This week’s farm inspection takes us to Bull City Farm.

Scott and Sam met while working together at a roadside zoo in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. They were both students at Virginia Tech at the time. Sam had plans on continuing that work and focusing on education and animal welfare, but when she learned more about the horrendous conditions animals were facing in the industrial meat industry, she decided to pivot to farming animals in a way where people could know the animals they were eating had been given loving, humane treatment during their time on the farm.

They moved back to North Carolina and started Bull City Farm in 1992. At first, they focused primarily on raising cows and hosting summer camps on the farm. Scott worked full-time at a nearby nursery while Sam focused on building the farm. They expanded to chickens, pigs, sheep, turkeys, and geese – some for meat, some as pets, and some as protectors from predators.

Scott eventually left the nursery and Sam began working for the Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT), where she is now the Humane Farming Program Director and works with farmers all over the country focusing on humane animal agriculture and the policies that influence their care.

Bull City and its 38 acres serve as a working example of what that looks like. Large chicken coops are built directly onto trailers, allowing the chickens to be constantly moved and rotated to new pasture while also giving them refuge from heat or predators. Pigs happily rotate between the shady hay beds of their pen and big mud baths in the summer sun. A flock of sheep wander in one field, while cattle slowly graze another. They even found a safe and natural way to protect their animals against insects by bringing in a colony of Purple Martin birds that continually fly around and pick off pesky flies mid air.

There is no way of getting around the fact that eating meat means an animal has given its life. But for Sam and Scott, making sure that animal has had a caring, enjoyable, humane environment is their ultimate goal. It’d be a lot cheaper and easier if they did it the conventional way, but for them, no amount of money is worth giving up their values