Shared land and labour

Collective farming: Logan Halley-Winsett (left) and Leah Wilks cut a length of wire fencing for a goat pen at Okfuskee Farms in Siler City, North Carolina, United States. The pair are part of a group of friends who came together to help build a small barn for goats on the farm.

A new kind of exchange is taking place on farms.

EMILY Anderson and Kellie Ann Grubbs had an unusual housewarming on Easter Sunday in March. Instead of bringing gifts, the women’s dozen guests hauled scavenged pallets and boards to the edge of a muddy field, where they built a barn for goats alongside the lumbering hogs and pecking chickens of Okfuskee Farm in Silk Hope, North Carolina.