Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Field Day at Polyface Farm
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Field-Day-at-Polyface-Farm-by-Nancy-Lewis-110715-82.html

In a bad economy, why would 1600 people from all over the country shell out a 
hundred bucks a pop to hang out all day in the hot July sun amid the redolent 
smells of manure? Every three years Joel Salatin hosts Field Day at his 
Polyface Farm with a full day of demonstrations and tours and a chance to 
hear the guru of sustainable agriculture firsthand.

Polyface is nestled in the pastoral rolling hills of the Shenandoah Valley of 
Virginia and Joel is on the forefront of a movement known as eco-agriculture. 
His 550 acre family farm is a living demonstration of the principles of land 
use and management that Joel calls redemption of the land and on some 
occasions "lunatic farming".   In a summer offering not a lot of hope and 
change, it was refreshing to see so many young people obviously wanting to 
learn how they could adopt Joel's very different model of farming.

Dan Solderburg, the farm's head gardener and chef, explained "soil is the 
basis of the whole farm" and everything that is done at Polyface is geared 
towards building soil, using the animals to interact with the land and leave 
it enriched with their manure.   Although the farm primarily produces pasture 
grass-fed beef, chickens, rabbits and pigs, there is enough horticulture 
going on to supply produce to several restaurants and feed the crew of 24 
interns and apprentices. Dan explained how the farm uses "stacking", the idea 
of integrating more activities on the same amount of land. It's using 
livestock, composting, produce and even mushrooms to take an existing 
operation and make it sustainable for more people.

On a hillside near the farmhouse, visitors fanned out examining the chain of 
bottomless structures the tops partially covered with corrugated aluminum 
roof to provide shade for chickens happily grazing on the green bounty of 
grass and weeds. The chickens are enclosed, but with ample room to move 
about. Every few days these structures are moved giving the birds a new 
"salad bar" and leaving behind mowed pasture and of course, the magic manure. 
  According to Joel they haven't had to seed a pasture for forty years.

After all nearly two thousand people had been served barbecued chicken, 
pulled pork, fresh cucumbers and peaches, the crowd gathered for the 
afternoon tour, with Joel using a mike on the hay wagon podium to explain 
what we were seeing. The first stop was at what was called the feathernet, 
basically an area corralled off with high-tech portable electric fencing.   
Hundreds of chickens were basically allowed to free-range within their 
confined pasture. The large structure in the middle of the corral was 
portable, allowing the flock to be moved to a new section of pasture every 
few days. Cattle are moved to a different grazing pasture every three days, 
then the chickens are brought in to finish grazing the cropped grass in a 
rotation that ensures optimal natural feeding for both the cattle and the 
chickens.

I knew that Joel believed that farm animals should be allowed to express 
their unique nature in as much as possible when being raised for meat, and 
seeing how he does it with pigs is pretty cool.   The areas of the farm that 
are woods have been turned into pig glens, allowing the pigs to forage on 
acorns and roots, which not only saves how much feed is needed, but is part 
of a process of opening up forest thickets to become new pasture. According 
to Joel, "there's not one reason for a single confined pig house, not one."   
It's all part of "letting the pigs express their pigness."

Joel Salatin clearly has a big following and is on to something that is 
catching on all across the country with more young farmers wanting to get 
away from the industrial farm that is heavily dependent on chemical 
fertilizers, feed lots and raising fowl and pigs in overcrowded houses that 
cost a fortune to build and maintain.

  It all goes back to his philosophy, which Joel freely dispenses to anyone 
who will listen. One intrepid young man asked if Joel would answer a hard 
question: "How did his faith influence his farming?"   "We don't own this 
land, we're just stewards of it", Joel says. He explains that we better all 
be questioning some very basic things about the food we eat and how it was 
produced. Some of the things going on in our food production are just wrong, 
like feeding cows dead cows.   Quoting a character from Jurassic Park, Joel 
said we should all be asking every day: "just because we can do something, 
does it mean we should?"

Joel is a voice for the new sustainable agriculture movement because he is 
living proof that "you can have a successful business model and still be 
ecologically sound." Not surprisingly, he's critical of Monsanto, calling 
their actions to patent lifeforms "a new permutation on slavery".   In 
answering the young man's question, Joel gets in deep philosophical water 
saying he believes the Augustinian idea of the duality of flesh and spirit is 
"in error: it's all one." He says he's in the "redemption business" and that 
farming, "if it's not healing, it's not righteous."

The young people attending Field Day gave me some hope that maybe Joel's 
model is spreading and that the change we need will be lived out in a 
different way of viewing the land, our food, and each other.   Dan Solderberg 
began his talk by holding up his one-year-old daughter to answer the question 
of why he's working at Polyface. It's all about the kind of future we want to 
create for ourselves and our children, a future that is more in harmony with 
nature, less dependent on corporations and which honors the sacredness of all 
life.

Polyface is open year-round and welcomes visitors 24/7, not just on Field 
Day. Joel Salatin is the author of "The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic 
Farmer",   "Holy Cows and Hog Heaven" and "Everything I Want To Do Is 
Illegal". His unconventional methods are discussed in detail in Michael 
Pollan's "Ominivore's Dilemma".