PORKtober Feature: Tork and Sawyer, This'll Do Farm

An operation that has stood the test of time, pivoting and leveraging resources along the way, “This’ll Do Farm” operated by father-son duo, Tork and Sawyer, has a story worth sharing.

With a social media following of over 250,000 followers across all major platforms, This’ll Do Farm is pulling the curtains on their wean-to-finish operation to show others exactly what pig farmers do.

This six-generation family farm, located in southeast Iowa, began around 1853 with swine production as a part of the family farm from the start. Over the years, the family operation has seen many changes in production practices. While sows were farrowed in the barn and pigs finished in dirt lots, Tork’s father, Lawrence, born in 1919, remembered herding hogs down the dirt roads to the stockyard in Washington, Iowa to be loaded on rail cars bound for Chicago.

After returning from World War II and law school in 1949, Lawrence built the farrowing and gestation barn where the current “Barn Talk” podcast is filmed and recorded. In 1971, the first finisher barn was built, adding gestation, farrowing and nursery barns four years later.

Operating a farrow-to-finish operation through the 1980s and into the 1990’s brought economic challenges, as the era did for many hog producers across the U.S. The family made the hard decision to sell the sows and convert the existing barns for contract finishing.

“By the mid 2000s, both my parents and our converted finishers were getting older and there was a lot of uncertainty as to whether hog production and possibly farming would continue to another generation,” Tork says.

Not long after, the tides changed, as contract finishing was booming and Tork’s off-farm job led him to build his first wean-to-finish barn in 2010. Then, after graduating high school in 2018, Sawyer decided to join the farm full-time, alongside Tork, and built his first finisher barn in 2020.

The farm currently operates four-2,400 head wean-to-finish barns, custom finishing around 20,000 pigs each year for Eichelberger Farms from Wayland, Iowa. Additionally, the farm operates 400 acres of crop ground.

A Rise in Social Media

While the history of the farm writes a story of its own, Sawyer serves as the driving force behind sharing the current story of the farm on social media. Noticing the lack of representation of hog farmers online, Sawyer was inspired to start filming videos of a day-to-day life on the farm.

When it comes to creating farm content, “Authenticity is what matters. Be yourself and don't try to fancy things up. What, like only 1% of us are farmers? What we do is interesting to people. The most average mundane chore you do is interesting to people that have never done it,” Tork encourages. “It's going to be a little craggy at first but as you get comfortable, it will get better and easier. Tell your story but show it also. Showing is the most powerful in today's short attention span world.”

Though the father-son duo has a large social following, Tork claims, “The biggest challenge has been, is right now and will forever be, keeping this family farm viable for another generation.”

This’ll Do Farm's story can be found on all the major social media platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and the farm’s “Barn Talk” podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Anchor, as well as the video podcast on Youtube.

Thanks, Tork and Sawyer, for sharing your authentic, everyday story of pork production with consumers and viewers across the globe!