© 2024 WMRA and WEMC
WMRA : More News, Less Noise WEMC: The Valley's Home for Classical Music
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Polyface Farming In The Valley

Wikimedia Commons
Eggmobile Chickens at Polyface

Joel Salatin from Polyface Farms in the Shenandoah Valley has been at the forefront of the Farm to Table movement for years.  His new book Polyface Micro describes how anyone can use his farming techniques on a small homestead scale.  

He’s our speaker for November's Books & Brews at Pale Fire Brewing Company.  WMRA’s Chris Boros spoke with Joel and asked him to describe the obstacles he faced when first starting the farm.

Joel Salatin:  I think the probably the biggest hurdle at that time, was getting people aware of more authentic, alternative to what was in the supermarket.  Back in the 70s, these great big conglomerates that we have today, they were still up-and-comers and there was a fair amount of competition in the marketplace. So initially it was just trying to get people to understand there can be a difference in an egg

WMRA:  And there were a lot of regulations you had to deal with too at the beginning, right?

JS:  Yes, fairly early on we ran into regulations regarding outdoor, poultry processing, for example, and these were not matters of quality, they were just matters of regulatory, licensing, compliance, things like that. And the problem with these regulations is they start sincerely for sure. I don't deny any sincerity in this, but what happens is they become a one-size-fits-all and I well remember some of these meetings and they would sit there and just marvel at how the regulatory climate just created this one-size-fits-all. And I remember them sitting there saying is it possible that when you wrote this, you could not have conceived of a place as different, small, and clean as Polyface. And of course, they all admitted, we weren't thinking of them, we were thinking of the big outfits. I actually wrote a book about it - Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal to itemize many of these kind of run-ins we had with the bureaucracy.

Credit Wikimedia Commons
/
Wikimedia Commons
Joel Salatin

WMRA:  You've been called by a lot of people the most famous farmer in the world. What's that like to get that kind of praise?

JS:  Oh, listen I put my britches on one leg at a time too.  I feel like Cinderella some days, you know, I've been in the ashes and suddenly I'm at this ball. It's exciting but the tragedy in our mind is we wish that we would be normal. You know, that this this is just the way it was. The tragedy is that this is not more common. But anyway, it is what it is and it's been exciting to mentor and encourage thousands of others around the world to embrace a more animal-friendly, ecology friendly, earthworm friendly type of farming.

Credit Wikimedia Commons

WMRA:  Earlier you talked a little bit about Polyface eggs, and when you open up a conventional egg and then you compare it to a Polyface egg, there is a huge difference. The shell’s harder, that yolk is bright, orange or bright yellow. So what what's going on there? What makes it so different?

JS:  Well, there are a couple differences. One of the main ones, of course, is the grass, the green material, the salad bar. We all know, chickens are omnivores. And so we all know the importance of salad. And so for the chicken, the salad is also extremely important along with daylight.  Chickens are extremely hormonal and tied into sunlight.  When they are denied fresh sunshine and denied fresh salad material it devitalizes the egg that they produce.  We participated with 12 other pasture poultry producers in the country several years ago in a nutritional study.  We compared our eggs to the USDA standard and when we did that study I think we measured something like ten nutrients. One was folic acid.  The standard egg in the supermarket is 48 micrograms of folic acid per egg and ours averaged 1038 micrograms per egg. So, you know, we're not talking about little changes. We're talking about almost exponential magnitudes of nutrient density of nutrient change.

Credit Wikimedia Commons
/
Wikimedia Commons
Joel Salatin

WMRA:  Something you do to At Polyface I want to talk to you about is that you take on a lot of apprentices through your stewardship program. Can you talk a little bit about that and why is it so important for you to teach people your methods? I would think some people in your position would want to keep these ideas secret so you can be the leader in this movement, but you want to share with everyone.

JS:  Oh, absolutely. I'm a total believer in abundance and not scarcity. Right now in the US in the next 15 years, 50% of all agriculture equity, that's land, buildings, equipment, all that agriculture equity is going to change hands in the next 15 years because the average farmer is now 60 years old and we believe here that we need sharp innovative savvy people caressing are ecological umbilical if we're going to have a nest as a legacy to leave to our children.