Growing a Greener World Episode 305 - Polyface Farms

I'm Joe lample when I created Growing a Greener World I had one goal to tell stories of Everyday People innovators entrepreneurs forward-thinking leaders who are all in ways both big and small dedicated to organic gardening and farming lightening our footprint conserving vital resources prot protecting natural habitats making a tangible difference for us all they're real they're passionate they're all around us they're the game changers who are literally Growing a Greener World and inspiring the rest of us to do the same Growing a Greener World it's more than a movement it's our [Music] mission it's hard to miss all the media attention on our nation's food model today everywhere you turn there are more stories about environmental pollution and the depletion of our natural resources brought about by some of the ways that we produce our meat and eggs but the good news is there's a very strong movement towards Ultra sustainable food production where the soil is actually made better every year the animals are happier and healthier and the food is even more nutritious and more and more people are seeking out the farmers who are using these more responsible techniques at the Forefront of this movement is Joel salatin a polyface farm in the shinoa Valley of Virginia with a 100 open Acres the family run Farm raises grass-fed beef Forge based rabbits pastured poultry eggs and forest floor Pigs and the whole system is carefully Cor gra without ever using chemical fertilizers or industrial animal feed and yet his farm is able to service over 3,000 families 10 retail outlets and 50 restaurants through on Farm sales and buying clubs Joel is as outspoken about what is wrong with farming today is he is passionate about doing it right and he and his family openly share their knowledge with others in the hope of healing the land one acre at a time we call this Farm polyface because it's the farm of many faces we raise salad bar Beef pigat Pork pastured chickens both meat and eggs pastured turkeys hair pin rabbits forestry Products and we call ourselves grass Farmers because that differentiates us from annuals and tillage essentially Americans are are kind of brain damaged on grass because when we say grass we think you know a lawn or a golf course that sort of thing I'm talking about the kind of grass that grew here in the shenoa valley 300 years ago when the early settlers wrote back letters home where they rode through the valley and said everywhere they went they tied the grass in a knot above the horse's saddle grass historically has been the foundation of the entire nutritional program of civilizations because that's what can be grown without tillage grass is the foundation of the whole herbivorous diet which includes both you know cows and draft animals uh mules horses up until very recently all draft power all the energy from a farm came from from a perennial product that didn't require tillage that's grass and so it's that component when we say we're grass Farmers what we're talking about is that we are are honoring and producing the most historically normal carbon cycle nutritive cycle energy cycle that is solar driven in real time and actually builds soil the way Nature has forever Joel the term grass-fed is a highly desirable trait these days that everybody sort of looks for but you're a guy that likes to come up with phrases of your own that are more fitting and one that I really like is the one that you say is a salad bar salad salad bar beef yeah as opposed to you know grain fed yeah um and of course nutritionally for the cow the cow is essentially a four-legged portable sauerkraut vat you know a big fermentation tank and what she wants is carbohy hydrate is is plant material vegetation she is an herbivore after all and so what we want is a polyculture of of of a salad bar just like you know you'd like to go to a salad bar with a lot of uh variety well it's the same thing for the cow so so you know as you walk along here I mean here here's onion um here's narrow Leaf plantain uh let's see what else we can find here we've got uh here's here's wide Leaf plantain see that that's wide leaf and this is this is narrow Leaf okay as we go along here here we've got uh here's a nice Orchard Grass just just beginning to to head out a little bit of course uh here's Fescue we'll put some fescue in there and uh then this is this is H bluegrass from uh you know like Kentucky that's real uh early stuff blue grass and then uh let's see we've got some dandelion here get a little bit of blossomy color here of course the leaves of the dandelion that's these kind of serrated serrated leaves like that and then let's see there's um these big these big ones right here are red clover those big those big leaves there red clover and then over here is the white clover there's some white clover blossomed out and uh then of course you got these uh these butter cups here cuz it is it is spring and uh so the butter cups are coming cuz it's wet but at the end of the day what you have then is this wonderful Diversified um salad bar that that provides all this um diversity in nutrition mineral enzyme for the cow and actually you know some of these plants like it damper co uh drier some like it colder some like it warmer and so they actually occupy a different profile in weather growth season and all that but at the end of the day what you have is this very stable Diversified landscape of perennials that then feed that four-legged mowing machine there's a huge contrast here at polyface between how we raise the cattle and finish them compared to how the industry does and you know that starts I would say with this electric fence uh the electric fence is lets us control them they're moved every day to a fresh salad bar every single day and then the chickens come behind them rather than shooting them up with grub aides and parasiticides the chickens uh sanitized behind the cows the birds following the herbivores and then the fertility is not maintained with petroleum based chemical fertilizer but rather with composting that we generate in the winter time and then that compost is actually you know the whole guts of the fertility program so we're actually feeding the biology of the soil and then and then uh another one is that we don't till these pastures uh you know typically people plant monocultures of things for the cows to eat these are polycultures what we call perennial Prairie polycultures Joel your whole farming system is like a well orchestrated dance with all your animals in the grass yeah we we call it ballet in the pasture that's good let's talk about how you time the grazing of your cows and then why you follow up with the chickens after that sure well we're walking down an electric fence line here where they grazed yesterday and then they've moved over here for today so uh you know when you look at herbivores in nature they are actually moving they're not staying in one place and they're they're being pushed by Predators behind them and that gives the grass a rest period to come back well we don't have wolves and and you know lions and tigers here but we do have high-tech electric fencing that allows us to create this same um uh movement pattern across the landscape and so by using the electric fence to Define where the cows are for a day and giving giving the plants time to uh to build up a head of steam if you will you know to regrow uh we actually produce way more biomass than you do in a just a continuous grazed place uhhuh and that's the that's the whole idea of what we call mob stalking herbivorous solar conversion lignified carbon sequestration first ization it's exactly what I was going to say yeah got it but then you bring in the chickens after that then we bring the chickens in and again we're looking at nature like you know Nature's template if you will and saying well how does nature sanitize behind herbivores and what you see is the Egret on the Rhinos nose we see birds following the cap Buffalo and batswana you know the the the wilderbeast on the serengetti all those types of birds and so we bring the egg mobiles behind the cows the chicken scrats through the Cow Patties eat out the fly larvae and the Paras sites and things spread the Cow Patties out so they they fertilize more ground and of course where the cows have recently grazed there are worms and bugs and caterpillars and crickets and grasshoppers that are newly exposed that the chickens can then Harvest as well and so the chickens are used in their bird Scavenging sanitation role and so you have the the bird and the herbivore in its natural symbiotic relationship that we orchest straight right here um using high-tech electric fencing and our management to duplicate what nature does on a domestic scale polyface works really hard to take every animal's natural tendency into consideration when adding it to the farm Joel's son Daniel learned that firsthand as a young boy with a 4 project today Daniel is the farm manager at Poly face Daniel people are coming from hours away to buy your pasture raised chicken egg eggs and you know that's one of your fores here but people at home are starting to get a little bit into that as well with their chickens talk about some of the advantages though to just the quality and the taste of the eggs well the quality of pastured eggs have not only nutritional values from higher Omega-3s higher beta carotenes because they're taking in all the pasture they're transferring all that chlorophyll into the egg so that's where the color comes from that deep rich orange is coming from all of the color of the p pure that they're eating now it's the egg it's one of the way the homeowner can prove that they're actually getting a pastured egg is by that rich Yol so all of those things add up to a better taste and so it's a much better eating experience all around and better for our health and maybe it inspires some new Farmers doing it the right way too absolutely we already have and have more that just this trail of young Farmers that have come from our education and that's a really rewarding factor for me as a teacher um and as us as a farmer that we have this lineage of other people around the country spreading the word and raising animals the way they should be like a growing number of farms polyface has an on-site store where visitors can come and buy directly which is one of the best ways to purchase the food you want from a source you trust I'm sure you've heard the term free range and cagefree when it comes to chickens and eggs but those terms probably don't mean exactly what you think they do when something is labeled cagefree it only means that the chickens were not in cages they can still be confined to large buildings their whole life with little or no access to the outside according to the USDA regulations free range only means that the chickens were allowed access to the outside with no specification as to the quality or the duration of time that they're allowed access to the space and unfortunately this term is being used on many products where the chickens have access but never actually make it to the outside and perhaps you've seen a vegetarian raised label on eggs chickens are natural omnivores and normally get their protein from Bugs and meat vegetarian raised means they never ate a bug outside they were kept inside a building eating only grain their entire life at the moment pasture rays and pastur labels mean just that and they're being used by Farmers that want to distinguish themselves from the more industrialized term of free range plus it better describ sces those animals that are allowed to roam and live most if not all of their days outside so if you really want animals that have been allowed to live outdoors then look for the pastor raay label okay hi that'll do it now aside from the labeling how can we as consumers be assured that the eggs and the meat that we're buying are being raised in an eco-friendly way well most importantly get to know your farmer shop at a farmers's market or a co-op or even the farm itself in an ethical farmer isn't going to have any issues with sharing information about their operation or even allowing you to come for a visit and when you buy from your local farmer you're helping a local business and the community and even the environment all at the same time many farmers today are trying harder to work with the natural environment a perfect example of this is the way Joel uses pigs to bring back life to a patch of land that would otherwise be unusable for farming so here we are to one of our Pig pastures and uh the the pigs are on pasture because they get of course exercise Sunshine they get to run around you know and um and but the main thing is that they get to actually actually pick this grass uh again we've got this salad bar for the pig so they get to eat you know they do get to eat the feed which is a local GMO free uh grain ration but they also get cafeteria style they get all this other uh grass grass that they want so they get to choose well do I want to eat grass today do I want to dig some dirt today do I want to um eat some feed today and and they get to make those choices and what that does is it allows us to uh use a lot of marginal land that may not be good for other things maybe good enough for pasture for cows or you know good enough to grow a garden or something like that we come into marginal land and and open it up this used to be you know forestal but what's happening here is that the pigs are actually disturbing it just enough to germinate all of this latent seed bank this perennial Prairie polyculture I mean you know we're reverting back like 500 years ago to these old seed banks that were here and have been suppressed under a forestal overstory and so by cutting down some of the trees opening it up and letting the pigs come in with their strategic disturbance there's a there's a a just a huge germination of all this seed bank which then of course feeds the pigs and it actually makes it more productive than when it's just a static system so one of our roles I believe as humans is to bring to the ecology just the right amount of exercise uh massage you could say to that ecology to stimulate it to actually be more productive more Diversified and more stable than it would be in a static State this is the whole operation you got a feeder you got a water trough down there electric fencing there's no concrete no electricity no petroleum no big buildings so it's a very gentle footprint you know if you if you drove by this at 60 mes an hour you wouldn't even know there was pigs raising here where most of uh you know industrial a the footprint the the infrastructure is so big it dominates the landscape this is embedded so when the pigs are gone it's it's it's exciting for the wild turkeys to come and now they have openness to eat bugs and have their baby turkeys the deer come in I mean there's there deer manure all over the place uh because this encourages deer to come in so this is a very uh a wildlife friendly gentle ecological footprint and then finally when the when the animals get up close to slaughter we don't finish them on grain like a big feed lot situation they're actually finished right on the salad bar which you can test then with uh empirical scientific analysis the the riboflavin the conjugated linolic acid the polyunsaturated fats all of the nutrient profiles are just literally hundreds of a percent different than the regular grain finish feed lot type of animal it preserves that whole herbivore concept right through to the final day like you know like a deer or an elk or or something like that and it completely revolutionizes the the nutrient profile of the final product no this is not your standard beef it's a whole different ball game it's great to see Farmers trying to make a difference in the way our food is produced and by turning to Nature we really can create small food ecosystems that help the environment and nurtures healthier animals at the same time and remember we can choose the system we want by voting with our dollars with every food purchase we make and we have more information on Food Systems like this on our website and you'll find it under the show notes for this episode and the address is the same as our name it's growingagreenerworld.com I'm Joe lamp thanks for joining us and we'll see you back here next time for more Growing a Greener [Music] World [Music]

Channel: Growing a Greener World

Views: 2,968

Keywords: Polyface Farms, Joel Salatin, sustainable farming, pasture-raised chickens, grass-fed beef, organic farming, regenerative agriculture, soil health, ethical meat production, farm-to-table, local food systems, sustainable agriculture, educational farming, eco-friendly farming, holistic farming practices

Id: _mSX0uyt4vE

Length: 19min 50sec (1190 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2024