For Endswell Funeral Home and Joe Van Gogh Coffee Roastery, kudzu is an invasive plant that recently overwhelmed both Hillsborough properties. But for a local herd of goats, it’s a high-protein snack.
Only last week, the kudzu entirely covered about an acre of land sitting between the two businesses. The funeral home’s founder and owner Hunter Beattie said the vine’s apocalyptic growth even extended into vehicles in the parking lot.
“You should have seen it,” Beattie said. “It was verdant. It was bright and green. It was Jumanji.”
Endswell Funeral Home’s view of Joe Van Gogh in Hillsborough, at the height of the kudzu. (Photo via Hunter Beattie.)
The near-cleared ravine one week after the arrival of the Goats On The Go herd. (Photo via Hunter Beattie.)
Because Endswell is North Carolina’s first eco-friendly funeral home, offering sustainable funeral services, Beattie said he did not want to use toxic herbicides to weaken the plant. When researching alternatives, he found Goats On The Go Raleigh-Durham: a local herd that would eat away the unwanted vine.
“I messaged [the operator], he came out, and he gave me an estimate that was actually lower than it was for humans to deal with the kudzu,” Beattie explained. “And supposedly, the goats would do a more thorough job because I think the majority of the kudzu seeds don’t survive the four chamber stomach of the goat’s digestive system.”
And when three dozen goats arrived at Endswell on August 14, Beattie said they were hungry for the vine.
“[The goats] went to work immediately,” Beattie said. “They’ve all got interesting personalities, and it’s really funny to see them stand up and get to some little piece of a leaf that’s higher up in the tree than they should even be attempting to eat.”
In just a week, the herd cleared nearly the entire ravine dividing the funeral home and the coffee shop. And while chomping away at the kudzu, they were also going viral on social media.
Set to a Dolly Parton classic, a video on Joe Van Gogh’s Instagram shows the 35 goats arriving at the site. And it now has more than eight million views and counting.
“It was just the perfect song choice,” Beattie said. “You know, Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” ‘stumble out the kitchen,’ and you see the goats just stumbling out of the trailer, kind of falling over each other to get to the thicket of kudzu.”
The video stands out from the roastery’s usual coffee-focused content, and Marketing Manager Emilie Burgess said it has been an unusual experience watching its like-count skyrocket. As a result of the post, she said the account has also more than doubled its Instagram following.
“It was kind of crazy because I put this reel together pretty quickly because I was about to go on vacation,” Burgess said. “So, I came out here, I was out here for ten minutes, and I took a bunch of video, and then I went home and put it together real quick.”
Just like in those in song, the life of an employed goat is a busy one. Operator for Goats On The Go Raleigh-Durham Stephen Paul said the herd will move on to their next project once wrapping up at the Hillsborough location.
“They are constantly working,” Paul said. “We have home bases around Pittsborough, and our goats almost never go to home base once grazing season starts around April. They’re just going from project to project because we’re just so booked up.”
Paul said about ten goats will return to the ravine in the spring to continue weakening the plant, with a final round the next year. Then, other plants can take root and outcompete the invasive vine.
Beattie said the goats have almost felt like therapy animals to the funeral home’s clients.
According to Paul, goats are a more sustainable and effective means of removing kudzu.
The operator said using goats for kudzu remediation is a method only starting to become popular in North Carolina. While there are 80 goat-grazing affiliates nationwide, the Triangle branch is currently the state’s only Goats On The Go service. But Beattie said it fit perfectly into the funeral home’s unique focus on sustainability.
“This is not a very environmentally-friendly industry,” Beattie explained. “Cremation has a carbon footprint, plus all the toxic and carcinogenic acids emitted during the process. And then conventional burial methods, the non-biodegradable caskets, the concrete vault, taking up land in the middle of town.”
Because of the viral video, Beattie said new clients wanting earth-friendly alternatives have reached out to Endswell for its aquamation and green burial services. He also highlighted Endswell’s upcoming solar grant, where he said a solar array will offset most of Endswell’s electrical usage.
And the goats have almost acted like “therapy animals” too, he added.
“We’ve had some overlap with the goats and our clients, and that has been a very positive experience,” Beattie said. “I think it’s daunting to come to a funeral home. It’s a very emotional experience. But instead, you see 35 goats chewing on kudzu. It’s very disarming, and people have found it to be a sweet experience.”
Joe Van Gogh’s Marketing Director Rick Quinn said he is unsure whether the post will translate to more people coming into the coffee shop, stating how some of the new followers may not even live in North Carolina. But like the funeral home, he said its bringing welcomed attention to the brand’s values.
“The building we’re standing right next to has solar panels on the roof,” Quinn said. “Which is pretty unusual for a coffee roastery. We have had compostable products in our cafes for a really long time. More so than driving people to buy a latte or another cup of coffee, I think the whole reason why we got behind this and the reason why I think it’s really cool that we’re getting a lot of views and attention for it is that it highlights that focus on sustainability for the company at large.”
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