When comedian Jon Stewart stepped down as host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show in 2015, he also made headlines for his next project: the 45-acre farm for rescued farm animals that he and his wife, Tracey, planned to open in New Jersey. Local authorities approved the project this past January, and when it opens to the public next year, it will be a partnership with Farm Sanctuary, a livestock rescue and advocacy nonprofit founded in 1986 (Tracey is on the board). The farm is a sister site to Farm Sanctuary’s three shelters—one in upstate New York and two in California.

A longtime animal activist, trained veterinary technician and author of Do Unto Animals: A Friendly Guide to How Animals Live, and How We Can Make Their Lives Better, Tracey is excited about the partnership. “What Farm Sanctuary does is they do rescue and sanctuary for animals, and then without realizing it, they also do rescue and sanctuary for people,” she said when the couple accepted the organization’s Gift of Life Award in 2015. “And I feel as though they’ve rescued me and they’ve given me sanctuary for the rest of my life.”

The Stewarts’ first farm rescues were a pair of pigs named Anna and Maybelle, who are now being joined by goats, chickens, cows, sheep and other rescued livestock. You can follow the animals’ progress on The Daily Squeal Facebook page.

“Tracey’s always real good about getting the animals to calm down and feel safe,” Jon has said. “I never know what she’s going to come back with. It’s usually OK, long as it’s not an animal of prey. We draw the line at panthers.”

Related: Are You Ready to Adopt a Rescue? Ask Yourself These Questions First

Sanctuary for Farm Animals

In 1986, vegan and animal activist Gene Baur sold veggie hot dogs with a side of animal activism pamphlets from his VW van at Grateful Dead concerts to start Farm Sanctuary, an organization that saves dying animals in North America’s factory-farming industry.

It began in backyard of a humble row house in Wilmington, Delaware. “We saved goats, sheep and chickens, and the role of these animals as ambassadors to highlight and change the way our meat is ‘grown’ quickly became clear,” says Baur. Since then, he has been hailed as “the conscience of the food movement” by Time magazine after decades of campaigning to raise awareness about the abuses of industrialized factory farming and our current food system.

Today, he estimates that 1,000 animals, mostly “that people tend to eat,” live at Farm Sanctuary’s three locations in upstate New York and California—cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks, turkeys, geese, goats, alpacas, four horses and a donkey. The Stewarts’ farm, opening next year in New Jersey, will be the fourth location.

Related: Moving Stories About People, the Animals They Love and How They Saved Each Other

Baur says every animal has a very sad story to tell. Hilda, a lamb left discarded on a pile of cow, pig and sheep carcasses at a factory farm in Pennsylvania, was the first rescued. “We got her healthy and she lived at Farm Sanctuary for 10 years,” says Baur.

In Watkins Glen, New York, Opie, a bull, happily grazed for almost 20 years. On the day he was born, weak and considered worthless, he was sent to be sold at a stockyard, where volunteers found him collapsed and dying in an alleyway. Opie lived to be a 3,000-pound gentle giant.

“Must we make conditions so bad for animals raised as food that their last hours of life are so tortured?” exclaims actress Loretta Swit, an avid Farm Sanctuary supporter. For decades, Swit, best known as M*A*S*H’s Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan, has put her fame to work as a voice for animals. She’s received numerous accolades for her advocacy, including the Actors & Others for Animals’ 2016 Betty White Award. Proceeds from her new book, SwitHeart: The Watercolour Artistry & Animal Activism of Loretta Swit, go to charities and programs to end animal suffering and cruelty, like her SwitHeart Foundation, which sponsors two Farm Sanctuary animals a month, among the many rescues it supports.

“At Farm Sanctuary, we provide better lives for these animals and shine a light on issues of wrongdoing,” says Swit. “I believe in the exquisite goodness of human nature to do right once [people] know the facts.”

Actress Emily Deschanel of the hit TV series Bones agrees. She’s on Farm Sanctuary’s board and says she didn’t really know anything about farm animals until she visited. “I’d never spent time with chickens and pigs and cows. Meeting these rescues was such an experience it really changed me,” says Deschanel.

Now she’s focused on changing others, working with the Stewarts on a new public education program that will launch on their farm and enthusiastically looking to rescue her own animals. “I want to rescue a million!” she declares.