Since 2016, we have been on a journey of self sustainability, growth, and discovery.

Where It All Began

I (Carrie) asked Michael for directions in early 2013. We were both on Active Duty in the United States Marine Corps, and I was checking in to a new unit in Camp LeJeune, North Carolina after reenlisting and moving from my previous duty station in Quantico, Virginia. We both ended up on the manifest for a deployment to Afghanistan later that year.

After returning to the U.S from Afghanistan, we got married in June 2014. Along came our son, and we decided to plan a (successful, healthy, and peaceful) home birth. This decision changed our lives deeply - we began to question things - everything, in fact.

When we both concluded our military service in 2016, we rented an old farmhouse owned by a man who had cows, pigs, and more. This renewed a love of farming in me - I had worked at a beef farm in and after high school, but had left it behind when I joined the Marine Corps. My great-grandfather had been a dairy farmer, but had lost the farm after losing his leg while battling diabetes. During our stay as renters, Michael would help the farmer from time to time, and as a payment, he gave Michael piglets to bring home. We added laying hens, and talked about buying the cows from him someday. We named our homestead “Black Sheep Farmstead” because we knew even then that we felt compelled to do things differently - to cut against the grain, to be the outsiders, to be the black sheep. We began to look into buying farmland, and this search led us to Michigan. In 2017, we left behind what we had begun in New Jersey (my home town), everything but our two pigs that started it all - our girls named Mags and Loretta.

The next few years consisted of a lot of trial and error. We reestablished our flock of laying hens, and added dairy goats. I began to make soap, and then I began candlemaking. We raised our first meat chickens and took them to a local family to be processed. We raised our own Thanksgiving turkey, got our first Great Pyrenees Livestock Guardian Dogs, grew a garden, and felt incredibly blessed and fulfilled by our endeavors. We renamed our farm “Copperhead Hill Farms” for multiple reasons. First, because the song “Copperhead Road” by Steve Earle, we similarly felt that we exited the military and had “a brand new plan”. I done two tours of duty in Vietnam / I came home with a brand new plan. While we are not running moonshine, we did decide to do things the way we saw fit, freely and without needing anyone else’s permission or validation. Secondly, because Michael is a redhead, so… copper… head. :). And no, it has nothing to do with the snake. Later, we astonishingly discovered that my great-grandfather’s dairy farm in Ringoes, NJ was named… Copper Hill Farm!

After a while, though, we began to feel some homestead burnout and slowed down. We stayed in a holding pattern until 2020, when uncertain times brought us a renewed sense of purpose and clarity to our vision. We added Irish Dexters to our farm, and had beef in the freezer and fresh, whole, unprocessed milk in the refrigerator. I could finally make hard cheese, butter, and so much more. In 2021 we added our first Jersey Cow, Juliette, and no longer milked our first Dexter. When it came time to dry off Juliette for several months before her next cow, we added a sweet heifer named Dolly.

We finally reached the point where we had a surplus in milk, and decided to explore offering Herdshares. We opened our Herdshare Program in September of 2022, and are very thankful for our members and their dedication, support, and encouragement as our young family and farm continues to grow. We are sincerely blessed to serve a growing number of families in our area by providing fresh, raw, real milk on a weekly basis.

We are thankful to have you along on this journey, and encourage you to start your own journeys of self-sufficiency, sustainability, and personal growth.

“I am a Christian, libertarian, environmentalist, capitalist, lunatic farmer.”

— Joel Salatin