POLYFACE FARMS, POLYFACE BOOMER JOEL SALATIN

The grass farmer of Polyface Farms.

At a certain age you give yourself clearance to review your life, your accomplishments, the mountains you’ve climbed.

If you have any laurels, you rest on them, trusting the comforts of your effort won’t wear thin.

When is that time? Don’t ask me, and most of all, don’t ask Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms fame.

Don’t ask me because I write about you, and don’t ask the lead man at Polyface “the farm of many faces,” he’s busy running the show.

Joel calls himself a ‘grass farmer.’ He’s got the grass, but he’s more of a grass rancher, or more accurately a combination of both, like the All Round Cowboy award at rodeos.

He does it all, and then more.

For all the wonders and witness of modern man, these are things you’ll never see:

• The original Olympics and their two sports of running and wrestling.
• DaVinci painting The Last Supper.
• farming practices that could change the world.

Two of the three you’ll never see, one you can.

From polyfacefarms.com

In 1961, William and Lucille Salatin moved their young family to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, purchasing the most worn-out, eroded, abused farm in the area near Staunton.

Makes you wonder how that transaction went?

William Salatin: I’d like to see the worst land in the area.

Realtor: We have some beautiful land on our inventory.

WS: I’m not here for the beauty, I’m here for the land.

Using nature as a pattern, they and their children began the healing and innovation that now supports three generations.

Healing and innovation are substitute words for hard work followed by more hard work, then rest breaks that include more hard work.

If you’ve ever worked the land, planted a garden, sodded a yard, then you know the effort.

Making things grow and heal often means following traditions and customs from the field, except when you start with worn out, eroded, and abused land.

The poor conditions probably resulted from following common farm rules.

Disregarding conventional wisdom, the Salatins planted trees, built huge compost piles, dug ponds, moved cows daily with portable electric fencing, and invented portable sheltering systems to produce all their animals on perennial prairie polycultures.

Today the farm arguably represents America’s premier non-industrial food production oasis. Believing that the Creator’s design is still the best pattern for the biological world, the Salatin family invites like-minded folks to join in the farm’s mission: to develop emotionally, economically, environmentally enhancing agricultural enterprises and facilitate their duplication throughout the world.

If the plan is world domination through healing the land while supporting food animals that live like the animals they are, instead of the clinical view of protein resources, the line starts behind me.

My wife read about Joel Salatin, then attended an event on Windy Acres Dairy in Prineville, Oregon where he was the main speaker.

She’s a big fan and discovered we’d be in his Virginia neighborhood for one of his Polyface Farms, Polyface Boomer tours, though that’s not the advertised name.

The Salatins continue to refine their models to push environmentally-friendly farming practices toward new levels of expertise.

I don’t know how hot it was the day we rode the hay bales, except it was hotter in a way I’m not used to.

As a result I felt a little dazed watching Joel Salatin hop on and off the tractor like it was a cool dewy morning. In comparison, I figured I’d be a bad farmer until I got the hang of the heat.

The talk at every stop wasn’t a sermon of hope, but a recounting of fact. The man runs the farm and shows how he does it. It’s no mystery, unless you’re afraid to dig in.

I listened from the hay bales and heard a voice for a possible future, one that explained how to feed the world without killing the land.

For context, please understand that we don’t do anything conventionally. We haven’t bought a bag of chemical fertilizer in half a century, never planted a seed, own no plow or disk or silo—we call those bankruptcy tubes. We practice mob stocking herbivorous solar conversion lignified carbon sequestration fertilization with the cattle.

Interpreted: Polyface Farms cows move to new pasture ready to eat everything growing.

They’re not finicky. They don’t wait for feeding, they hit new ground ready to munch.

The land they left get the next treatment.

The Eggmobiles follow them, mimicking egrets on the rhinos’ nose. The laying hens scratch through the dung, eat out the fly larvae, scatter the nutrients into the soil, and give thousands of dollars worth of eggs as a byproduct of pasture sanitation. Pastured broilers in floorless pasture schooners move every day to a fresh paddock salad bar.

Pigs aerate compost and finish on acorns in forest glens. It’s all a symbiotic, multi-speciated synergistic relationship-dense production model that yields far more per acre than industrial models. And it’s all aromatically and aesthetically romantic.

I am first and foremost a farmer, but not a very ordinary farmer. In fact, I’m known as a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic. Our family farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley now has four generations living on it. I’m second generation, but the day-to-day operations are handled by my son. Polyface Farm is a diversified, grass-based, beyond organic, direct marketing farm.

What Joel Salatin doesn’t include is he was an English major in college. And like his farm work, it shows.

When a man runs a line of adjectives like he’s reciting poetry, it’s a good listen and an important message.

He knows who he is, how he is perceived, and the effect he has in a world outside Polyface Farms.

If it’s not a lesson on positive self awareness, you’re not listening hard enough. We should all know what we’re all about, that’s the work ahead.

While many business folks would consider this a tiny business—and it is—it is considered quite a large farm by USDA sales criteria, which calls any farm with sales above $400,000 annually a large farm. Polyface direct markets everything it produces to a customer base that numbers 2,000 families, 25 restaurants, and 10 retail outlets.

A world of fast food beef and chicken needs fast production to fill orders. Grow the meat, butcher, and deliver is the drill. Land abuse is a side effect, land recovery not a primary focus.

BoomerPdx likes the idea of counter culture and hippies working the land, or pioneers farming it up, even though Polyface Farms is neither.

Joel Salatin brings a different twist. Not exactly ‘farm it and they will come’ mythology, but more ‘give a man a fish and he eats for a day vs teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime’ idea.

You Can Farm is more than a book title, but hit the link for a look at the book.

Polyface Farms, Polyface Boomer is more than sinking roots in the country and hoping for the best. The Salatins make it work by nurturing the critters AND the land and keeping up with the cycle.

Vegetarians and vegans and environmentalists all have opinions on how best to proceed with earth-related industry. Polyface Farms turns theory into practice, and that’s more than one small step for man.

It might be the giant leap mankind needs.

Thanks, Joel. Thanks for making Polyface Farm a great visit and a vision.

Best regards,

David and Elaine Gillaspie

Polyface Farms Oregon:

Afton Field Farm

Pasture Network Partners

National Young Farmers Coalition

Carnahan’s Chickens & Eggs

Zenger Farm

Full Of Life Farm