How Joel Salatin’s Farming Style CAN Feed the World

yeah you got a lot of clover here goodness this is pastor ditch this premium is this the original land okay so it look like this when we came out yeah that's what I was gonna say so look this is what 50% clovers yeah 60 70 plantains there's bugs everywhere yep plantain what else well fescue orchard grass red clover you graze something right here what was here so what did this look like we would have walked here back when you're gonna walk the whole thing and never set foot on a piece of vegetation are you serious now what year was that 1961 okay we we arrived back in the States Easter Sunday 1961 do you remember that because you were young I remember that I remember the ship the ship ride back on the ship and I remember some of the trauma there in Caracas just before we left mm-hmm but I don't mean I don't remember yeah just you know little stuff yeah it's just big stuff for those that you don't know that your father's dream was to farm another country that was Venezuela for him yeah and and and he wouldn't have you know as he was developing his dream he wouldn't have minded whether it was you know Peru Bolivia Colombia yeah it didn't really matter it's just the idea was to go to a to go to a developing country he saw that as a new frontier you know open markets I mean it didn't work out not because the farm didn't work was because the political instability you know we couldn't get we couldn't get four ten train and so we ended up you know as the guerrillas came in the back door we left the front door and lost everything and came back to the States there was no there was no place for us there of course now looking back were actually grateful because if we had stayed and been successful we probably would have been successful with dads genius okay yeah we probably would have been successful well look where we'd have been today who would want to be in Venezuela today right and and and and and we'd had you know at least we lost little for her lost destiny lost weight okay we didn't lose it you know when it became something significant we're with Joe we're about to go move the cows this afternoon you know we got here and I mean there were 16 foot deep gullies there were rocks a lot of these fields I mean you could you could walk the whole farm never set if you don't never set foot on a piece of vegetation or that much bare ground between thistles I remember thistles as a kid I mean we made hay it looked like it was a snow blizzard you know this little seeds and now you'd be hard-pressed to find half a dozen thistles on the whole place and and and I you know at the beginning I remember very well when I was early teens we had you know 10 or 12 cows and barely had enough to feed them and and as you know as a 12 or 13 year old started driving the tractor and raking hay and I would rake ten swathe ten swathe together to get a little wind row you could barely see and I mean today mm-hmm one swath is all a baler will pick up now I mean now we make we make as much off of one acre as we used to make off of twelve Wow it's just you don't retain a mind-boggling you know and I don't say this I don't say this proudly I say it gratefully and humbly that that that these systems work that then they just work you know and then when the mayor says oh you can't feed the world this way or or you know you can't keep stuff healthy or be productive or blah blah blah you know it just don't talk to me about that you know I've watched it in my life now I've watched it I mean you couldn't find the earthworms feel the ground was brick hard like clay brick now it's you know it's it's yeah off Brazilian you come out here in the spring with a tape recorder and you can you can catch the sound of the earthworm's and as you walk across the because you walk across the field in computers that many earthworms so yeah it's it's it's gonna been a big change [Applause] [Music] Joe couldn't fit us all on the four-wheeler that would've been awkward anyway we're catching him though he's gonna be setting up he likes coughs this isn't the first time I've come I've only been here so many times this is the second time I've moved cows with him so he's got a premiere wine salt we're energized her right there yeah intelidox 6p premiere one well don't touch it don't do nothing with it he might have turned it off on his way out one of the you know dad dad early on got a hold of this Andrei Voisine grazing stuff at that time there wasn't Gallagher and speed right premiere fit no and so he actually he actually created a kind of a portable fencing made made spools out of masonite with little reat you know reels on them and stuff and we started now we didn't move the cows everyday back then you know we moved them I don't know once every two weeks and thought what we had really you know arrived and started moving them around and and then then it wasn't until after I graduated from high school one summer home from college this would have been like 76 78 77 I took one month in in July and by hand I dug I went around all the field perimeters and put in permanent electric fence a one strand permit electric fence that was the breakthrough then then we were able to just cross fence you know like like rungs on a ladder yeah and then we were able to go to daily moves and when we went to daily moves everything changed mmm everything changed and that's why I always tell people when they've got what do you do about this weed or we do about clover or do you do about you know this that and the other first questions always are you moving them everyday if they're not I got nothing else to talk about I mean that's now that's how profound I think it is at the foundation and how profound it was for us so this is where the cows have been studied a little bit Jonna this disturbance you notice a lot of grass is still there he didn't let him eat it all the way to the ground yes sir that's probably somewhere like where they're going we'll see and then this is what it looks like after so there's the cows I'm betting that's today and this is tomorrow when I put in the when I put in all the posts for the for the field outlines and we were able to go to daily by that time we were moving them while every all four days maybe and then when we when we jump to the day everything changed I mean that was just as dramatic as night day night and day and then suddenly you know things started to thicken up and Daniel riza when he came to my farm he said Justin walks faster than a New Yorker I think Joe's got me you can see him can you even see him did your people seed your way out there JC you got a better zoom than me no no no he took off I'm wearing they're one of the first big machines we bought was a chipper and we began chipping tree to tree to tree limbs fing gums and for from fire because we always fire wood I mean early 70s was the Arab oil embargo you know Jimmy Carter Arab oil embargo so everybody went to wood stoves and so did we to quit using petroleum well this meant we had a bunch of tree tops cuz we were burnt that big old leaky farmhouse you know we burned a lot of wood and so we started we started doing the chipping and using that as bedding behind the cows so that we we could start spreading that material and then we began composting that and and I mean that was like that was like just spreading green paint on the field I mean it was just dramatic so you know we with what we were doing we could see we could see what brought results moving and feeding the soil that brought results and so we just knew what we got to do more of it we got to do it better we got to do more of it [Music] because do you guys know how fortunate you have it do you know they're so ready for this move though how many cows could you keep her acre back then when you first bought this place yeah back then probably one cow to about 10 acres yeah it's about 12.9 acres Wow yeah good for you no flies on them right you're so right very few flies gosh the neighbors around here though did you see any other factors like this without your actual gun and I guess they're eating the dry stuff too because look before after yeah I get a distinct no smell grandpas perfect garden hmm what how did Grandpa inspire you what where have you found perfection well if not the garden yeah well so I described what this place was like when we came and my grandfather my dad's dad was in Indiana in Anderson Indiana and he he always wanted to be a farmer but never could be but he was he was a very much a tinkerer and and he was a machinist and he actually designed and built he was he had a lot of engineering and he my dad did too and he designed and built the very first walking garden sprinkler you know that reels up the garden hose walks through the garden called the spring creel got a patent on it and then somebody just changed one part and you know of course patents aren't worth squat so anyway he didn't make his million with the spring creel but but the point is that he was he was an early an early he was a charter subscriber to organic gardening farming magazine when it came out in nineteen whatever 48 49 and and so you know appreciate what we what our life was like here it was thistles and brambles and weeds and open ground and gullies and rocks and we'd go up there visit grandpa and I mean his garden was just immaculate and lush and and grapevines and compost piles and soil you could just stick your hand in you know and and so as a child the juxtaposition of our scarcity and his abundance you know it's one of those things at the time I didn't I didn't I couldn't have articulated it you know I was a little kid but as I've grown older looking back I've realized how it what a profound just a position that was in my life at that time and it was just an hour and I realized it didn't have to be scarce it didn't have to be poor you know that that that if we did if we did what grandpa was doing we could have that abundance to and and so what's cool is that I lived I was I've been able to watch that scarcity turn into abundance uh-huh and that's pretty neat too to have lived through and seen that's cool what would grandpa say if he was right here with us I think I think he I think he would and so with dad you know he he he died in 1988 he was pretty young I mean I was only 31 and but so I mean Teresa not only gotten married in 1980 and we'd come back to the farm September 24 1982 is is when I left outside work and came back to the farm full-time so we had only been here I mean he died in February 88 so we'd only been here fall of 82 to February of 88 before he died we're talking about five and a half years we were doing what he always wanted to do but by the time he could do it he was he was too old to to jump on what he knew you know that the cycles of life are real and it took him he and mom working off the farm ten years to pay for it then by that time he was into his mid-fifties and and then your energy starts to wane you just you just can't make that and he had kids coming up to college so cash was still important necessary and so and so he didn't he didn't get back full-time so as Teresa and I you know left our town jobs came back lived in the Attic of the big house drove a fifty dollar car lived on three hundred dollars a month Ward you know junky clothes and and only ate what we grew never went out never went to the theater we didn't have a TV still don't have a TV but as he saw the land blossomed as once I got here full time and there was a full time person here what changed was what I call slippage hmm we were here for every calf that was born we were here for when the green beans needed to be weeded we were here for when the carrots needed to be thinned okay and and and as you know in farming and husbandry like this timing is everything you know if you if you miss pruning those grapes by week it can cost you a crock if you if you miss helping a cow have a calf that's having trouble if you missed that by sixty minutes you've got a dead calf instead of a live calf Tommy is everything and so so the thing that we did not under state that would happen when I came back full time was that by being here all those that slippage would stop those leakages that slippage and and and so it ended up that we that we didn't have the expenses and the leaks in the system that we had had when everybody was working out you know when dad was working in town mom was working I mean teach schoolteacher and of course we kids we were in college or we were in high school you know whatever okay there were anybody here and so you just you know you you weren't able to keep up with stuff so Jonah he's probably gonna open it up there as my guest because there's nowhere to open it here so let's go up you're pretty not intimidated this is cool for a group of steers well I don't know if they're all serious maybe there's some heifers in there your dad wasn't able to make the leap and go full-time on the farm right you were and then you found all these benefits because you were here on the farm and you're saving it you know you're having more abundance because you're here but how what's the secret to making that leap oh that's great question so first of all let me let me give my you know honor to a mom and dad who lived who lived a little below their means for a generation most Americans right now are living above their means so they lived below their means okay that's a big deal all right and so they live below their means which meant that when I came to adulthood the land was paid for with off-farm income but at least it was paid for so I didn't have a mortgage I was able to start with a clean it wasn't a business it wasn't a going concern it wasn't generating a salary but at least there was not indebtedness we weren't starting from the hole we at least start you know from zero that's a big deal the second thing is that Teresa and I did work out for a couple of years and by living frugally you know eating out of the garden cutting our firewood driving a 50 dollar car not going anywhere having no TV you know all those things and I say you know I say look I don't think having a TV is evil but I think it's a time sapper it's just a time sapper and people don't realize you can easily burn up seven eight hours a week is not even much watching time well what if you what if you did marketing calls what if you launched the business what if you took a class what if you watched a good YouTube educational video you know I mean there's a lot of things you can do in seven or eight hours a week anyway by living like that we cut our living expenses down that even though we neither one of us had high pain I was a reporter for the local newspaper she taught school for a semester and then worked in a cash register retail at a fabric shop because she knew all about sewing and fabric and all that stuff but neither one of these were high-paying jobs but because we live so frugally we were able to save half our paychecks so we did that for two years and by doing that we accumulated a nest egg that we knew we could live on for at least a one-hole year maybe more but at least one year and as soon as we had what we thought we could live on for a year we pulled the plug and here was my thinking my thinking was so I remember I was at the newspaper I was reading the one that one of the perks of working at newspapers and let you read it and and of course I was doing articles on businesses and all this stuff and I realized there were always people needed in restaurants I mean every business person I talked to a masonry workers construction they were desperate for somebody who just knew how to work thought about what they were doing showed up on time and didn't give anybody any lip and put in a full day's work well I was all those things and it started to dawn on me man everybody would love to have me work for him and you know what that was liberating for me because I realized if we if we don't make it if we run through our nest egg and I have to go back to work I don't mind doing anything even though I got a college education I don't mind I'll push up push concrete I don't care okay and I realized I could take a dishwashing position in any restaurant in town and in six months I'd be assistant manager that's not prideful that's just saying that the bar is so low for for four people that that if you're you know if you've got some savvy you can go pretty fast so as soon as I realized if it doesn't work I'm not afraid to do anything and everybody would love me the golden chains they call them golden chains that paycheck that fell away and we said you know what let's make the break and so we did and you know what that's that's what happened we made that break and we found out Wow that I think it was close to ten thousand dollars that we had instead of going through it in one year it took two mm-hmm because you know what happened we didn't have to buy professional clothes we never had to go to town so instead of filling up the gas tank and our fifty dollar car once a week we filled it up once every six weeks that's a game changer yeah so what happened was our expenses went way down our slippage went way down so we were able to stretch that little nest egg into two years and by the third year we were starting to break even yeah on the farm see if you can find his water let's see how he's doing his water so he's got a big hundred gallon tank yeah he's got an automatic float valve on it Jonah I wonder what he'll do with this I guess he'll probably just I don't know if he'll empty that and put it over here I'm curious to see what he's gonna do so you went when you had your break when you were 10 selling eggs and you had the two older ladies at the store yeah and they fed you pound cake and pickles and or is it pickles and potato your favorite Oh potato salad with sweet pickles in it oh man I just get all woozy over so salad we just have spares of that nice okay we're ready to move all right where do we go you got heifers in there too yeah uh-huh are all these destined to be hamburgers hamburgers and steaks and all sorts of things I'm gonna go ahead and dump this filling up any help we did cloth diapers we you know we we did I mean we I say we breastfed I mean I mean I'm thinking back the way we raised our kids I mean we never bought one single jar of baby food we had the little mill you know yeah and they ate what we ate talk about cheap you know that's cheap and we never had a stroller we didn't have a backpack baby carrier I mean I look at all these contraptions that people feel like they have to have when they have a kid you know it's thousands of dollars yeah we had a little Johnny jump up on a spring you know we hooked to the to the ceiling and and and you know they could kind of jump around this little giant jump up thing but you know it was a ten dollar thing and it was fine but you know the kids played I mean the favorite thing they played with was to open the kitchen cabinets and play with play with the Tupperware all the Tupperware you know and all the different colors and shapes and sizes they don't need a bunch of highfalutin you know educational tools from you know Mattel and Playtex simple stuff blocks of wood and then and then you've got the great outdoors to go and build forts and you know use your imagination now if you guys can hold back here yes sir open this gate because it'll it'll distort they're coming through sure [Music] whoa [Music] yeah [Music] [Music] do you ever grow tired of that never grow tired of that never never it's an adrenaline high every time how many years have you been doing that have that much that much whatever being wait voluntarily respond to your whatever to respond to you yeah positively it's Theresa your wife as frugal as you are she's more frugal than I am yeah I always tell fiancee say man you want the one secret to success marry a woman more brutal than you that won't that will protect you from a multitude of sins nice you happy with this grace is this a good yeah yeah no this is good this is like a 50 you know probably 50 percent or so I mean Lotus the mulch on the ground and yeah yeah they've taken the best and stopped everything else pretty much you're about your father envision something big happening here you're a sensitive it's what you wrote in your book mm-hmm is this it have we arrived is this the big he felt in his heart or is there something bigger coming no I think this is bigger than he imagined okay I'm confident of that yeah bigger than he imagined nice and I think if grandpa had a garden if grandpa's garden was perfect I would imagine he would look out here and say this is a perfect pasture I think he probably would you know all my uncle's my uncle's my dad's brothers and sisters my aunts and stuff they now tell me they said well you know their dad they're all passed away now but what they've said over the years I said well it it took our family three generations to get back to the farm yeah that's in other words he wanted a farm but then it was a depression and and he had to go work in a factory in order to make ends meet and and so he always wanted to get back to it dad always wanted to get back to it came close to Venezuela and then it got taken away from him and then I was able to get to it so they say it took three generations to get back I take that as a true it's just it's just a great way to look at it I get all I get all kind of teary about that yeah yes [Music] how'd you know my how much to give them today did you rack some measure today yeah are you getting to where you can I oh I'm not I'm giving them I'm giving them about 1.9 just a smidgen under 2 acres okay and that is uh that is roughly 200 yards 200 yards long okay 40 yard or 45 yards wide 9,000 square yards mm-hmm ten thousand would be two acres hmm well you picked up farming at about ten years old and started showing interest what about your son Daniel I know that and and for the folks that don't know he's here he's here full-time you know can you remember the moment you knew hey this guy's gonna be around and take over this place you know we don't have a moment like dad and I have a moment partly I think because I wasn't working in town so we were just together all the time dad nice moment was I was in high school and he had it you know he was an accountant and he had a client that was a realtor and this realtor just offhandedly told him a little bill you know your place out there is worth I don't know let's say four hundred thousand dollars and you know we bought it for forty nine thousand well dad remember dad was always ready to go to the next the next big thing you know and so he said my lands if it's appreciate we can sell this and go buy two thousand acres in Missouri so that was his kind of yeah you ready for the next you know the next big thing and I got wind of it and I remember the conversations right out there and they in the lane we call the dogleg there I was in high school and and we had this we had this little this is it this is where you had the conversation right here we call it we call it the dogleg because the road comes up and makes this makes this bend in the road so is it casual was it like you happen to be walking through here and he just brought it up or didn't say hey so that's going away I can't remember that particular that much particular I think we just intersected here probably I'd come from doing something and and he had come from somewhere else this is this is a common intersection on the farm yeah you know somebody's doing chores over here somebody's doing tours over here and we just happened to whatever beat up at this point he just touched me with this idea and he got my attention mmm oh yeah it was right here did you answer him right away I just said let me think about it no no no no no I said I said well he he just asked me he said do you do you want this place that was his question that was him no that was it and I said yes okay and that was all he needed and he said I'll never I'll never mention it again that was our discussion dan and I never had one that big because I never was interested in settling yeah you know yeah it was not that but but yes certainly when he when he was up in you know 13 14 he was younger than I was I think when that reality really hit and and he just took to it had such a love for it if you guys want to do something so if you somebody wants to real it yeah somebody pick up the steaks yep no Johnny you wanted to jump right in didn't you buddy he's got this room why weren't you tempted like your father he was interested in taking that because he could have bought more land for the price he sold here what makes you love Virginia or this land so much well I mean I grew up here so all my childhood memories are here and I've written about this I think in family friendly farming there's not a there's not a square yard I can go on this place that I don't have a memory of being there with dad huh and that's a that's a pretty special thing that's legacy that's legacy stuff and I think too often we just get enamored of the grass is greener on the other side of the fence boy if I just if I just was over there you know at that place it rains better or you know there's not as Frost there's not as much snow or whatever and and I think there's a tremendous advantage in trying to bloom where you're planted where you have connections you have a reputation whatever bankers know you businesses know you people in the community know you putting down roots you know putting down roots is a is an investment in and not just connection but it's it's something you can leverage you can leverage it in the future I mean you know dad never did but in my lifetime now I've actually carried a couple of caskets for the neighbors you know and and Daniel will do more and so there's a there's a value in developing those linkages that connectiveness in a community I mean I don't worship I don't worship this play and you know and and I'm but I'm with Wendell Berry too I think I think to steward well you have to love well in order to love well you have to know well and you can only know so much land and it takes a while to know something yeah I know every wet spot every dry spot I know where the warm air tunnels are in the fall where the cold air tunnels are I know where the drifts pile up I know where the the wind makes Eddie's around a tree or a building I mean I know this place I mean I'm just I'm one yeah you know and I don't mean that all mystically and weird but but I just I just know this place you know and and and I think I think Daniel knows it better than I do and and I think that that has a lot of a lot of value [Music] do you have a memory in this field with your dad that comes to mind yeah well yeah one of my special ones is so we had early on we didn't get a hay baler we actually bought a hay loader a loose hay loader like you know they usually pull with horses and because that had this idea of making loose hay and then dumping the wagon and setting it up like a bread loaf on end you know boo-boo-boo-boo and and so so here we were one day he was driving this was in the you know 86 maybe 1986 and round balers had come I mean round balers was the new that was a new big thing you know and so all the all the neighbors that that were real farmers they got a round baler right I mean that was that was the new big thing so we were out here one day of course here we were we were using this this old hay loader that I mean you could make any part for very very simple machine and we were using a hay loader dad was driving the tractor and I was back you know of course putting the hay moving a hay around on the wagon he's beautiful you know loose stack wagons and the neighbor with his brand-new Vermeer hay baler went sailing down the road with his big round baler dad yells back at me from the from the tractor seat he yells back at me and and he points at the at the Vermeer baler and he says old he points back at me with the hay loader no you know that was his you know that was his humor you know he he thought truly that the hay loader that with his design of this dump wagon thing that we were actually going to be on the edge something you know really slick and we were doing the we were doing the innovative new stuff and the vaillar was just fine yeah now final thing you have to do just get your microbiome fit okay oh my good nice I'm gonna feed your microbiome sure good well water with a little bit of cows lobby right I drink it routinely okay and I haven't been sick in 15 years biome fear pressure yeah yeah that was good tasting water now next you're gonna be drinking out of chicken water is microbiome is strong enough I didn't drink of it before I moved I mean oh that's right after they've been drinking here a day I drink when it's red yeah I'm okay to be weird but degree of my weird only so much will accept Joe it's funny because Rebecca that lines somebody dropped some food on the ground and she's like semi she'd eat that microbiome what is this microbiome stuff so I guess I was warmed up to it a little bit Rebecca says you can eat food off the ground it's good for you and she used the same terminology improve that microphone if folks want to get more you or see this farm what is that what would you say the best way they can do that well I mean we're we're open 24/7 365 anyone's welcome to come anytime from anywhere in the world to see anything anywhere unannounced so that's our transparency policy but what's really exciting to me is what's going to happen next summer July 17 and 18 here we're gonna have the very we're gonna host the very first on farm mother earth news fair and and we're gonna have there's going to be 300 vendors we're gonna have you know Eliot Coleman is going to be here Darren Daugherty from Australia probably the number one water guy in the world it's going to be a marriage of stop McGrath's far more acres USA Mother Earth News so commercial homesteading farm standing large scale small-scale livestock plant energy you know the whole spectrum and and and we're hoping that we get 5,000 each of those two days a total of 10,000 and that's what we think our limit is that we can handle and I would like for this to basically put a stake in the ground you guys can laugh at us yeah I mean you guys I mean genetic okay you guys can make fun of us I say that it's all a you know hokey and silly and whatever else but look at this baby there there are a lot of needs that haven't bowed to bail that are questioning the orthodoxy that are that are that are ready to build soil and and grow things and be self-reliant and not just take whatever Chase Manhattan Bank says and I like that we're making a stand we're making regular stand we're saying we're saying right here right now you coming you come and look at this and talk to these people and see what what brings what brings thousands of people out on a dirt road in Virginia to come and fellowship maybe you're missing something maybe you're missing something this can be historical moment yeah yeah so you've already booked our vacation say we're already booked we're coming good well the scuttlebutt in the community I haven't I haven't verified it for sure with the Chamber of Commerce but the scuttlebutt is we're getting secondhand from people that that the rooms in Staunton are already starting to okay starting to fill vodka we got 1,400 rooms in Staunton and if they're already getting full and tickets haven't even gone on sale yet that's a good sign things are pretty excited about I think there's gonna want to be a lot of people I want to take a stand with you we're gonna take a stand with you and we'll see you then yeah okay looking forward to that yep

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Length: 42min 20sec (2540 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 11 2019