Navajo Farmer Discovers Benefits of Wool Pellets By Shear Luck

It is somewhat of a Navajo taboo to laugh while planting, be it a backyard garden or rows of crops across a field. If you do, your harvest could be negatively affected. You might pull a cracked watermelon from the vine or experience some other harvest mishap.

It’s what Jarvisson King has heard anyway.

Jarvisson understands the old adage, and as someone who is moved by planting and growing a bountiful garden, he gives that superstition the space it deserves. But the story of his farming operation, Laughing Goat Gardens, has comedy baked into it.

It’s almost as if the adage dares him not to let out one or two incredulous chuckles when he thinks about how his operation has evolved in recent years. And he can, just not while he’s planting.

He can save any giggles that bubble up for his sheep.

Putting Down Roots

Home for Jarvisson is in Sanders, a small town just northeast of Petrified Forest National Park, not far from the New Mexico border, in the Navajo Nation. After bouncing around the Phoenix area for some time, Jarvisson settled in Sanders, where the bulk of his extended family lives, about a decade ago.

And when he did, he started dreaming of a business.

He had reached a point in his life where he was becoming more particular, and more concerned with, the type of food he was eating. He wanted to make healthy choices, but found that the nearest grocery store was about an hour away — in any direction.

Growing what he wanted to eat would be his best option. He picked up a handbook for small-scale organic gardening and used it as a guide that allowed him to grow vegetables and grow his garden to a point that he could sell some of his harvest.

He’d harvest, wash and bag salads for teachers at the local school. And he’d visit the farmers markets to offload items his family wasn’t able to use.

His hobby garden beautifully complemented the pasture-raised livestock Jarvisson’s brother managed on the family’s land. Sheep, goats, cattle and chickens spend their days grazing largely on native vegetation. Without irrigation, it’s challenging to grow anything other than native vegetation in the pasture, but Jarvisson’s interest in regenerative agriculture prompted him to seed the pasture and utilize cover crops.

By seeding the pasture, and getting his hands into the dirt in his garden, he made a discovery.

His soil is sandy. And it lacked a host of nutrients. It can be difficult to work with, and without amendments, offers a challenging landscape to grow and harvest an edible garden.

Soil testing revealed the ground had been depleted of micronutrients, specifically nitrogen, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, zinc and boron. So he went in search of solutions, not knowing the answer he was looking for was already making a snack out of his pasture.

Shear Luck

A year after taking a sheep shearing workshop in New Mexico in 2021, the sheep on Jarvisson’s farm had wandered into a burr patch. Whatever wool they would shear from the sheep that season would be a total loss, he thought. But someone had mentioned wool pellets to him, offhand, as a use for otherwise unusable wool.

Pellets are made from shredded and processed wool and they act as a soil amendment that aerates and adds moisture to the soil. In fact, the pellets contained the exact micronutrients Jarvisson was missing in his soil.

He found a processor and branded his pellets with his farm’s name, Laughing Goat Gardens. Jarvisson used them in his garden and began selling them at farmers markets and online. And they went.

In 2024, he ran out of his initial batch. And his own soil was healthier.

Moving forward, he plans to work with other Navajo shepherds to procure additional wool and grow both his operation and theirs. And he has his sights set on the goal of beginning to process the wool on his own farm, further expanding the products and services offered there.

“As a farmer, rancher, gardener, you have to think way outside the box,” he said. “It’s the only way you can grow. And the only way you can differentiate yourself.”

Thinking outside the box is encouraged. Laughing inside the garden box is, potentially, risky. But it’s a chance that Jarvisson King is willing to take.

To learn more about Laughing Goat Gardens, or to purchase wool pellets, click here.

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Alyssa Crijns