How Herdshare Programs Work
When you buy a herdshare, you are buying a share in our dairy sheep. As a herdshare member you enter into a contract with us whereby your herdshare money pays us to feed and care for your dairy ewe and we provide you with dairy products. Such contracts are a legal and valid way to sell raw milk in North Carolina. We charge a one-time $15 membership fee to be part of the herdshare as this is what makes the herdshare agreement legal. For a better understanding of how raw milk laws work state by state, please visit: https://www.farmtoconsumer.org/raw-milk-nation-interactive-map/
Pick-up Locations & Days
Tuesday 3:30 - 6:30 pm: West Asheville Tailgate Market 718 Haywood Rd https://www.westashevilletailgatemarket.com
Saturday 8-12: North Asheville Tailgate Market: On the Campus of UNC Asheville: 3300 University Heights https://northashevilletailgatemarket.com/
Saturday 8-2: Farm Pickup: (538 Graham Rd, Marshall). We will have a fridge with shares in an easy to find location. We ask that you do not go into the barns, pastures or the parlor...you’re welcome to enjoy the sheep in the fields from a distance! Thank you!!
We Ensure Your Safety & Health By:
Intensively grazing our sheep on unsprayed pasture. Keeping the flock on pasture except during the coldest time of the year when we feed hay in the barns.
Using no chemical wormers during our milking season. Addressing any health problems in our ewes by withholding that milk from the bulk tank and treating the ewe separately.
Milking in a clean milk parlor using an automatic milking machine.
Cleaning the udders before milking and dipping with iodine solution after milking.
Chilling the milk immediately in a commercial bulk tank after each milking.
Bottling and delivering raw milk within one day of milking.
Testing the milk twice a month to ensure absence of pathogens.
Pricing & Glass Returns
The share price includes a bottle deposit of $2 / jar or bottle. If you are picking up at a market, just bring your cleaned jars and/or bottles back to market and you’ll get $2 for each one. For the on-farm pickup, we will keep a tally of the jars and bottles you returned and we’ll credit you back this money at the end of your herdshare.
Member Responsibilities
Manage your online account. We use a software system to manage our herdshare memberships. This system is very flexible and once you have created your account, you can go in and pause pickups, change pickup locations, cancel your herdshare and add on more products to your herdshare. We ask that you use this system to manage your herdshare so that it fits your life. I.e., please do not call/text/email each week asking us to make the changes for you.
Pick up your herdshare or send someone else to pick it up. This is a big one..…our responsibility to you is to have your correct herdshare product at the pickup location and your responsibility is to pick it up! If you have not gone into your online account to pause or change your pickup and we bring your products to market and you don’t show, that’s counted as a fulfilled pickup. I.e., please do not call/text/email after you have missed a pickup and ask us to hold it at the farm for another day, bring to another market, drive back into town and bring it to you, double up on product for the next pickup to “make up” for the one you missed, etc etc.
Note that the herdshare is a 6-week long subscription that automatically renews. When you purchase a herdshare, the amount you are charged is for 6 weeks of deliveries. The system will take your payment info and it automatically renews every 6 weeks. If you do not want it to renew, then you need to go into your online account and set the stop date. As we get closer to the end of the season, we go in and set a stop date for deliveries so if you’re purchasing throughout the season, you’ll see that your last renewal may only be for 2-3 weeks if it’s up against our stop date for the end of the season.
Your bottle and jar returns need to be clean in order to get your $2 deposit back. We take all glass back to the farm kitchen and wash and sanitize everything again. However…..we cannot be introducing large amounts of milk loving bacteria or molds into our sanitary Grade A environment without affecting the quality of our products. That means no bottles and jars with funky things growing in them. We require that you wash out your empty glass with soap before returning it.
Reach out to us if you have questions! We want to help everyone use the online system effectively, but we also know that it can be confusing. So please reach out if you have questions about how to manage your account. We are happy to walk you through any snarls you encounter, and many such questions are already in the FAQ on our main herdshare site. If you have a question, somebody else will have that same question, so please help us build out our FAQ for everyone’s benefit.