Jo Douglas '06

A Farming Career Launched on a Belmont Day Trip

“Had I not found The Farm School, had Belmont Day not taken me there, it would have taken me a little bit of time to figure out my path. It was very helpful.”

Jo Douglas ’06 Cares for Pigs, the Earth, and Her Community

Johanna “Jo” Douglas ’06 can still remember the moment when— as a Belmont Day School sixth grader—she found her future career. Jo recalls the comfort of being surrounded by middle school classmates in the Kiva and the pride of having a submission published in Lambs Gambol, a school literary magazine. But the piece of her Belmont Day experience that truly shaped her life was the overnight trip to The Farm School—then a sixth grade tradition. After traveling a bit more than an hour to Athol, Massachusetts, Jo and her classmates encountered a different world. They cared for cows and pigs, saw how produce was grown, and got an authentic window into agricultural life.

“While they are here, the students find value in real work, create a community that persists when they return to their classrooms, and experience firsthand what it means to be stewards of the earth. It’s simple, and it’s magical,” The Farm School’s website says.

It was magical, indeed, for Jo.

“You know what? I’m going to be a farmer. That’s what I want to be,” Jo recalls thinking. “I’d always loved being outside, working hard, and love animals, and everyone needs to eat. Here was an opportunity to work outside and care for animals.”

Today, Jo has turned that child’s dream into a reality, raising pigs on Martha’s Vineyard. But Jo has also taken it a step further, building Fork to Pork, a unique closed-circle system where she feeds her pigs leftover food scraps from local restaurants, which eventually get first dibs on buying her pork at the end of the season. Her work is a unique kind of philanthropy—in the true sense of the word—rooted in the core values that Belmont Day holds dear. Jo has built a model that gives back for the greater good. She treats her animals humanely and diverts food from landfills.

“As much as 40 percent of food is wasted in the U.S.,” Jo says. “As a farmer, I know how much energy, time, and work go into

producing food. So it’s unbelievable to think that we put in all this effort to create food, and almost half of it gets thrown out. I’m a big environmentalist, and that also came from Belmont Day.”

This journey started when Jo joined the Belmont Day School community as a fifth grader after attending public elementary school in her hometown of Belmont. But her BDS roots go back further. Jo’s mother, Kristen Harris ’69, and her three brothers grew up on Concord Avenue and attended Belmont Day.

After her aha moment in sixth grade, Jo returned to The Farm School for summer camp each year. As an eighth grader at Belmont Day, she knew her dream Capstone project would involve surrounding herself with farm animals, but she also knew that was unrealistic in her suburban environment. Instead, she seized on the next closest alternative, studying pets, specifically clicker training for positive reinforcement of dog behavior.

Her passion for farming only grew during four years of high school at Concord Academy, and Jo eventually became a counselor at The Farm School. “Had I not found The Farm School, had Belmont Day not taken me there, it would have taken me a little bit of time to figure out my path,” Jo says. “It was very helpful.”

She wanted to jump right into farming, but her parents asked her to attend college first, so she chose Green Mountain College in Vermont, where she studied sustainable agriculture and food production. “I loved it,” Jo remembers. “It was so great to take academic courses, be in the classroom with farming professors, and then visit various farms every week. They had a campus farm. I could look out of my dorm and see the animals there.” She is even featured in a day-in-the-life video for her college.

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“I wanted to produce food from animals raised humanely with respect for the earth and then supply my neighbors and community with healthy, delicious food I fully believe in.”

Jo initially pictured opening a dairy farm and spent her early career working with cows owned by others. But she also knew that a 365-day-a-year job with high up-front expenses might be a challenge and eventually shifted her focus to pigs. “I was trying to find an economic model that would work,” she says. “I wanted to produce food from animals raised humanely with respect for the earth and then supply my neighbors and community with healthy, delicious food I fully believe in.”

Along the way, she experimented with possible models. During a stint working on the farm and coaching lacrosse—a sport she began playing at Belmont Day—at Northfield Mount Hermon School, Jo saw what it looked like to feed pigs mostly leftover food scraps. What, she wondered, would it look like to gather pre-consumer leftovers from restaurants and feed pigs that exclusively?

In 2018, she spent a few months in charge of a pig farm and tried it out, developing partnerships with local chefs who gave their scraps to feed her animals.

By January 2019, Jo was ready to launch her own farm. She headed to Martha’s Vineyard, where she had long vacationed at her grandparents’ home. She pays a nominal rent for three acres of wooded property in Vineyard Haven for the pigs, near the island’s center. The area is owned by the Martha’s Vineyard land bank, which uses a small portion of real estate proceeds to preserve land that can create food for the people on the island.

The seasonal pattern looks like this: In April, Jo begins prepping her farm, setting up hoses to keep the animals hydrated and electric fencing to keep the pigs near. Although Jo is quick to say that they seem to have no interest in escaping: “They have everything there. They’re social creatures. I have 38 of them. They make pig piles. They sleep together. Then every

“They have everything there. They’re social creatures. I have 38 of them. They make pig piles. They sleep together. Then every day I bring them this delicious food. They’ve got everything that they want.”

day I bring them this delicious food. They’ve got everything that they want.”

Jo drives her Toyota Tundra and trailer to the mainland in May to pick up a season’s worth of weaned baby pigs. Her preferred breed is Idaho Pasture Pig. “They’re very smart and cute. They have great personalities and are very friendly,” she says. “Sometimes they are little talkative pigs, so people are always looking in the trailer on the ferry. Often, they’re just sleeping.”

Then, from May through September, the daily work includes driving to two dozen restaurants and other facilities to collect around 300 gallons of food waste. Most often, the scraps are the ends cut off during food prep or a batch of greens just a bit brown on the edges—great for the pigs, but not for restaurant guests. If not for Fork to Pork, most of this food waste would be bagged and shipped off the island to New Bedford, where the landfill incinerator is.

Jo’s pigs love avocados, tomatoes, lettuce, beet greens, carrot tops, grapes, papaya, and all types of melon. They also love scrambled eggs that she gets from a hospital kitchen and even dine on

leftover focaccia and pre-boiled pasta from the Vineyard’s trendiest restaurants.

Jo then tosses the food on the ground to excited grunts and snorts. “They hear my truck coming,” she says. “They get to practice their natural rooting behavior. They eat a bunch of food in about 20 minutes and then get food comas. So they take a few steps, and then fall over and sleep for an hour. They wake up and are hungry again.” They gain about a pound each day.

The final step comes late in the summer, when Jo loads the fully grown pigs back into the trailer, heading for a USDAinspected slaughterhouse in Rhode Island.

Jo is not surprised to get the question about how it is to eat the pigs she raised. She was a vegetarian for about a decade, starting when she was a Belmont Day student. She returned to eating meat in college when she saw up close what it meant to raise animals humanely. “It’s nice knowing that my animals have a great life and they only have one bad day, and for them, that day is their last day, but they live the best lives I can provide for them,” she says.

In 2023, her fifth season, Jo raised 38 pigs and three cows. Most of them make their way onto the menus at the very restaurants

“She’s made quite a name for herself on the island. I just can’t explain enough how great it is to have her in the community and how positive and hardworking she is. You can tell how much she cares about the program, how much she cares about the animals, and how much thought she’s put into it.”

that fed them their scraps. Christopher Stam, the chef at Alchemy Bistro & Bar in Edgartown, is one of the fans of Jo and her pigs. His New American menu, with influences from France, Italy, and the Mediterranean, is dotted with Fork to Pork offerings. Bacon is scattered on Brussels sprouts and on the roasted, boneless half chicken. The Fork to Pork Meatball is a popular starter featuring housemade marinara, whipped ricotta, basil, and that previously mentioned garlic focaccia. “I think this year I took nine or ten whole pigs,” Stam says. “You can tell the pigs had a healthy and happy upbringing. They have nice marbling to the meat and a nice big fat back layer.”

Stam’s staff even enjoyed a special treat—a Fork to Pork pig that won big at the island’s agricultural fair (Jo was the most decorated pig farmer on the island last year.) was at the center of a luau-style pig roast he hosted for employees at the end of the season. “It was really special for the staff to have a full circle experience. We’ve been talking about these piggy buckets and see the food going out. Every day, we see Jo, hear about the pigs, and see pictures of them. Then, finally, it comes full circle.”

When the last pig is gone for the year, Jo picks up her other job—serving as the first female Zamboni driver at the island’s ice

rink. It is a center of life during the offseason and provides her with income to farm when the time is right. “I like seasonality,” she says. “I couldn’t work in an office doing the same thing all year because I so much appreciate living within the cycles and natural rhythm of the earth.”

“She’s made quite a name for herself on the island,” Stam says. “Everyone sees her driving around. Everyone sees her with her buckets running around, working so hard. I think it resonates with anybody who cares about what they’re consuming. I just can’t explain enough how great it is to have her in the community and how positive and hardworking she is. You can tell how much she cares about the program, how much she cares about the animals, and how much thought she’s put into it.”

Jo loves that The Farm School visits remain a beloved part of a Belmont Day School education. “I saw on The Farm School Instagram last week that Belmont Day was there,” she said during an interview in the fall. “That’s this nice connection. I saw them counting garlic cloves and milking cows, and I did all those same things. That was great to see.”

“It’s nice knowing that my animals have a great life and they only have one bad day, and for them, that day is their last day, but they live the best lives I can provide for them.”