Slow & Steady Wins.
For over a century, this 47-acre patch of the North Carolina Sandhills gave everything it had to flue-cured tobacco.
Year after year, the mules, tractors, and fertilizers took what they needed, leaving behind pale, wind-scoured sand that had forgotten how to hold water.
In 2015, we stopped the cycle.
First go the eleven brush goats, gleefully working the rough margins like an slightly unruly demolition crew. They stretch up on hind legs to strip sweetgum branches, greenbrier, and blackberry canes that would choke out anything else. Behind them come fifty-four KuneKune pigs—our permanent soil engineers. With their short, pushed-in snouts, they don’t plow the dirt into a moonscape like traditional hogs; they graze the pasture grass low and clean, leaving the fragile fungal threads in the sand unbroken. As they move, dung beetles follow, burying rich manure inches below the surface before the afternoon sun can dry it out.
Healing ground like this doesn't come from a seed catalog or a bag of synthetic nitrogen. It comes from a slow, deliberate choreography of animals who know how to work with their heads down.
Darting between all those hooves is a roving crew of ducks and chickens, scratching apart deposits, hunting grasshoppers, and stitching quick bursts of nitrogen right into the turf.
None of it is fast. Sandhills dirt holds onto its memories, and rebuilding topsoil out of weathered quartz takes an stubborn kind of patience. But when you step back and watch the goats in the briars, the pigs grazing shoulder-to-shoulder, and the hens kicking up dust, you realize the land isn't being forced to produce. It is simply remembering how to live.
Back the Herd. Heal the Soil.
We're so grateful for the community that has built up around Slow Farm. Your enthusiasm for what we do – from our regenerative farming practices to our handcrafted goods – fuels our drive for this work. Every high five, hug, gift and purchase has helped us grow and continue our mission of nurturing the land and celebrating what sustainability can be.
Why Your Support Matters
Regenerative farming is not an abstract concept here—it takes physical effort and real resources. It means literal tons of clean grain, winter hay delivered by the tractor-load, miles of fencing, clean water lines, mineral supplements, and round-the-clock herd health care.
When you become a Slow Farm Patron, you aren’t donating to a vague cause. You are paying for the tangible fuel, grain, and fencing that keep this soil-building machine running.
The Slow Farmers:
Rachel Herrick
& Carl Dyke
Rachel Herrick
Rachel grew up on a diversified farm in central Maine, raising beef cattle, hogs, poultry, and apples. That childhood instilled an unvarnished work ethic and an instinct for living systems—tools that later fueled an exhibiting career as a visual artist, writer, and university educator.
In 2015, Rachel returned to agriculture with an artist’s eye for material integrity and a deep skepticism of industrial shortcuts. Since 2019, she has run Slow Farm as her full-time career.
If it lives, grows, or is built across these 47 acres, it runs through her hands: she manages the daily rotational grazing of 54 KuneKunes, brush goats, poultry, and guardian dogs; frames 90% of the farm’s physical infrastructure; steam-distills the botanical crops; compounds every waterless formula in the Slow Goods workshop; and hand-draws every label, print, and shirt.
For Rachel, farming, making, and teaching are simply different expressions of the same physical craft. That circuit comes full circle when she opens the farm to guests—whether leading quiet walking tours through the silvopasture or hosting small, hands-on studio workshops at the bench, teaching people how to read and live alongside land in recovery.
Carl Dyke
Carl Dyke is a history professor at Methodist University in Fayetteville, NC, where he brings a lifelong fascination with complexity systems to the classroom. Raised in rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with early roots in gardening, carpentry, and conservation, he balances his full-time teaching schedule with life on the land.
While Rachel runs the daily farming and apothecary operations, Carl serves as Slow Farm’s resident co-conspirator, sounding board, and infrastructure partner—bringing theoretical curiosity and practical hands to weekend timber builds, long-range planning, and heavy farm projects.