I racked my brain for what to do. I thought to introduce him to Carole Morison, a former contract chicken grower and whistleblower in Maryland. You may be familiar with Carole from her appearance in the Oscar-nominated documentary film Food, Inc., as the only farmer who allowed the filmmakers to bring their cameras into her operation, and who shortly afterward was fired by Perdue. Carole was able to successfully emancipate herself from the sharecropping system and start over as an independent, pasture-raised egg farmer with the help of a successful crowdfunding campaign on Barnraiser, the farmer’s Kickstarter.

I thought she could offer Sonny an alternative perspective, as well as camaraderie and practical advice. I contacted her and explained the situation, and asked if she’d be willing to chat with Sonny, which of course she was. Carole was very gracious and sympathetic and offered to help in any way she could. I was excited to share the news with Sonny. Carole’s bravery and resilience made her an icon of sustainable agriculture, and I was sure putting them in touch would empower Sonny to speak up.

On July 3rd, I texted Sonny. He responded:

Ok. I will contact u about this after this holiday. Thank you.

A week went by. Then another. I took the initiative to ring him myself, and followed up with several texts and voicemails. I could tell he was reading and ignoring them; he has read receipts activated on his text messages. With each passing week, my boss was growing more and more concerned I was losing the story. On August 4th, she sent me down to South Carolina to scout it out, see whether or not I had scared him away for good, or could find a way to get him to talk on camera.

On the way to Sonny’s, I see a huge logging operation on the property across the road. They’re clearing the neighboring forest — dozens of tall timbers, flatbed trucks carving deep tracks in the soft mud. I turn into the opposite driveway and crawl up the gravel path toward the house, passing a large, manmade pond. The small ranch house, with its gray brick façade, looks under construction. An old minivan is parked outside the garage. A young woman rifles inside through the open door. I park my rental car and approach. I know it’s his wife.

I ask to speak to Sonny. She says he’s not there. I ask again, holding up my cell phone. “I tried calling him. He won’t pick up!” Again she says no. “Can you call him for me on your phone? Tell him it’s the filmmaker from New York. He knows who I am.” She finally gives in and dials her cell, informing Sonny in Vietnamese. “He’s at the chicken house, he’s coming now.”

Sonny drives up to meet me from the opposite end of his property, his car trailing dust and rocks and the smell of chicken manure. He wears a camo print jumpsuit, brown beanie, and a huge smile. He looks about 35. We shake hands and sit on upside-down buckets outside the garage. We talk for an hour. He uses a rock to draw in the dirt, outlining the schematics of his farm before and after the attacks.

I ask how he ended up with two farms — one behind the house, and another a ways away down the road. Turns out, a few years ago, another Pilgrim’s chicken grower knocked on their door in the middle of the night, also Vietnamese, forlorn and very behind on his bank payments. He wept uncontrollably as he begged his neighbors to put them out of their misery and buy their farm at an extreme discount. Sonny took pity and agreed, expanding his operation by nine more houses.

Sonny (left) pictured beside neighbor and mentor Tuan Nguyen (no relation) in a 2011 news story about Asian immigrant chicken farmers. Source: USA Today. Photo: Brett Flashnick.

After a while, a young black man approaches; I introduce myself, offering my hand, but he smiles and refuses, looking to Sonny for further instruction. Sonny gives directives, then turns to me and says, “That’s my farmhand. Good man. Hardworking.” I ask how many people are helping him care for his 240,000 chickens? The answer is: one. Sonny can’t afford to hire another farmhand, so he does it all himself. “But my brother is coming from Vietnam in September!” He adds, “But I won’t tell the company. I don’t want them to know anything about me. I don’t want any more trouble.”

I ask again about putting him in touch with Carole Morison, and he shakes his head no. He doesn’t want to reform, he just wants out. He never wanted to go into chicken farming in the first place.

I’d initially thought he could sell the farm to a cooperative of conscious, young farmers who have the energy to flip the operation on its head. Start over as a diversified farm; maybe run a crowdsource campaign to dig Sonny out of debt. But Carole already explained to me why that could never happen in a place like Manning: the only USDA-approved slaughterhouses for poultry south of the Mason-Dixon line are owned by the big meat companies. And corporate abattoirs only service corporate birds. This is why Carole had shifted from raising slaughter hens to producing pasture-raised eggs.

There’s no way to get pastured birds to market without going through a USDA-approved slaughterhouse. There’s no way to transform an industrial poultry growing operation back to a sustainable, independent chicken farm. So — scratch that one off the list.