From the top of one of the ridges that surround the tiny community of Vilas, six miles west of Boone, the Shipley farm, far below on the valley floor, looks like a child’s toy farm. Classic red barn and silo, red outbuildings that used to hold things like a springhouse and a hen house, and a brick farmhouse that used to hold the Shipley family. From up there, the cattle roaming the pastures below look like brown-and-white Fisher-Price figurines.

Neighbor and former North Carolina poet laureate Joseph Bathanti dubbed this patch of Vilas “its sane, unspeakably beautiful valley,” and the late Robert and Agnes Shipley, who lived there for more than 70 years, “the first couple of agriculture in the High Country.”

Nathan Shipley’s son introduced cattle, and his 21st-century kin reintroduced them, but some things have remained the same: blue skies, red barns, and those verdant green hillsides. photograph by Chris Council

For a place that looks like a 1950s farm play set, though, the Shipley farm is doing something very modern. Inspired by an idea that Robert “R.G.” Shipley Sr. came up with when he was 101 years old, the farm today is Shipley Beef, where R.G.’s son, Bob Jr., and his grandson, Gray, are using their bucolic piece of land to get their beef on restaurant menus and dinner plates across the state.

“Granddad didn’t leave us with a business,” says Gray, 47. “He left us a heritage. We’ve started a 150-year-old business.”

Gray’s father, Bob, 77, left his home in Raleigh several years ago to make a go of it on the family farm. “We’re ordinary people living in an extraordinary place,” he says.

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R.G. and Agnes weren’t the beginning of the Shipley Farms story. For that, you have to go back to 1872 and Nathan Shipley, the first Shipley on this land. The farm itself is even older: The oldest part of that red barn is believed to date to 1860. When Nathan Shipley married Sarah Bradley, the daughter of the owners of the biggest farm in Vilas, they bought 115 acres of steep hills and green pasture from her family, stretching across the valley from ridgeline to ridgeline.

In about 1897, their son William Edwin “W.E.” Shipley went to Virginia and bought a registered Hereford bull. He then walked it back behind his wagon through the rough mountains to the farm near Boone. The new addition to the Shipley herd was the first of its kind in North Carolina.

Over the years, W.E. Shipley and his brother, Huston, got a reputation for knowing cattle. By the 1920s, Huston Shipley owned the farm, while W.E. and his family, including son R.G., lived in Valle Crucis, a few miles away. In the summer, R.G. would ride over the ridges on a pony to work for his uncle.

In 1929, R.G. was 17 and paying his way through Virginia Polytechnic Institute by milking cows when Huston died and left him the farm, with the stipulation that he pay his six brothers and sisters for their shares. R.G. finished school trekking back and forth from Blacksburg, Virginia, to the farm that he would own for the next 86 years.

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Huston Shipley was smart to not let the farm get divided up.

“Uncle Hus made a decision that enables us to do this today,” Bob says. “Being able to keep something together isn’t easy.”

In addition to running his farm, R.G. also became an agriculture teacher at Cove Creek High School — now Watauga High School — where he taught future generations of farmers until he was 70. Agnes was a teacher herself, giving lessons on practical home skills like canning and baking.

Father and son Bob and Gray Shipley (pictured with Nellie the dog) are the fourth and fifth generations, respectively, to run Shipley Farm. photograph by Chris Council

In October 2013, Agnes died at 96. R.G. was 101 and starting to slow down. He agreed to leave the farm, sell the cattle, and move in with Bob and his wife, Ginny, in Raleigh.

Even though R.G.’s grandson, Gray, grew up visiting the family land, his life had gone in a different direction from farming. He went to the University of Alabama for a degree in engineering, but he didn’t love the work.

The Christmas after his grandmother died, Gray picked up his grandfather at the farm to take him to Raleigh to live. As they drove, Gray asked R.G., “What would you like to happen to the farm?”

“I’ve been thinking about getting back in the cattle business,” R.G. replied.

When they got to Raleigh, Gray told his father what his grandfather had said. Is it possible? Could the Shipleys use R.G.’s knowledge of raising cattle to get back in the livestock business?

More than a century ago, W.E. Shipley (far left) established the family’s reputation as cattle farmers, raising Herefords. Today, Bob and Gray continue the Shipley cattle tradition with a Hereford/Angus crossbreed. photograph by Chris Council; Historical Photo Courtesy of Shipley Farms Beef

Gray believes that if you have land, you should build something or grow something, as the Shipleys had done for the past 153 years. “Even if we try and fail,” Gray says, “I get to be a partner with my dad and granddad.”

By the summer of 2014, the idea was taking shape. Bob took his father to North Wilkesboro to buy their first 6-month-old Hereford/Angus calves. The Hereford line that W.E. brought 120 years ago was long gone. Today, Angus cattle are prized for better marbling and faster growth, but Herefords have better temperaments, so a cross brings the best of both.

Raising 1,300-pound steers isn’t as simple as just sticking them in a pasture and letting them eat. In the winter, the Shipleys move their cattle out of the mountains to farms at lower elevations, to find more grass and save the calories they would use to stay warm. “It’s the best place in the world to be a cow here in summer,” Gray says. “In winter, not so much.”

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R.G. was there for the first two years. They even have a photo of him eating the first steak they produced. At 103, R.G. Shipley died on August 14, 2015.

The father and son now divide responsibilities: Bob handles the livestock, and Gray runs the food division. They sell directly to the public at their farm store and through mail order, but they learned early on to focus on restaurants. They work regularly with chefs from Asheville to Wilmington, and hold events on the farm, like the Good Fields Appalachian Food & Farms Festival in June. They’ve even added a “glamping tent,” called Valley View on Linville Creek, on the ridge above the farm, for people who want to experience a cattle farm up close — but not too close.

From the deck of the tent, Shipley Beef may look like a tiny toy farm down below, but with more than 150 years of legacy to build on, the Shipleys are just getting started.

Shipley Beef
1699 Linville Creek Road
Vilas, NC 28692
(828) 484-1872
shipleyfarmsbeef.com