Most Americans know little about where their food comes from and even less about the lives of the farming families who plant, water, feed, herd, harvest and deliver that food to market. "Five Farms: Stories From American Farm Families" confronts that information gap head on.

This remarkable series of five one-hour documentaries uses compelling first-person storytelling to personalize the lives and work of five farm families, one each in New England, the South (a North Carolina farm), the Midwest, the Southwest and West Coast. By tracking these families for a full year-long cycle of the seasons, "Five Farms" documents what the American farmer does to help feed a hungry nation, and reveals the vital role farmers play as caretakers and conservationists of the lands and resources they use. "Five Farms" helps listeners make the critical connection between the food on their tables and the families who work to produce it. 

The North Carolina Connection: Eddie and Dorothy Wise

Eddie and Dorothy Wise raise hogs on 106 acres near Whitakers, in east-central North Carolina. Eddie is a fourth-generation hog farmer but the first to own a farm; his father and grandfather were sharecroppers. During a career in the military, and as an ROTC instructor at Howard and Georgetown Universities, Eddie raised hogs in his spare time. It was his dream to return home to North Carolina and farm full-time. When he retired from the Army in 1991 at the age of 48, that's what he set out to do. Dorothy Wise grew up in Washington, D.C., but she too hoped to one day live on a farm. When she and Eddie met at Howard University in the 1980s and she discovered he was a farmer, it seemed that her wish had come true.

Still, it took the Wises five years, until 1996, to secure the loans they needed to buy their farm. They were repeatedly turned down by local government loan officers who, the Wises are convinced, did not want African American farmers to succeed. It was only through determined effort and much research and legwork that the Wises were able to receive the financial help for which they qualified.

Today the Wises have 250 hogs, which they raise from birth and sell to a black-owned pork processor in their area. Eddie's lean pork, raised without hormones or antibiotics, is sold at a premium in area supermarkets. Finding such a market niche is the only way the Wises can compete with the much-larger farms that mass-produce hogs for the large meatpacking companies.

The Wises are featured throughout the series.

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