In this inspiring pig-filled video, we visit Wild Harmony Farm in Exeter, Rhode Island, a family farm that sells organic pork, grass-fed beef and pastured poultry. Owners Rachael Slattery and Ben Coerper use regenerative agriculture techniques, which help restore soil health and reduce the impacts of climate change. Their motto is “Healthy Land. Healthy Animals. Healthy People,” and they pledge that animals are treated humanely. “Our pig production is really special,” Rachael says. “They love to chew on the hay, root around in the dirt. They have access to clean water.” It’s sharply different from how most food in the U.S. is produced today, on industrial-scale farms. Wild Harmony Farm hopes to share its methods, like cover cropping and rotational grazing — all of which keeps carbon in the ground, rather than releasing it to the atmosphere — with other small farms who want to practice regenerative farming.
PIX: Two farmers, Rachael and Ben, survey their property and its surrounding forest. In a lush field, Rachael tugs a handful of bright, healthy green grass.
Rachael v/o: My generation of farmers, we're inheriting tired land. We're inheriting land that has been overgrazed, abused, for generations. It's now my generation's job to restore that land, to bring it back to health, to bring it back to a vibrant ecosystem.
TITLE: Healing the Land
PIX: In a lush green field, Rachael pets a group of fully grown black pigs who are out to graze.
L/T: Rachael Slattery
Rachael: We see our animals as a big piece of this regeneration, this regenerative way of growing food.
PIX: The black pigs relax in a large, openair barn. Ben brings a bowl of feed to a mother nursing piglets. As piglets play, Ben and Rachael replace hay and clean the barn.
TEXT: Wild Harmony Farm, Rhode Island - April 2023
Rachael v/o: Our pig production is really special. Our pigs do start the year in an open air covered structure with lots of hay in the bottom, which actually kind of becomes like a heated floor for them in the winter.
PIX: Ben is interviewed in front of the openair barn.
L/T: Ben Coerper
Ben: What we have are Berkshire pigs, which is a heritage breed that we settled on at the request of chefs, actually, because they tend to marble a little bit better than some of the conventional breeds.
PIX: As their mother naps in hay, a group of piglets nurse.
Ben v/o: They started giving birth about three weeks ago. The newest ones that we have right now are about five days old.
PIX: In the openair barn, mother pigs comfortably nurse their piglets together as Ben does chores around them.
Ben v/o: They're probably born at two pounds and they stay with their moms for two months.
PIX: Rachael and Ben are interviewed in front of the openair barn.
Rachael: They just thrive in this situation. They love to chew on the hay.
PIX: Groups of piglets happily chew hay in the sun.
Rachael v/o: They like to root around in the dirt. They have access to clean water, frost-free water the whole time they're in here.
PIX: In a childhood photo, Rachael feeds a cow from a bottle.
TEXT: Rachael grew up in Alabama in a family that has farmed for generations.
Rachael: The way that my grandfather farmed is very, very different than the way we farm.
PIX: A biplane from the 1950s drops white dust–DDT–on the ground.
Rachael v/o: When my grandfather was a child, they would tell stories of going out into the field and coming back just covered in white dust, which of course was DDT.
PIX: In a family photo, Rachael’s grandparents stand before their farm.
Rachael v/o: All of my great uncles and grandfather passed away of different, various types of cancer.
PIX: A group of long, rectangular warehouses replace what should be barns, in an aerial view of an industrial farm.
TEXT: Most food in America today is produced on industrial-scale farms.
PIX: Inside these warehouses, pigs and cows are crowded into tight, dirty spaces.
TEXT: They rely on fertilizers and pesticides to increase yields.
PIX: A pig nurses her piglets through a cage.
TEXT: Animals spend their lives in warehouses.
PIX: Chickens are stuffed wall-to-wall in a miserable warehouse barn.
Rachael v/o: I still don’t think there’s an excuse to have chickens or pigs, in a warehouse, shoulder-to-shoulder where they can’t move. I understand from a business standpoint that it would be more profitable to have these systems where the animals are more controlled.
PIX: A wall of cages holds multiple chickens per cage. The chickens have no room to move.
Rachael v/o: Their environment is controlled and predictable and flat.
PIX: Rachael and Ben walk along their lush, spacious fields; their dog relaxes by one of their barns.
TEXT: In 2012 Rachael and Ben rented 40 acres of land and started Wild Harmony Farm.
PIX: Flowers bloom around the farm. Rachael approaches a hill of healthy soil and examines its quality in her hand.
Rachael v/o: We are trying to farm in harmony with the wild. Regenerative agriculture starts with the soil. So starting with soil life, soil health.
PIX: Rachael and Ben are interviewed in front of one of their vast fields. Ben examines a field of bright green grass.
Ben: Grazing grass and then giving it a break so that it can grow back really well, that’s the process that sequesters the most carbon, that builds the soil the fastest.
PIX: A herd of brown cows leisurely stroll along the forest lines. They enjoy a snack of hay.
Ben v/o: If we can keep the grass healthy,, we know the animals are healthy because they're eating healthy food.
PIX: The piglets from April are now grown into large, healthy pigs. They freely walk around the property, drink water and nap together in the mud.
TEXT: September 2023
Ben v/o: It's about six months to get them from two pounds to here.
Rachael v/o: We find ways to use the animals’ natural tendencies to benefit the land.
PIX: Rachael and Ben join a group of pigs grazing in a bright, lush green field.
Rachael v/o: Pigs dig up and turn up soil. They're really good at that rooting, that digging. But when they do that on land, that doesn't have an opportunity to recover or have grass or forage regrow, it just causes bare soil.
Rachael: What we found with pigs is we need to move them. We need to move them often.
PIX: Pigs freely graze the large field of lush grass.
Rachael v/o: Each week the pigs are moved to a brand new area of forage where they go in, they have lush, tall cover crop that we’ve planted for them.
PIX: In a different area of the farm, pigs root around rich brown earth as Ben supervises.
Ben: We throw the seed out there and they bury it and we systematically move the pigs, seed it, work them around in a whole circle.
PIX: Pigs walk in a maze of tall grass.
Ben v/o: So by the time they get back to the first place, the cover crops can be two feet tall, four feet tall. It's lush, it's fully recovered. It's absorbed all the nutrients that the pigs left there the time before. And it's ready for another grazing.
PIX: A group of fully grown pigs nap in the shade of a large tent structure as Rachael and Ben watch.
Sue v/o: They're good-looking pigs. Do they do anything besides eat and sleep all day long?
Ben: That's about it.
PIX: Pigs play in the mud and snack as Ben checks their food dispenser.
Ben v/o: They graze on the forages that we’re planting for them, they eat the grain that we supply for them, they sleep a lot, and then they leave their offering for us.
Rachael v/o: I know that happy is a funny word sometimes to use with livestock. But happy by, I mean, they're not stressed, they're not hungry all the time. They're healthier, happier animals.
PIX: Rachael and Ben observe the pigs in one of their many openair feeding areas, where pigs can eat when they want. One pig opens the feeding slot with his snout and eats.
TEXT: The pigs provide 40% of the farm’s income, and beef, almost 30%.
TEXT: They sell to restaurants and shops, and through a local farm program.
Ben: We use a local slaughterhouse in Westport Massachusetts. We're already taking the bigger ones. Every week we take a trailer load.
PIX: Pigs frolic in a field of tall grass.
Ben v/o: We just started this week, and we’ll take a group every week for six weeks.
PIX: As Ben kneels in a grassy field, a group of pigs approach him to be pet.
Rachael v/o: We are constantly trying to roll with nature and then trying to fit into the rigid business world of scheduling and bills and payments.
Rachael: But with climate change, we don't know what typical really is anymore.
PIX: Rachael and Ben walk through a large, forest-y area, their silvopasture.
Ben v/o: Rather than taking out an insurance policy that'll pay us when there's drought, we've built: an insurance policy here by thinning out the trees. About half of the pasture space that we have now is partially shaded and just grows right through the droughts. And in here with the partial shade will stay green and growing right through the summer.
PIX: Along the road, a handmade sign leads visitors to Wild Harmony Farm. Back at the farm, Ben and Rachael do chores like stringing fence wire and rolling hay.
Rachael v/o: We are working very hard to become a profitable business. In the beginning, it wasn't about profit. As we are getting older and have a child now and learning, "You do need money to exist in the world and to have a comfortable life."
PIX: Flowers bloom around the farm.
TEXT: Regenerative farms are often less profitable than conventional ones, which benefit from economies of scale and government subsidies.
Rachael v/o: I have to stay optimistic to keep doing what I’m doing.
Rachael: I do have hope that we as consumers will recognize that we can take control of our health, we can make changes to what's happening in our food system by changing what we buy and by changing what we eat.
PIX: As their pigs nap in the mud and enjoy one of their feeding areas, Rachael and Ben look on.
TEXT: Nationwide, only about 1.5 % of arable land is being farmed regeneratively.
Rachael: We want to be profitable, we want to be successful, but we don't want to be the only ones.
PIX: After taking care of the mother pigs and newborn piglets, Rachael and Ben climb out of the openair barn.
Rachael v/o: We want our competitors to thrive. For us, it's sharing what's worked, what hasn't. Part of our business mission is to create a replicable model so that regenerative agriculture is here to stay.
TEXT: Experts estimate that if half of U.S. farms were regenerative, carbon levels could be lowered to pre-Industrial Revolution levels.
PIX: With what seems to be a smile, a newborn piglet chews a piece of hay in the sunshine.