Jill Johnson and Mary Wills raise Animal Welfare Approved hogs and laying hens on Crane Dance Farm in Middleville, MI. Named for the Sandhill Cranes that make the farm their home each spring, Crane Dance Farm is nestled among the rolling hills, beautiful woods, and wetlands of Barry County.

Kelley and Mark Escobedo of South Texas Heritage Pork raise hogs on 120 acres in South Texas. They began raising pigs in 2008 with the desire to provide better food for their family. Kelley and Mark purchased a pig that produced some of the best pork they had ever tasted and provided the peace of mind of knowing exactly what they were eating because they had complete control over what their animals were fed.

Jack Ward’s farm has been in his family since the late 1800s. Like his farmer father before him, Jack raises pastured Yorkshire, Hampshire and Berkshire pigs, as well as row crops on 350 acres in Seven Springs, North Carolina.

Christine Abbey and her husband, Jamie DeRuyter, left Orlando in 2003 in search of more open space. They settled in Arcadia, a town with a population just over 6,600, where one thing led to another and they ended up establishing Sprawling Oaks Farm. Now the farm is home to Saanen, Lamancha and Guernsey dairy goats and Buff Orpington, Rhode Island Red, Black Copper Maran and Ameraucana laying hens.

Rufus and Alice Percy raise Animal Welfare Approved pigs at Treble Ridge Farm in Whitefield, ME. Both Rufus and Alice are second-generation farmers from Whitefield. Rufus’s father had a 20-sow farrow-to-finish hog operation, and Alice’s parents had a small pasture-based goat dairy. They both moved away to try other things in their late teens, but soon returned home. They raised their first two pigs together in 2003 and in 2005 they became certified organic and raised their first litter for sale.

Madroño Ranch: A Center for Writing, Art, and the Environment in Medina, Texas is both a ranch with Animal Welfare Approved bison and laying hens and a residency for environmental artists and writers. Martin Kohout and Heather Catto Kohout decided in 2005 that raising bison in a high-welfare system was the best use of the 1,500 acres their family had owned for almost 20 years in Texas Hill Country.

Ken Barefield raises Animal Welfare Approved purebred Hereford hogs at Hog Heaven Farms, LLC in Avon Park, Florida. From a young age Ken remembers helping his father raise chickens and other livestock and growing fruits and vegetables. As an adult, Ken returned to his roots, raising various livestock on his 15 acre family farm since 2008. Presently, Ken only raises pigs, which he breeds and weans for other AWA-certified hog farms.

Christopher McPherson raises Animal Welfare Approved beef cattle in Siler City, North Carolina. Mac Farm cattle are raised with the highest animal welfare standards in the United States, using sustainable agriculture methods on his independent family farm. Animal Welfare Approved farmers raise their animals outdoors on pasture or range their entire lives. All approved practices can be found on the AWA website, making it one of the most transparent certifications available.

When she was 10, while most children are asking their parents for allowance money and believe that eggs come from the grocery store, Shelby Grebenc was soliciting her grandmother for a loan of $1000 to start her own pasture-raised egg business. Shelby and her parents live on four acres in Broomfield, Colorado, 20 miles outside of Denver. She began caring for laying hens when she was just 6-years old. “Dad was trying to teach me to be an adult,” she says, so he gave her chores—watering, feeding, and letting out the family’s small flock of chickens. In the summer, she loved it. When it was 20oF during Colorado’s winters, she hated it, but that didn’t keep her from learning everything involved in raising hens on pasture and starting her own business selling eggs to help expand the family’s income when her mother, Nancy, who has multiple sclerosis, was in a nursing home.

Many years after swearing off the farm life when she left the family farm for college, and following a career as a nurse, Joyce Keibler and her husband Gary chose to spend their “retirement” as sheep farmers. In 2005 they bought Hemmer Hill Farm outside of Louisville, Kentucky’s Northeast End and began raising Saint Croix sheep. While Joyce’s family had experience with both beef cattle and wool sheep, she preferred the smaller size of sheep. After attending a free class at the University of Kentucky which introduced her to different sheep breeds, she decided on the Saint Croix, a small meat breed with hair rather than wool, known for its resistance to the parasite problems that often plague other breeds.