‘Break from reality’: As ‘Mommy Farmer’, Missouri woman brings rural life to millions
As dawn breaks around Grain Valley, light spills across the maple trees that flank Rebecca Pyle’s 19th century home framed by white rail fences. Cries from goats and chickens escape into the morning air and a goose, shaking the last of a night’s rest from its feathers, bursts through the Twin Pines Farm’s barn house doors in a siren of honks.
In other words : It’s showtime.
Pyle, a 38-year-old mother of two, known as Mommy Farmer on TikTok and Instagram, pulls out the camera on her phone and keeps it rolling for hours, waiting to capture the right moment for her 2.5 million TikTok followers.
Sometimes that means working with Samantha, a temperamental chicken who gets off on not doing as she’s told. Other times the star is Gus, a meek but affectionate spotted pig.
Pyle edits footage of her 60 animals into the late night hours, searching for a minute of catchy audio. Often she’s left with a video showing a slightly less muddy peek into farm life, where the worst that’s happened is a goat falling down or a few birds running astray.
Nothing too remarkable for Pyle’s Grain Valley and Blue Springs neighbors, many of whom operate their own farms and are oblivious to her media persona. But to the audience in Mommy Farmer’s comment section, it’s a different story.
Many fans write that they’ve never seen so many animals before or dreamed of a life on a farm. They live in faraway cities or even other countries. Some women have confided in the comments that physical or mental ailments prevent them from even going outside.
They hold onto the videos as a respite from everyday life, something Pyle never expected.
‘Get away from it all’
Beyond the fresh air and green grass, Pyle’s dispatches from Twin Pines offers a perception of life that’s mostly free of ambiguity.
She guides viewers through a preordained set of chores, sensitively scolding her animals if they misbehave, then nurturing them like children, rinsing and repeating a simple pattern of activities that leaves little time for the mind to wander into a negative space.
It seems so peaceful that viewers scrolling back in time through her videos wouldn’t be able to tell her popularity picked up steam in a pandemic.
As COVID-19 hit her town in 2020, life on the farm went on as usual. Pyle and her husband Chris worked to preserve their Civil War-era ranch, which they had bought the year before. She enjoyed social media for the mom jokes, as Pyle calls them. But she knew social media could help drum up business and bring people to Twin Pines Farm. An alumni of the University of Kansas’ journalism and marketing program, Pyle began editing video and documenting pieces of her life on TikTok.
“People just liked it as an escape and taking a break from reality,” Pyle said.
That escape turned into a phenomenon. Millions of people tuned in each week to see the animals like characters on a beloved sitcom. They commented about wanting to know what Gus the pig was up to and whether Ruthie, a baby goat born with a low birth weight, would ever reach her full strength.
Even actress Jennifer Lawrence revealed that she had been anxiously waiting on reports of Ruthie’s status.
And though Pyle reserves the spotlight for her animals, most of the online affection is directed her way.
Many see her as a mother figure. They write letters and comments asking her to parent them, which feels strange to Pyle, who doesn’t see herself with the same rose-tinted glasses.
“They don’t hear me when I’m yelling at my kids to put their shoes on and get out the door,” she said.
In her mind, there’s Mommy Farmer, who laughs at the disobedience of the birds and the pigs, with dirt caught under her fingernails, greeting each mishap with a wink and a smile.
Then there’s Rebecca Pyle, who confides that she needs to “get away from it all for a few days” after shoveling mounds of animal poop by day and editing hours of film by night.
She does not take the decision to share these moments in her life lightly. Many of the frustrations and personal dilemmas she experiences never make it to her page. She knows that these moments can disrupt the picturesque ecosystem so many tune in to see.
It can be a lot of pressure, she said. But this idyllic glimpse into her life has provided a space for nearly 2.5 million people to find comfort.
“It does make me sad for society,” Pyle said. “I just think that there’s not enough empathy in this world.”
While the world of Twin Pines Farm is still her own, it’s primarily one of simplicity and kindness and people have traveled to feel that for a moment.
Visitors as far as Sweden and Alaska come for tours and goat yoga sessions. On one occasion, Pyle remembers a Maryland woman visiting as she was grieving her late husband. The older couple had giggled along to videos of the Twin Pine Farm animals and, Pyle said, this was the only place the woman could think of smiling again.
“I don’t view them as ‘Oh those are my followers,’” said Pyle. “There’s been a relationship built through the years with the people who follow along with our farm … feels kind of like family in a way.”
‘Don’t make mama mad’
When tragedy does strike Twin Pine Farms, her fans have no idea what to do with themselves.
Pyle remembers sharing that a raccoon had killed her chicken and thousands responded with shock. To Pyle, it was just another day on the farm. But to her community, it amounted to murder.
“People were so distraught over it… Some people can just find it laughable, but then at the same time it is so endearing that you realize how much you’re touching people’s lives,” Pyle said.
In May, Mommy Farmer shared another video, explaining to viewers that their corgi Boone had been killed. This time about 4.6 million people tuned in.
“People came out guns blazing,” she said.
Fans swarmed the comments asking each other whether to “ride at dawn or dusk” and “hunt down who did it.” Others talked of being so depressed that they were “calling into work” or not “getting out of bed.”
Pyle explains that it’s no longer just about the tragedy she faces, but whether the tragedy will affect the family of millions she’s never met.
“It’s not just some little act I’m playing, these people come to our farm and express how much it touched them and I know when they would care,” she said.
Trouble in the neighborhood
Most recently, that care was directed at a local business, Proverb Estates, which purchased land behind Twin Pines Farm to build a series of town homes. Worried the development would disrupt her farm and the surrounding plots of land, Pyle posted videos expressing her disdain for the decision.
She reenacted the politics of the development using animals like Gus the pig as the developer and her herd of baby goats as the neighborhood farmers. She gave her followers updates, revealing the latest gossip and showing fans what it was like to speak her mind at the planning commissioners meeting, breaking an unspoken rule not to discuss politics in the Mommy Farmer community.
Out of fear her venting would cause the online family to feud, she kept up with daily videos of frolicking birds and ponies. But to her surprise, the response was united. Never before had the inner workings of local Missouri government created this kind of rallying cry from social media users from Ireland to Australia. “Don’t make mama mad,” they warned.
“Even fellow developers from around the country are commenting and analyzing the situation, giving me their input and saying (the development) didn’t look right,” Pyle said. “It was really a unique situation. I did not expect that... Everybody understood where I was coming from.”
The support did not place added pressure on council members to vote against the developer, lead to riots in the streets or protests from out-of-state travelers at Blue Springs City Hall. In fact, council members say they were unaware the issue had taken off online and had never heard of Pyle’s social media account. On Monday, the developer’s plan was struck down by the City Council and Mommy Farmer had little to do with it.
With all the collective outrage, the worlds of Mommy Farmer and Rebecca Pyle the farmer never collided. But that doesn’t make the former any less real to the millions who need her.
“There’s gonna be people in this world that are going to always feel like they need to be heard and every issue needs to be addressed by them and they’re on the soapbox all the time,” she said.
That’s not Pyle and she doesn’t want that pressure.
“People are getting so bogged down by the everyday stress of life,” she said. “Sometimes you just need to laugh at baby goats.”
This story was originally published August 21, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
