Acres of creeks, pastures, and woods make up Cane Creek where we’ve set about creating a special home for unique breeds of pigs, as well as our ever expanding family of goats, chickens, turkeys, sheep, donkeys and ducks. Our animals are rotated continuously through pastures and woods. This is an ethical way to raise livestock and minimizes our need to medicate them, which helps assure healthy animals. Healthy animals lead to healthy food for our customers, food which happens to have incredible flavor. This is why many area restaurants use our products. Come out to the farm and we’ll show you our bountiful gardens, playful animals, and our conservation easement along Wells Branch teeming with wildlife. Help support local and sustainable farms in the Piedmont and promote our local economy!
Cane Creek Farm is in Snow Camp, NC, in the heart of Alamance County. In addition to being home to the Ossabaw Island Hog, we also raise Gloucestershire Old Spots, Farmer’s Hybrids, and our very own Crossabaw breed – a mix of the Farmer’s Hybrids and Ossabaw Island Hogs. The rest of our lively animal population on the farm is comprised of a Noah’s Ark of breeds including a variety of Heirloom Breed Chickens and Saxony Ducks, Katahdin Sheep, Nigerian Dwarf Goats and Miniature Donkeys. Visitors to the farm are constantly amazed at the happy interaction of all our species, and many have compared Cane Creek to a storybook or child’s vision of a farm.
Our farming practices differ from those of our large scale counterparts in almost every way. Cane Creek is a family owned farm and practices sustainable agriculture - rotating crops and animals to keep the soil (incredibly) healthy and to keep the animals on fresh forage. Our animals are never kept in confinement and have free range to graze, root, and wallow. The pigs always have access to fresh water and are either hand-fed or have free access to grain-based food, supplemented with everything from garden clippings in the spring and summer to pumpkins and peanuts in the fall. Sheep, and goats are all entirely grass-fed, and our feed never has antibiotics or animal by-products. Cane Creek’s sows (that’s momma pigs, to you non-farmers) give birth as they would in the wild - by making a nest and raising their piglets without human interference.
Owner Eliza MacLean, along with a mighty and passionate staff keep this farm up and running. Read about Eliza below. Please visit our staff page to read about our fabulous employees.
Eliza MacLean
Deeply affected as a vet technician in her early teens, Eliza MacLean has always known her life would find her ever engaged with animals. A senior project in high school lead her to farming, as she worked side by side with a Amish family of 8 and was inspired by their love and commitment to each other and the land. It would take many years for her to return to farming, but she never lost her desire to live that holistic family lifestyle.
MacLean has had a long history with animals, from work rehabilitating seals and sea lions in Sausalito at the Marine Mammal Center to songbird/raptor and small mammal rehabilitation at a wildlife center in North Carolina. After graduating with a degree in Environmental Toxicology from Duke, MacLean studied fish and their relationship to detrimental environmental impact. She also cultivated a hobby farm at home for years before becoming a career farmer, with a herd of registered goats, heirloom chickens, and miniature donkeys.
After the birth of her twins in 2000, MacLean volunteered part-time with the ALBC in Pittsboro, NC. There she met Chuck Talbott, then the Swine Specialist at NC A & T University, who would become a friend and mentor. She decided to go back to work part-time, and Talbott hired her to manage his hog herds at the university. MacLean immediately fell in love with the pigs, and soon starting working full time in partnership with Niman Ranch, Heifer, A & T university and with the Gold Leaf Foundation – focusing on transitioning long time tobacco farmers across the state into family pig farms. After launching the program with Gold Leaf, Niman Ranch hired MacLean to be their representative, evaluating farms and meat quality for their fledgling North Carolina hog production.
In 2003, author and NY Times writer Peter Kaminsky contacted Talbott about finding someone to begin a herd of a rare breed of hog known as the Ossabaw Island Hog – a descendent of the Iberian hogs left by Spanish settlers off the coast of Georgia in the 1500’s. Talbott immediately suggested MacLean – she had the desire to begin her own farm, deeply rooted in her experiences as a youth, and an abundance of knowledge and enthusiasm about veterinary medicine, hog farming, and the conservation of rare breeds. Her herd of Ossabaw Island Hogs, Ossabaw Crosses, and Farmer’s Hybrid hogs has grown – hovering at 250, all free ranging on pasture land and grown without antibiotics or animal byproducts.
Eliza is now seen as a mentor and “go-to” person among other small-scale pasture farmers across the state and regularly serves on panels at Pastured Pork and Poultry conferences. She is the only farmer to continually provide fresh pork products at the venerable Carrboro Farmer’s Market; Eliza is known locally for providing a superior pork product to local restaurants, as well as respected venues in New York other Atlantic coast locations. MacLean is truly unique in the area and the nation, and has become a leader in the local hog farming community.
