West Gardner Beef
Todd Pierce works seven days a week at West Gardner Beef, where he started working at fourteen years old. He runs a custom slaughterhouse in West Gardner, Maine, a family business that exists at the edge of a food system most of us never see: local farmers bring him their pigs, turkeys, and cows, and he does the work that turns an animal into meat.
It's a job most people look away from, and one that almost no one else wants. But Todd's work is also what makes small, local farming possible at all — without someone willing to do this, every farmer in the area would have to drive hours to the nearest industrial processor, or give up raising animals altogether. He is, in a real sense, load-bearing infrastructure for his community's food supply, and he's doing it alongside his family, day after day, largely unseen.
I made this project while studying at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, spending time with Todd to understand what that life actually looks like up close — the routine, the skill, and the quiet dignity of a job that keeps a whole local food system standing.
