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N.C. Public Radio/WUNC to broadcast 'Five Farms'

Five-part documentary series co-produced by Duke's Center for Documentary Studies

A new five-part documentary series, "Five Farms: Stories from American Farm Families," co-produced by the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University, will be broadcast on North Carolina Public Radio/WUNC (91.5 FM in the Triangle region).

The series will air from July 6-10 at noon each day, with rebroadcasts at 9 p.m. The series, co-produced by Wesley Horner Productions, will also be available online at http://wunc.org.

Airing in place of WUNC's "The State of Things" for that week, the series features North Carolina hog farmers Eddie and Dorothy Wise, among four other farming families from other states. The Wises, who keep a herd of 250 hogs on 106 acres in Nash County, are among the nations 20,000 remaining black farm families. A coalition of public radio stations and independent producers in agriculturally rich regions across the country collaborated with CDS to produce this new series of documentaries about the lives and work of farming families. "Five Farms" collected stories from families in North Carolina, Massachusetts, Iowa, Arizona, and California.

The recording of farm families' stories occurred over a year-long cycle of the seasons. Some 150 hours of recordings were sent to CDS, where series producer John Biewen assembled them into five one-hour programs, titled "Planting," "Nurturing," "Stewardship," "Harvest," and "Succession." "Five Farms" is also an ambitious multimedia project. CDS director Tom Rankin led a team of photographers who visited each of the farms multiple times during the course of the year. The resulting photographs can be viewed on the project website -- www.fivefarms.org -- and in a multimedia exhibition on display at the Center for Documentary Studies until Aug. 21. "Most Americans know little about where their food comes from and even less about the lives of the people -- farming families -- who plant it, water it, feed it, pull it out of the ground or herd it, and deliver it to market," said Wesley Horner, the Massachusetts-based executive producer and series creator. "When we slice a tomato or open a box of frozen spinach, peel an orange at breakfast, order a BLT from the lunch counter around the corner from the office, or select a package of pork chops for a holiday dinner, our lives become linked to farming people who may live thousands of miles away."

Collaborators on "Five Farms" include WFCR Amherst, Mass.; Iowa Public Radio; Native Public Media/KUYI Hopi, Keams Canyon, Ariz.; and Capital Public Radio, Sacramento, Calif.

For more information, visit: _ Center for Documentary Studies -- http://cds.aas.duke.edu _ "Five Farms: Stories from American Farm Families" -- www.fivefarms.org _ North Carolina Public Radio/WUNC -- http://wunc.org _ "Five Farms" on WUNC -- http://wunc.org/programs/tsot/5-farms/5-farms-documentary-special