few hours a day for household tasks and to keep the meat freezers at adequate low temperature.

As the storm passed we surveyed the damage and began restoration activities. A wise friend once told me, “When you put up a fence, there’s a tree waiting to fall on it.” True to form, we had an array of (thankfully minor) fence damages.

The storm’s fervor triggered a couple of sheep to go into labor. So overnight, in the onslaught of wind and rain, we wrangled mamas and babies from pasture to safety and dry quarters in the barn.

Baby Helene, born as the storm intensified and bore down on our farm.

Baby Hugo, born as the storm subsided.

We’re doing fine - thanks for your thoughts and prayers. Now that our operations are mostly re-stabilized we’re looking at how we can help others in our region. It will be a long process of recovery and rebuilding for southern Appalachian communities. Keep in touch, come visit, volunteer to help out. All are welcome.

Our Q3 was bookended by baby goats

In mid-July during a harsh early summer drought Clarice gave birth to a romper lil’ buck.

Then we had drought-ending rains, then another intense dry spell, then more rain, on-and-off in a weather whipsaw.

And on the first day of fall Clarice became a grandma when her daughter Ramona gave birth to a doeling that is definitely in the running for cutest critter born in our pasture so far.

Mama and baby are doing fantastic.

Ramona has been a champ with her first baby. We didn’t intend for her to get pregnant but it seems a sneaky Possum must have got to her at some point.

We just wrapped up our second summer farmers’ market season in Hickory, NC. Our lamb sales increased by 44% compared with last year.

Our rabbit sales also increased by 44%, and our goat sales increased by 60%.

Our pork sales were about half what they were last year, but that was intentional. We kept fewer pigs this year, and just focused on offering a few varieties of sausage since our breed (kune kune) make the most fantastic sausage!

Regenerative rotational grazing for the win

The numbers affirm our hypothesis that regenerative grazing of sheep and goats (and rabbits!), with silvopasture pork as a secondary product, is a wise strategy for our farm from an ecological and economic standpoint. Going forward we will continue to refine the plan.

Despite the challenging drought conditions through parts of the summer we have maintained an excellent forage base. We give a little corn as a reward to keep the landscaping crew happy and accustomed to daily interaction with humans. But they grow on a diet of grass as nature intended!

Given encouraging market results we’re expanding production. In August we brought on several more Jacobs lambs from a nearby farm to raise out.

Our rabbits have done that characteristic thing of “breeding like rabbits,” and grow up on a rich diet of grass and leavings in our backyard kitchen garden.

Backyard kitchen garden and rabbit zone with stationary and mobile hutches.

The rabbit pee and poo has really improved the weathered clay and rocky soil of our kitchen garden. During summer we grew a good crop of potatoes, sweet potatoes, acorn squash, and okra.

We have lots to offer so check out our Farm Products for Sale page.

And of course you-know-who is growin like a weed and gettin into all sorts of mischief.

Now we’re shifting from warm season production to cool season expansion and infrastructure projects. Priorities this winter include building a farm workshop, repairing fences and gates, and giving particular focus to breeding and growing our flock. Stay tuned, and thanks for your support…

The project that instigated this post is a first for me in a couple of ways. One, most of my decentralized water engineering design work has been done in low-resource settings abroad. Other than installing some rainwater harvesting systems on our farm, I hadn’t done any water supply or treatment installations in the US.

Two, I haven’t done much electrical work and I have never personally wired up a solar powered water pump system (though I have played a support role in similar projects abroad).

But I can’t turn down an opportunity to face a design challenge in appropriate technology in the water sector! Let me know what you think of our invention here…

A friend recently asked for my help solving an urgent water problem.

He’s starting an orchard and permaculture site in steep, hilly terrain near our place in the Brushy Mountains. Normally summers here are wet with plenty of rain. This summer has been different however. Our region has had very little rain - in some locales almost no rain at all - since mid-May.

Over the past couple of years my friend has been on a major tree-planting binge, trying to get his orchard project up-and-running. With very hot temperatures and drought conditions over the past two months his trees are mega-stressed in in danger of dying. So recently he asked me to come up with a plan to facilitate watering the trees, and “Put a hurry-up on it!”

He’s got a spring that flows through his property that at least so far into this drought is still producing water. But the stream runs down in the holler, of course, whereas he needs water way up at the top of his property above the orchards so that he can gravity-feed hoses or a drip irrigation system to his fruit and nut trees.

Now we’re seeing the stream under extreme low-flow conditions but it’s easy to tell from the catchment’s morphology that during periods of high rainfall the creek swells, carves up its banks, and carries and deposits significant loads of sediment. 

So not only do we need to move water from a low point on the property to a high point, we also need to deal with episodic flow conditions and substantial amounts of sediment that could damage pumps, clog drip irrigation systems, etc.

So here’s what I came up with:

It’s an up-flow gravel roughing filter in a 200 L (55-gal) drum modified to have essentially a PVC pipe “borehole” in the middle of it. Down the simulated “borehole” we put a DC well pump driven by solar photovoltaic (PV) panels.

Water flows into the bottom of the gravel filter by gravity from the spring catchment. Sediment settles in the lower layers of gravel, and clear water spills into the “borehole” through holes in the PVC pipe. It’s then pumped to storage tanks at the top of the hill by the DC well pump. 

Sediment is flushed from the filter on an as-needed basis by backwashing (reversing the flow direction) by simply opening the large cleanout valve near the bottom of the drum to expel the dirty water.

The criteria for this project was that it needed to be done pretty quickly, fairly cheaply, robustly and with low complexity, and off-grid (since my friend does not have power at his orchard site yet).

“Daylight Drive”

I designed this system to be as simple as possible - the DC well pump is wired directly to the solar panels (with only an On/Off switch in between). When the sun is shining on the panels (and the switch is On), the well pump runs. If there’s partial sun or shade, the well pump runs slower. It doesn’t run at night - hence “Daylight Drive,” a term I borrowed from friends who have pioneered the concept at Living Energy Farm.

There’s no inverter (to convert between DC and AC power), and no batteries for energy storage. The inverter and batteries are typically the most expensive components of solar electric systems so this approach saved a lot of money.

SYSTEM COMPONENTS AND SPECS

Except for the irrigation hose, HDPE drum, and large diameter PVC pipe, all plumbing and electrical components were purchased from amazon.

My friend already had an HDPE “pickle barrel” drum we used to house the filter:

The gravel depth is about 28” (about 70 cm) and the total volume of gravel used is about 5 cubic feet (about 140 L). 

PLUMBING

For the “borehole” pipe I used a section of 6” inner diameter PVC electrical conduit I had laying around. I cut a hole in the lid of the pickle barrel to insert the PVC “borehole” pipe through, and epoxied the circle cut from the lid to the bottom of the PVC “borehole” pipe to close it. (This worked fine with what I had on-hand, but a better solution could be to use a section of PVC drain pipe with a proper slip-fit lid glued on the bottom end.)

The inlet and overflow lines are 1.25” diameter irrigation hose. They’re fitted to the drum using 1.25” bulkhead fittings and hose barbs (easy to find on amazon).

The cleanout is made using a 2” PVC threaded ball valve, a 2” threaded male-male close nipple, and 2” threaded bulkhead fitting (also easy to find on amazon). 

ELECTRICAL

DC well pump According to the manufacturer’s specifications, it is a 12 Volt submersible pump with a maximum flow rate of 3.2 gallons per minute (12 L/min) and a maximum water lift of 230 feet (70 m). I estimated that the elevation difference between the streambed and the water tank at the top of the hill was about 80 feet, maybe 100 feet. For the design I planned (hoped) that this pump would be able to deliver 1-2 gal/min at that elevation. 1/2” irrigation hose was affixed to the pump outlet to transmit water uphill to the storage tank. The pump cost about US$150 from amazon.

PV array This designed used two 100 Watt, 12 Volt PV panels wired in parallel purchased as a two-pack for about $120 from amazon. I enclosed the electrical connections in a waterproof case using cable glands, and added a waterproof On/Off switch in-line between the panels and the pump (all purchased from amazon).

OVERALL COST ESTIMATE

Depending on how much water line is needed from the spring catchment source to the gravel filter, and from the pump to the water storage tank, this whole system can be constructed for around US$500.

Here’s a photo from the first test of the setup:

And here’s my friend happy to finally have water flowing to one of the empty tanks at the top of his orchard:

At that elevation above the filter/pump we measured a flow rate of just over 2 gal/min (>7.5 L/min).

On a clear sunny day he should be able to fill three of these ~300 gallon (~1,000 L) IBC totes.

VULNERABILITIES AND CONCERNS?

In trying to anticipate what might go wrong with this setup, I suspect our main source of potential trouble will be the water intake. If it gets clogged, or the steam level drops further with the continuing drought, then insufficient water (or no water) could be delivered to the gravel filter inlet.

During our first test pictured above, the flow rate of water coming into the filter was greater than the flow rate out from the pump when the panels were in full direct sun (at zero elevation, so the maximum possible pump flow rate). Even with the pump at max flow there was still water going through the filter overflow port. In this condition, the “borehole” would stay filled, avoid the risk of being pumped out and exposing the pump to drawing in air.

But if conditions change and the stream catchment provides insufficient flow to the gravel filter, then the pump could run dry. These pumps are supposed to have an automatic shutoff if they get too hot, but who knows if this will be ok to protect the pump from damage if flow to the filter stops or drops below the minimum needed to keep the “borehole” full.

Another big potential vulnerability comes from my electrical work! This is an area where I likely “don’t know what I don’t know.” But - hopefully that will be remedied soon as I am attending a “Daylight Drive” training at Living Energy Farm later this month! I’m sure Alexis et al. will be happy to critique my design and suggest improvements.

Let me know what you think of our “quick-n-dirty” roughing filter / Daylight Drive water pump solution! We’ll see what all goes wrong with this system and I will report back on our troubleshooting.

Silvopasture (silva is forest in Latin) is the practice of integrating trees, forage, and the grazing of domesticated animals in a mutually beneficial way.

Our approach prioritizes animal health and wellbeing, and agro-ecological and regenerative practices suited to the southern Appalachian bioregion.

2026 Offerings

This year we are focusing on lamb and duck eggs. (We do still have ground pork available, as well as a few rabbits.)

We sell on-farm by appointment: call or text Josh at 336 902 2543.

You can also catch us at the Downtown Hickory Farmers’ Market every Saturday from 8 AM to 1 PM.

Also - Saunders & Sons Grocery near Statesville carries our lamb and duck eggs.

2025 Offerings

For lamb and goat we’re planning for quarterly processings this year. With each processing we’ll have a limited number of half shares available. Please get in touch with us ASAP if you’d like to reserve a half share. We also sell cuts a la carte, of course. The half share price reflects a 10% discount compared with buying individual cuts.

We sell on-farm by appointment and at local farmers’ markets. Inquire for latest pricing and specialty products.

INFORMATION ABOUT OUR PRICING

Please note:

• Prices are subject to change, and

• We almost always have sale items available at reduced prices. Call or write, come see us at the farm, or stop by our booth at the Hickory Farmers’ Market, and shop the latest specials!

You may notice that these prices are significantly higher than what you typically pay in the grocery store. It’s a topic for another day to discuss the subsidies, distortions, externalities, un-sustainability, environmental and animal welfare issues, etc., that afflict industrial food system products. In this article we just want to provide transparency about the process we use to set our prices.

Put simply, we consider our costs for raising and processing animals as well as current market prices for pasture raised meat in our county, state, and the broader US.

Cost considerations

Infrastructure

Obviously, there is some up-front investment in infrastructure for starting up a small regenerative agriculture enterprise. Our philosophy prioritizes thrift, frugality, resourcefulness, creativity, and good ol’ hillbilly engineering to minimize costs and promote efficiency.

We’ve done a lot of work to repair and repurpose dilapidated structures that were on the farm when we got it. For example, we demo’ed part of a hunter’s shack that was beyond repair and used the wood we reclaimed to convert the other part of the shack into a barn with stalls for lambing and kidding.

The barn

We built a shelter, farrowing pen, and loading system for the pigs for very low cost. Our neighbor gave us the old tin panels used for the roof. Much of the lumber came from disassembling the porch and deck of the old trailer on the property, and the poplar half-rounds we got for free from a local sawyer. The grain bin sheets used for the loading chute were leftover from a millwright job. The water tanks (which collect rainwater from the roof), previously used for soy sauce, were purchased at low cost.

Piggo central, in their forest haven

Our mobile goat and sheep shelter (the “Winnebagoat”) is made from an abandoned livestock trailer. We gave it a little TLC (tires, greased and repacked wheel bearings, light kit) and a roof. It has served us well.

We’ve been thrifty and resourceful, and our animals are very well cared for. Over time we expect (hope!) to recoup our expenses for building out farm infrastructure. That said, up-front infrastructure costs are not explicitly added as line-items in our meat prices.

Nutrition and Wellness

Animal wellness means receiving a healthy diet as well as medications (e.g., vaccines, de-worming, antibiotics to treat sick or injured animals) when needed and physical care such as shearing and hoof-trimming.

Our sheep and goats forage grass for most of their diet, and our pigs forage greenery, certain roots, acorns and walnuts, and other forest delectables, for a portion of their diet.

From January to April, when the grass isn’t growing, we feed hay purchased from a nearby farm to the sheep and goats. Sheep and goat mamas need additional nutrition during lambing/kidding season, so we feed supplemental grain and alfalfa pellets. Sheep and goats also need supplemental minerals and a salt lick year-round.

Pigs need more nutrition than they can get from forest foraging, so we feed 14% protein hog pellets to feeder pigs, and a 16% protein feed to nursing mamas and their piglets.

Parasites (worms) can be an issue. If you’ve seen skinny, sickly goats, for example, they most likely had worms.

The green plant shown in the photos below is Lespedeza. It’s often used for soil conservation, for example in areas where erosion is bad, and disturbed areas like along highways, since it grows in very poor soils and helps to stabilize the land.

Lespedeza (the plant, not the goat! Her name is Clarice…)

Lespedeza forage also has natural inherent anti-parasite properties. It’s growing in some of our pastures and we have plans for strategic seeding of more Lespedeza in key zones on the property for parasite control.

Our animals have had little to no issues with worms. On occasion we have had to use medical dewormer on a sheep or goat when they first arrive to our farm from another farm where worms are a problem. But babies born on our farm have not needed deworming, and during our Fall 2022 herd health check we did not deworm a single animal. Getting some Lespedeza in their diet and rotational grazing in general for breaking the parasite life-cycle probably explain our good luck with parasite absence in our flock.

Wellness costs for sheep, goats, and pigs also include straw and/or wood shavings for bedding for mamas and babies.

In very rough terms, we estimate feed and wellness costs of about $100 per year per sheep or goat, and about $200 per year per pig.

As I’m sure you’re aware, the costs of just about everything are going up these days. Though the Federal Reserve may peg the rate of inflation in 2022 at 7.5-8%, our feed costs have gone up 14-24% over the same period.

December 2021 - April 2023 cost trends per 50 lb bag of feed for alfalfa pellets, 16% protein layer chicken pellet feed, 14% protein hog pellets, sheep and goat pellets, and shelled corn (snack and moving assistance) from our local family-owned feed mill.

Our animal processing and meat packaging is done by a nearby family-owned facility. Our processing costs are about $150 per sheep or goat, and about $200 per pig.

Thus our total estimated costs for raising and processing animals into packaged cuts are about $275-$350 per sheep or goat, and about $400-$500 per pig.

Of course, we are new at this having only been going for a little over two years. So these figures will be refined over time as our experience grows and we have more cost data to work from.

Market prices for pasture raised lamb and pork

Keeping in mind these cost estimates, we also look at what other farms are charging in our county, state, and in the US in general.

Wilkes County, NC

We have drawn a huge amount of inspiration from our friends at Sheraton Park Farms. They raise pastured meat chickens, egg layers, turkeys, rabbits, pigs, and cows. In a recent (October 2022) video, farmer Chuck identified their top-five sellers at farmers’ markets around our region. They sell chicken, eggs, and beef, which we don’t, and we sell lamb, which they don’t. But to give you an idea of what they ask for their products, here are prices for their top-five sellers.

1. ground beef - $9.50/lb

2. chicken breasts (bone in, with skin) - $11/lb

3. boneless pork chops - $15/lb

4. bacon (uncured, smoked) - $15/lb

5. pasture raised chicken eggs: $4-$5 per half-dozen, $7-$8 per dozen

We charge similar prices for our bone-in pork chops and bacon. They sell ground pork for around $10.50/lb, whereas we currently charge around $8/lb. So our prices are comparable or a little lower than those of Sheraton Park (certainly we are not over-charging compared to them).

State of North Carolina and US

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the North Carolina Department of Agriculture (NCDA) publishes handy reports each month listing ranges and averages of retail prices for pasture raised lamb, goat, and pork (and beef, dairy, poultry, etc.).

These can be found here under the heading “Direct to Consumer.”

Very simply, we look at these reports, in particular at the average prices that different cuts of meat sell for in NC and in the broader US, and we set our prices close to these values. Sometimes NC prices are a little higher than the US average, and sometimes they are a little lower. But they are typically comparable.

Are we profitable? Are our prices fair?

The “million-dollar questions,” so-to-speak… Let’s look at some ball-park, conservative figures.

Based on our retail prices of packaged cuts, one sheep would be expected to gross about $350, and one of our kune kune pigs about $700. Subtracting the costs of raising and processing a sheep ($200-$250) or pig ($400-$500), that would net us $100-$150 per sheep, and $200-$300 per pig.

It is from those net values that we can begin to pay back our initial investments in infrastructure, and cover various other sundry costs that weren’t included in this “back-of-the-envelope” analysis.

Are our prices fair? Does this explication ease the “sticker shock” one might feel when comparing our prices to grocery store meat? Should we be charging more? That is up to you, dear reader. Let us know what you think!

Share Magpie Hollow Farm News

We’ve been experimenting to find the right lavender variety(-ies) that grow well at our place along with optimizing the growing conditions. We’ve been selling lavender bundles at the farmers’ market beginning summer 2024 and want to include to other lavender products as we expand our production.

They measure about 12” x 6” x 8,” have an insulating liner and a zipper closure, a mesh pocket on one side and a solid fabric pocket on the other side. Great for packing a lunch or keeping your farmers’ market items warm or cool as needed.

“Space blanket” insulating interior liner.

Cool bags are available for $8 plus shipping.