Notes From Polyface

There are a few things that one notices right off the bat when exploring Polyface Farm. First, the lack of machinery. No plows, disk, drags, planters, silage wagons or any of the other contraptions that make farming so expensive to get into. They do have machinery for haying but not much else. Second, almost every form of animal housing is on wheels or skids. The whole system revolves around mobility. The cornerstone philosophy that guides all facets of the system is a simple one. Animals are healthiest when they are happy. An animal is happiest when they can act in the way that God created them to act. Joels says, "We want a chicken to be able to fully express its chickeness, a cow its cowness and a pig its pigness". Using this basic idea the Salatin's have created farming enterprise that supports 3 generations while not using antibiotics, chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Another thing that makes them unique is the idea of complimentary enterprises. All the different kinds of animals work together instead of competing for resources. The shelters were very simple and not very fancy. The folks who were out with tape measures and note pads tring to make plans for the assorted movable shelters missed the point, I think. I didn't take long to see that these things were made with available resources in an inexpensive manner. What you make your eggmobile or shadmobile out of should depend on your available materials. If you paid attention you also noticed that they were always updating and changing and improving the shelters. The take home message here was simple, use your imagination and build it from the most affordable materials in your area. The part of the day I enjoyed most was Joel's talk on "relationship marketing". He said we don't want just loyal costumers, we want them to be evangelists. According to Joel we want, "Pastured Poultry Carismatics!" He talked about the pros and cons of farmgate, farmers market, restraurnt, and metropolitan buying clubs as ways to sell products. He touched on pricing a little. He said we need to make a profit and not try to compete with Walmarts artificially low prices. But he also said that he doesn't sell things for whatever the market will bare either. Just because you may be able to get $5 a dozen for eggs doesn't make it ethical. He stressed the fact that we should be able to sleep well at night knowing we didn't take advantage of others. The food was great. Its always nice to munch on chicken that didn't soak up a lot "fecal soup". One thing I really liked was the way he makes compost out of the beefers bedded pack before they spread it on the pastures. They use a lot of carbon (bedding) in the pack and also spread shell corn in it. The shell corn ferments in the manure and when the cows go out to grass the pigs come in and dig for corn turning and aerating the pack. The resulting compost is applied to the land instead of raw manure. There were many vendors such as Acres USA and Premier Fence there to visit. The people were all wonderful and we got to chat with a lot of folks from all over the US. I heard there were even some people from across the ocean there as well. It was well worth the trip and we learned some things and were encouraged by the number of people there. Its hard to write down everything we saw and learned, so if anyone has questions feel free to ask.