Keepers of sheep

Cannon Valley Graziers has flipped the traditional narrative of paying for access to land; instead, their sheep provide landscape management services in solar fields, for a fee.

By Eva McMillan ’24

It’s still dark when Arlo Hark ’18 and Josie Trople ’18 start their morning. After breakfast and coffee, they call for their border collie, Frazey, and hop into their green 1994 Dodge 2500 pickup and set off. After driving for a bit through the vast cornfields of Northfield, Minnesota, the trio pick up their semi truck and quadruple-decker Merrit livestock trailer. As the daylight settles in, they arrive at their destination: a 30-acre solar array. Framed by a sea of shimmering photovoltaic panels, Hark and Trople set up a temporary corral while Frazey goes to work rounding up their flock of just over 100 Rambouillet sheep. The aluminum chute clangs as the flock loads into the trailer single file, from bottom to top. Hark cinches the doors and hitches up their 500-gallon water tank. With all of the flock accounted for, the team takes one last look around and heads off to their next gig. 

Hark, Trople, and Frazey are Cannon Valley Graziers, a family enterprise specializing in adaptive livestock grazing and vegetation management. They’ve flipped the traditional grazing narrative of paying for access to land on its head; rather, they are paid for their sheep-powered landscape management services. While they started out aiming to apply their grazing methods to prairie and forest settings, the couple have found themselves working in the burgeoning field of agrivoltaics, which fuses clean energy and animal husbandry. As Cannon Valley Graziers work to expand their flock and their range, so too is the United States working to expand the use of solar energy. Hark and Trople are on the cusp of something big.

The United States is poised to experience a solar installation boom, following the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022 and the setting of ambitious carbon reduction goals for the next decade. The opportunities to incorporate novel agricultural practices such as solar grazing into this development are many. For young sheep farmers like Hark and Trople, the opportunity to earn a living while creating lasting positive impacts on the land around them is incredibly valuable. In a modern twist on an ancient relationship, humans and sheep are coming together as vehicles of ecological transformation and sustainability—an exciting prospect in this changing world. 

“The land going into solar here in the Midwest has often been over-extracted through decades of conventional monoculture. There’s been a push from environmentalists and conservationists to incorporate native species for pollinator habitat, but there’s also a bunch of folks who really want to see the land stay in agriculture,” says Trople. “Sheep are an excellent solution.” 

Josie Trople ’18, Arlo Hark ’18, and Frazey the border collie are the driving force behind Cannon Valley Graziers and Bayl woolen goods.

The two started their flock in 2018 with hopes of having a lasting positive impact on the ecology and soil health of Southern Minnesota while also providing food for their community. They dove into adaptive grazing while also generating lamb sales through local CSAs, co-ops, and restaurants. A year later, they came into contact with American Solar Grazers Association cofounder Lexi Hain, who helped them learn about and break into solar grazing. Since then, they have secured landscape management contracts with solar developers, getting paid for every acre their flock grazes. This year, they expanded their business with the launch of Bayl, a sustainable woolen goods company using hand-spun fiber from their flock. 

Hark and Trople’s flock grew to just over 100 sheep this year, and Hark thinks that they can keep growing—a lot. With their business model, he says, they can multiply that number exponentially. The sites they currently graze range from 5 to 50 acres, but they both want to go bigger, hoping to graze sites as big as 1,500 acres with a massive flock of sheep.

“I’d like to be grazing thousands of sheep. Like five or ten thousand sheep on big sites,” he says. 

The installation of large solar arrays can be controversial in rural communities, as it removes land from agricultural production, and can be perceived as an eyesore. Solar grazing changes that by keeping the land in agriculture, and, for some critics, the familiar sight of  livestock grazing beneath  the panels can change how they feel about a solar project in their county. 

“Managing the vegetation on these sites is not only critical for the aesthetic, but also for the site function,” explains Hark. “In order to keep these sites operating safely and efficiently, good vegetation management plans are crucial. So what we are doing is using targeted grazing as a land management tool to meet very specific site objectives.”

When explaining their business model, Hark has found that some have trouble wrapping their heads around it. People cannot figure out how on earth these two young farmers have managed to flip the grazing narrative. What Hark tries to drive home to people is the ecological service they are providing. It’s landscape management, but with stacked  benefits for the soil, pollinators, sheep, and people.

“Land access is one of the biggest barriers to entry in Minnesota. Young farmers generally have a really hard time finding land, which is one of the reasons that solar grazing is a great way to grow a profitable land management/livestock company,” Hark says.

Sheep are perfect for solar grazing both in size and behavior. Mowing under the panels requires expensive, specialized equipment, but sheep have no trouble fitting beneath the arrays. The sheep go through less water when grazing on solar sites; the panels provide shade for the sheep, keeping them cool on hot days. Solar grazing is a win for developers who save money when switching from commercial landscape management practices, which can cost more and can also have the potential to cause damage to panels. 

The US is poised for record-breaking installation of solar and wind power as the government works on reducing carbon emissions by 50% by 2030. The US currently has 139 GW of solar capacity, enough to power 23 million homes. The Inflation Reduction Act set the stage for an increase of operational capacity of at least 40% over the next five years, with some organizations predicting as much as a threefold increase. 

A flock of sheep belonging to Cannon Valley Graziers, owned by 2018 COA alums Arlo Hark and Josie Trople, head out for some fresh grazing in a solar field.

ORIGINS

Both Hark and Trople come from agricultural backgrounds; Trople’s family raised cow and calf pairs and cut hay, while Hark grew up in Cannon Valley with his family’s small flock of sheep. The couple met at College of the Atlantic.

While at COA, Hark gravitated towards English and creative writing, studying poetry with writing professor emeritus Bill Carpenter and diving into music composition with former music professor John Cooper. Trople studied agroecology and field botany, taking classes in food anthropology and food systems. Trople spent the winter of her senior year in Spain with history and Latin American studies professor Todd Little-Siebold’s Cidra, Queso y Granjas: Agriculture’s Past and Present course, an intensive three-week, field-based exploration of the history and contemporary reality of Spanish agriculture. Both Hark and Trople have found their studies in human ecology to be very connected and intertwined with what they are doing now with Cannon Valley Grazers.

“Human ecology is at the core of solar grazing,” Hark says. “You have issues of land management, soil health, ecology, sustainable energy production, agriculture, and livestock. There are so many different touchpoints, so you really have to be able to think on a systems level in this work.”

Both Hark and Trople knew they wanted to do something related to agriculture in the midwest after graduation. During their senior year, an elder from Hark’s hometown of Northfield asked if they were interested in grazing an eight-acre piece of overgrown silvopasture. They jumped at the opportunity. 

“There was this intention going into it that our animals would do something good for the land while we would also be producing food for our community,” says Trople. “Using animals to have a positive ecological impact on the land was important to our goals and what we wanted to do from the beginning.”

During their senior year, Hark and Trople pooled their savings and bought 20 lambs, sight unseen, off of Craigslist, sending a deposit through the mail. After graduating, they headed to Northfield, met their new flock, and began grazing on the land that had been offered to them. 

Hark and Trople worked on small grazing projects all over Rice County, traveling scores of miles from their Northfield home with their flock. As they expanded their scope and pushed the boundaries of what they were trying to do, they started pitching their services to developers, sending emails, making cold calls. Their persistence has paid off. 

BAYL

Trople has been working towards launching a woolen goods company since 2020. This past December, her brand, Bayl, launched its first batch of heirloom-quality, utilitarian, gorgeous wool products.

“The products are designed to be worn by rural folks and farmers, but also for people who are interested in slow, ethical fashion,” says Trople. 

Trople first became involved with fiber processing in 2019, when she and several other small producers from Minnesota and Wisconsin pooled their fiber to have it processed and made into socks to be sold at a fiber tour event. This gave Trople an opportunity to see what fiber processing looks like, and it felt like something she wanted to pursue. From then until the recent launch, Trople has been working diligently on feasibility studies and business planning for processing and using their flock’s fiber.

Trople has worked to incorporate traceability and sustainability into the business model, closely working with the few remaining domestic wool processors and using only natural dyes for Bayl’s garments. She is active in her involvement and understanding of the whole process, from shearing to processing, to garment making, labeling, and packaging. Each stage of the process is slow and thoughtful. 

“I think it comes back to integrity,” says Trople. “There’s a lot out there that’s being marketed as ethical and sustainable. It’s important to me as somebody who’s producing the fiber—the first step—that the integrity follows through with every part of the process.”

Visit Bayl online at shopbayl.com.

Eva McMillan ’24 is a third-year student at College of the Atlantic. She wrote this article as part of an independent study in nonfiction writing in fall 2022.