August 22, 2024 • 39 mins
---------- Originally Aired on the Good Foods Podcast ----------
Joel returns and talks about his many travels but his own personal journey as well. You'll hear about the farm itself and you'll also get a snapshot into who Polyface approaches things and get a few tips along the way about compost, chickens of course and more.
We were blessed to have Joel with us again and right after his trip to South America and the stories he tells about that most recent trip are fascinating. But then again, personally, all of Joel's stories are to me.
Polyface website ➡️ https://rb.gy/fc9c5
Instagram ➡️ https://rb.gy/6f7tg
Facebook ➡️ https://rb.gy/ws56d
Polyface Tours ➡️ https://rb.gy/jh33q
The Farm Store ➡️ 540-885-3590
Polyface Online Store ➡️ https://rb.gy/4matv
The Good Foods podcast is hosted by Shardan Sandoval and it’s possible that you've heard my voice on a commercial here and there, particularly since I'm currently one of the many talented National Creative Production Designers for iHeartMedia and to date, I voiced and produced commercials that have aired from Hartford to Hawaii.
The Good Foods podcast was created and hosted by Shardan Sandoval in March of 2023 and was active until September of 2024.
Joel returns and talks about his many travels but his own personal journey as well. You'll hear about the farm itself and you'll also get a snapshot into who Polyface approaches things and get a few tips along the way about compost, chickens of course and more.
We were blessed to have Joel with us again and right after his trip to South America and the stories he tells about that most recent trip are fascinating. But then again, personally, all of Joel's stories are to me.
Polyface website ➡️ https://rb.gy/fc9c5
Instagram ➡️ https://rb.gy/6f7tg
Facebook ➡️ https://rb.gy/ws56d
Polyface Tours ➡️ https://rb.gy/jh33q
The Farm Store ➡️ 540-885-3590
Polyface Online Store ➡️ https://rb.gy/4matv
The Good Foods podcast is hosted by Shardan Sandoval and it’s possible that you've heard my voice on a commercial here and there, particularly since I'm currently one of the many talented National Creative Production Designers for iHeartMedia and to date, I voiced and produced commercials that have aired from Hartford to Hawaii.
The Good Foods podcast was created and hosted by Shardan Sandoval in March of 2023 and was active until September of 2024.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello. I'm Joel Salaton, a poly fased farm and this
is the Good Foods Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
All of us are on a journey towards better health,
and we're grateful that you've allowed us to join you
on your quest in this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
I'm kind of with Michael Pollan when he wrote Omnivore's Dilemma.
He said, if it wasn't available before nineteen hundred, we
probably shouldn't eat it. And we can all be thankful
that hot dogs were introduced at the eighteen ninety World Spare,
and so hot dogs just came in, you know, ten
years under the marker for the nineteen hundred cutoff of
decent food.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
This is the Good Foods Podcast and now here's your
host show Dan.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Joel, thank you again for coming back on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Thank you for having me. Great to be here.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
I was thinking about something that you said in our
first conversation about old farmers aging out, and I wondered
what retirement looks like for Joel Sallison. Is it just
passed the pearly gates.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Well, I'll tell you I get kind of emotional on
this particular spot because most farmers, when they're my age,
they're alone. I mean, farming is a little bit of
a lonely thing anyway. You know, you're out there in
the field and you're doing your thing. But most farmers today,
when they're you know, past their mid fifties, their kids
are gone. You know, a lot of times the farm
(01:24):
kids don't want the farm. They want to get away.
And even the farmer doesn't want their kids to farm.
They want a quote unquote better life for them. I'll
be sixty seven in February, and you hit this age
and you're and you're alone. And so the blessing of
my life is that I'm surrounded by this team of
young people late twenties, early thirties that are just gung ho, enthusiastic,
(01:48):
ready to go. And I can almost just wish something
would happen and they just go do it, you know.
And it's just wonderful to have this level of bright eyed,
bushy tailed, you know, enthusiasm around me every day. It
really helps to keep you young. It helps me to
I got to hustle to keep up with them, you know,
and that's a good thing. And so for me, I
just see you know, continued encouragement from my part and
(02:13):
providing vision and mission focus, stay current. And of course
you know, these young people, they know all the technology.
So I don't even touch the website. I don't touch
any of this stuff. But they do all that sort
of thing. So they're not all just carrying buckets of
water to chickens there. You know, it's a team that's
you know, that's involved with you know, marketing and the
(02:34):
sales and different things. But to be able to just
be with them every day and have their enthusiasm rub
off as you age is truly a delight and a blessing.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
All kidding aside. I mean, it's kind of hard to
leave the gig when it's right outside your front door.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yeah no, I don't intend to leave here. I intend
to die with my boots on and maybe with a
chainsaw in my hand or something. But I have no
intention of you know, leaving slowing down, but you know,
not slow down, slow down physically, but not mentally. And
so yeah, I'm I'm here for the duration. I'm not
planning to go anywhere.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
You know. It's funny because people, you know, our age,
you'd hear people say, and you're still hear it. I
still say, you know, I'm going to work, you know,
till I drop and that was a bad thing. And
I was talking to my tax guy and he's up
there and I said, well, i'll see you next year,
and he's like, god willing, and I goes, well, hopefully
you keep going. He goes, yeah. I talked to my
doctor and told him I was going to keep working
and my doctor said, yeah, keep working.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Why not? Yeah? Absolutely. You know, the medical whatever studies
show that when you drop out of kind of drop
out of feeling needed. I mean, feeling needed is one
of the deepest you know, human needs, feeling needed, And
as soon as you don't feel needed, then you know,
(03:54):
you plummet pretty fat. That's why even a pet in
an elderly person's house, even a pet can extend life.
They've shown just because well I need to get up
and be the you know, and so just that alone
is enough. And so if you're staying mentally and physically
active with you know, important things to do. The world
is full of people who retired with no hobbies and
(04:15):
within a year or two they're gone because you know,
suddenly their life purpose is gone.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah, and your worldview probably just all of a sudden shrinks.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah. So I mean, if you stay active with even
you know, even volunteer service or or something. You know,
if you're going to retire, there's nothing wrong with retirement.
But if you are, then stay active with something. Devote
your attention to something that's meaningful, that adds meaning and
purpose to your life.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Absolutely. What's different between the summer versus the winter as
far as the to do list is concerned, and what
stays the same no matter what the season.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Well, let's see for us, certainly, what stays the same
is gathering eggs. Chickens lay every day, and so we
gather eggs every day of the year. That's one thing
that stays the same. The thing it changes, The big
thing is the poultry out on pasture in the summer.
Of course, we have broilers and we have turkeys. This
time of year, we don't have any meat chickens or turkeys.
(05:10):
That's the broiler of the meat chicken. We do have
the layers. That's why we gather eggs. The chickens are
not out in the pasture anymore. We move from the
pasture management and all that entails with, you know, setting
up electric fences, moving portable shades and things like that.
Those layers are now in hoopalses on deep bedding, and
so the actual daily chore time is a little bit
(05:33):
less because you know, we're not moving them around on pasture.
We did put a lot of attention on putting a
nice deep tar carbonaceous diaper in there for the winter,
but that's the extent of that. The cows are still
out on rest. They'll be out through most of January.
I'm sure. Then once they start on hay, then they'll
you know, we'll have to start feeding hay for them.
(05:53):
But the main difference for us between warm season cold
season is the the meat birds of the turkeys, that
are basically a six month on, six month off program,
And so in the winter when they're not here, that's
when we catch up on you know, construction projects, maintenance.
You know, obviously cut firewood where I mean, that's a
(06:14):
huge difference. Right now in the summer we don't burn firewood.
Now I'm burning firewood, so I have to stoak the
stove every day, and you know, do that sort of thing.
We have an outdoor wood furnace that heats our house
at Mom's Allison. I got to keep that up and
do that routinely.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Bill Gates, the farmland owner, good thing or not.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
You know, I don't get all bit out of shape
about that. I think that he is trying to hedge
his bets. He's thinking that we're going to eliminate livestock
and authentic meat. Notice he's buying crop land. Now, when
Ted Turner, and you're old enough to remember, when Ted
Turner was America's largest landowner, he was buying range land
(06:56):
because he was trying to bring back the bison, and
he raised you know, thousands of thousands of bison. But
Bill Gates is not buying range land. He's buying cropland
farmland because he thinks that he's going to be the
supplier for the lab meat, fake meat, the whole bioreactor
cell culture stuff. That's the big thing that a lot
(07:18):
of people don't understand. They hear about these you know
these we're making meat in these you know, vats of
stuff as if it just can you know, grow out
of thin air. But it takes a feedstock, and the
feedstock is usually corn and soybeans, and you know it's
grain crops. And so Bill Gates is buying cropland, he's
not buying rangeland he's not wanting animals. He's wanting to
(07:40):
produce grain with chemicals, of course, to be the feed
stock for these this artificial fake meat movement. That's where
he's positioning himself. Now, as far as you know, I
can't do anything about it, and so I'm a kind
of a big believer of Stephen Covey. Stay within your
sphere of influence. And I can't do anything about Bill Gates,
(08:02):
you know, buying farm mESC It is what it is.
I can't change it. I can't do anything about it,
So I don't worry about it. What I do. What
I can do is encourage other people to farm better,
to eat better, to you know, invest in homesteads and
some self reliance. That's what I can do. If that
ends up over time making Bill Gate's irrelevant, that's fine.
(08:25):
And if it doesn't, well, it's still the right thing
to do.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
So you're probably thinking this weird notion of eating real food,
what's going on there?
Speaker 1 (08:33):
I sure am. I'm kind of with Michael Pollen when
he wrote Omnivor's Dilemma, he said, if it wasn't available
before nineteen hundred, we probably shouldn't eat it. That's kind
of the cutoff point. To industrial food. And we can
all be thankful that hot dogs were introduced at the
eighteen ninety World Spare, and so hot dogs just came in,
you know, ten years under the marker for the nineteen
(08:55):
hundred cutoff of decent food.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
How was your trip to South America.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
It was good, It was fascinating. It was quick, but
the reception there was fantastic. A couple of high points
of that was that from the airport to the city
of Median, which was you know about I don't know,
thirty or forty miles through over a mountain and around.
What was most striking to me was that every single
(09:21):
place had a fence around it and was grazed by animals.
You know, even when you go by like a hospital
and the hospital lawn was being grazed by a Jersey
dairy cow and so you know, they weren't running a
bunch of lawnmowers and everything around. There's still very much
a culture of agriculture and animals there, and so it
(09:44):
was really refreshing to see the you know, the roadside
ditches and the you know, there was production going on.
That was one thing, even kind of in the urban area,
you know, it would be a flock of sheep or
a dairy cow or something, you know, even kind of
in the urban area. Thing that was interesting was that
the country, and several people told me this, that the
(10:07):
country is not that far removed from a true agrarian background,
and so a return to agrarianism is a lot easier
in a culture like that than it isn't a culture
like America or Germany or you know, what we call
a first world country. An awareness and a return to
(10:30):
self reliant food production locally and regionally and even nationwide
is much easier when you have it veered so far
from those agrarian roots. So they said, for here. As
I was presenting, you know, my stuff to them, they said, man,
the road back, the road to what you're doing, is
much easier here than it is, you know, in the US.
(10:54):
That was interesting. I did have dinner with one family.
They had a large dairy. They were milking five hundred cows.
Now get this, they were milking five hundred cows by hand,
by hand.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
They were yeah, no machinery, you know, labor's cheap, and
they were milking them in the field that they had
about what they tell me, maybe twenty people maybe thirty
through milk hand milk, and they drive out to the
field with a great big bulk tank with a compressor
on it to chill down, and they actually pour the
(11:31):
milk into this big portable bulk tank and so the
cows don't have to walk to a parner and the
milkers are out in the field and it's all done
right there. And then they toke this big milk tank
back to the headquarters and the truck comes and picks
it up. But it was just the thought of having
a five hundred cow dairy. Was no equipment. It was
(11:52):
like something from Afar, you know, from well it was
a foreign country, from a you know, front, from a
strange place, so it's very different. But my goodness, what
a climate there. I mean, you know, no frost, sixty
seven inches of ray in a year. I mean, it's
just a burdened resource rich, abundant vegetation. And it was
(12:14):
truly remarkable.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Milking that many cows. That's an all day adventure because
I was a team the last time I milk the cow,
and that takes at least a half hour minimum, So
you're talking right sometime.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Well, it depends on how good a milker you are,
and how much milk the cow gives. So these cows
are kind of a dual purpose. They only give a
galloner two a day, and so they're not milking you know,
five and six gallons. And so they said the average
good milker could milk out a cow in about ten minutes.
I would love to go back and see. You know,
(12:47):
I just can't imagine what looking at thirty hand milkers
running through five hundred cows out of the field. I mean,
just that would make great photography, I would think, true.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
True, So are the those types of gatherings just a
lecture followed by a Q and A walk me through that.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Yeah, So that was a lecture followed by yes, the
Q and A. And then I went and I met
with folks outside for a good while. Then I met
with some families. We had lunch, and then they had
me talk to actually do a Q and A with
(13:26):
about I don't know, twenty five young farmers, all under thirty,
maybe even under twenty five. In other words, they had
a kind of a young farmer track, and it was
absolutely delightful. We of course had an interpreter, so you know,
I spoke through an interpreter in real time. But yeah,
it was delightful.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
What sort of topics did you discuss? Is it kind
of always the same when you do these things.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Well, it depends on what they want. I mean, obviously,
this was my first time to Columbia, so there I
basically did a you know, did my a dog and coney,
you know, a PowerPoint walk through the farm, you know,
come take a virtual tour poly phase, which allows me
to touch on not only what we do, but why
we do it, and you know, the different things. If
(14:13):
I've been to a place several times obviously, then they want,
you know, different kinds of information. But yeah, I'm scheduled
to go to Paraguay in February, so i'll, you know,
I'll get to do a similar kind of approach there.
I'm going to Austria to do a two day master class,
so that's kind of my signature pieces. A two day
master class. What that is is the first day is
(14:36):
a practical how to, how to do you know a
carbon economy, pasture based livestock, that whole thing, basically how
to Day two. The morning is devoted to all about marketing,
how do you market this stuff? And then the afternoon
is devoted to team building. How do you get labor,
how do you inspire labor, how do you build a team?
(15:00):
Those sorts of things. That's kind of my signature thing.
And I'll be doing that in Vienna, in Austria in April,
i guess. And then I'm going on to boodhet Pesh,
Hungary for the first time to do a condensed I'm
going to do a condensed one of those in Hungary.
They only want me for one day. You know, budgets,
(15:20):
some people want you for two day, I want you
for one, so I'm want you for three. There's plenty
of material to go for. You know a long time,
you know, you expanded and contracted. However you want to.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
What's the farthest you've ever traveled, Joel to give one
of these presentations.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Well, probably Australia. I've been to Australia sixteen times. They're
hot for this kind of stuff. The neat thing about
Australia is they speak English, so you don't have the
language barrier. And even though it's a harsher climate than here,
it's a relatively wealthy country. And so what that means
is that they have a little more freedom. Like when
(15:56):
I went to South Africa last fall and did several
seminars there. In South Africa, you know, the beauty of
a place like South Africa is labor is cheap and plentiful.
But the downside is marketing becomes a little more difficult
because because things are spread out and you don't have
(16:18):
good distribution, you don't have good infrastructure to be able
to move stuff around. And so every place has its
silver lining and its problem to Australia is overregulated by
like crazy like here, but people do have money to
if you say, well, you need to buy a chicken plucker,
well they can go out and buy a chicken plucker.
Whereas in South Africa, you say buy a chicken plucker
(16:41):
and they you know, man, you know, I don't know.
I'll take half a year's where the salary is to
buy a chicken plucker. So, you know, the economics changes
things dramatically. So in Australia it's yeah, we can buy
the equipment, but we can't afford the labor. In South Africa
is we can afford the labor, but we can't buy
the equipment. You know, to always something, Yeah, everybody has
(17:02):
a liability and an asset.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yeah, what's been one of the most surprising things that
farmers from other countries have asked.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
To ooh surprising things? Ooh man. I think one of
my biggest kind of aha moments was in Australia actually,
where I was speaking on the steps of Parliament. I
arrived there and they were in the throes of some
legislative stuff, trying to create some whiggle room for farmers
(17:30):
to direct market stuff into their communities, and I quipped
something about, well, at least we have freedom of speech,
and I was quickly reminded by them, no, we don't
have freedom of speech. They don't have a Bill of rights.
(17:52):
And so that was a bit of an aloha moment.
You know, we Americans, we take these things for granted.
We assume everybody has this, but they don't. They don't
have that, the Bill of rights. That's not a good
answer to your question you ask you know, what's the
strangest thing you've been asked? But I can't think of
a strassing I've been asked as much as I've just
been touched by the cultural differences that are Sometimes you
(18:14):
don't think about you think, well, we have common roots.
I mean, you know, Australia came out of Great Britain,
the US came out of Great Britain. We have well,
we do have a lot of commonality, but boy, we're
the only country with a Bill of rights. And when
you can look at that bill of rights, I mean,
it's it's powerful, it's profound, and we just don't appreciate it. Here.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Our content coordinator, Morgan Mark, has a better nickname for
you instead of the lunatic farmer. She calls you the
most famous farmer in America. And I think it's got
a nice ring to it.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Joe, Well, that may be. I didn't aspire to that,
of course, But if I'm the most famous farmer in America,
I wish I had a larger ability to affect how
farming is done in America, you know. But anyway, maybe
I'm most famous among you know, non farmers, right to
the farmers. That's probably the case. That's probably the case.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Could you take your farming knowledge and farm anywhere? Would
the knowledge you possess transfer easily to another place, another country?
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yes, the principles are the same. Now, the the actual
outworking of it is not the same. But the actual principles,
whether you're sandy soil, play soil, cold, hot, dry or wet,
it doesn't matter. All soils respond to organic matter and
decomposition compost is what has driven fertility forever. And so
(19:37):
now with that being said, if you're on the you know,
if you're out on the beach and you're near the ocean,
you have sandy soils. Probably the best you can ever
get to is maybe four percent organic matter. If you're
out in you know, in the middle of Germany or
Great Britain, you can probably go up as high as
twelve or fifteen percent organic matter, you know, when it's
(19:59):
more temperate and don't have the freezing thaw. So every
place has its difference, obviously with livestock, which you know
that we're into livestock more. Obviously, your grass growth, you know,
changes as you go into colder areas. One of the
most interestating things about asture growth and grass growth is
that as you head north, let's just say, up into
(20:21):
Alberta and Saskatchewan, they get the same amount of sun
per year as we get here in Virginia, or you
get even in Florida. The difference is that it's concentrated,
so they have longer days in the summer, shorter days
in the winter. So the sunlight as the Earth tilts
(20:42):
on its axis and goes around, and it's yearly moved
as you go away from the equator. The amount of
sunlight per square yard is the same everywhere, but some
places it's compressed. I mean, like, why can they grow
you know, eight pound cabbages in Alaska in five weeks? Well,
(21:07):
because in Alaska in the summer they get as much
sun in five weeks as we get here in ten
because as longer than in the winter, you know, they
don't even see the south on for a couple of weeks,
you know, it's completely dark, and so that really changes
the whole livestock grazing, pasture growth system when you have
(21:28):
either elongation like you have in the tropics, for example,
versus the compression that you have in the north. So
you know, those things are the same. But even with
those differences, still the grass grows in a sigmoid curve.
The animals it responds to rest, rest and you know, impaction,
(21:49):
and all the basic principles stay the same. It's just
how you actually implement your actual you know, schedule and itinerary,
you know, function and of course, what you can grow,
you know, the amount of time between your frost dates,
you know. I mean there are some places in the
US where there are you know, some places in Idaho
(22:10):
and stuff where there is no frost free date in
a whole year, you know, And so that of course
complicates things. But you know the silver lining. For example,
in dry areas, dry areas can never grow as much
grass as diepparate areas, but the grass is weigh stronger.
So a pound of grass in the Vada is worth
(22:30):
three pounds of grass here. So even though they can
never produce as much, it's much stronger because it's more
mineralized than ours here. So their big problem is drought here,
but they have lots of minerals because they don't get
any rain here. Our problem is leeching and lack of
(22:50):
minerals because we have more rain. So yeah, you have
those differences, But the basic foundational principles of movement or
game anagmatter, you know, mineralization, those kind of things stay
the same anywhere in the world.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
So I know, you can test it in the lab,
but is it possible to bring a patch of soil
up to your face and smell it, and now know
that it's healthy. Or does all soil just smell the same.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Yeah, you can smell the actinomycets and the micoriza, and
you can smell like putrification. You can smell. You can
definitely smell the differences. I will tell you that you
can taste them even more. And so as soil becomes
(23:35):
or an acidic, it moves into a more acid bitter taste.
If it's very fertile, it has a much more a
less brittle or less bitter, sweeter taste. And so yes,
you can smell it, and you can also see it.
(23:55):
I mean, the structure of good soil should look like
chocolate cake, and or soil tends to look more like
like bricks because you don't have the poor structure in it.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
One would look like a moist chocolate cake, and maybe
the bad one would look like seven day old brownie.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Yeah, that's a fair assessment, assuming they both have you know,
some black you know, black soil in them. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Speaking of smell, do all pig farms smell bad? Does
that just come with the territory?
Speaker 1 (24:25):
No, we raise several hundred hogs a year here and
they do not smell. You could go eat a sandwich
in with the pigs. Now, pig manore generally is smelly.
But what you have to do is there are two
things that we have found that really change obviously the odors.
One is you go to deep betting what we call
a carbonaceous diaper. Pigs are actually very fastidious. If you
(24:48):
ever raise a guinea pig, a little pet guinea pig,
they pick a corner and they poop in the corner
all the time. And pigs are that way. Pigs choose
a bathroom spot and that's where they go, and whether
they're out in a field or in a building or whatever,
they tend to go in a particular spot. And so
when they're outside during the season, obviously we're moving them
(25:11):
every few days to a new spot so you don't
get the accumulation of the manure in that spot. The
other thing is that when they eat a lot of fiber,
whether it's hay or grass or weeds or whatever, that
completely changes their manure because they're getting way more carbon
through their manure than they get when they're just on
concentrated feeds. And so in the winter, when we have
(25:32):
the pigs in these oop houses for the winter, we
have them in for about one hundred days in the winter.
You know, they're on a deep betting pack usually you know,
wood chips, and then every day we feed them some
old junkie a you know, something that's got moldy or
rained on or something, and we feed them about double
what they would possibly eat, and we actually a lot
(25:54):
of times dump it on their toilet area, so they
eat about half of it and they poop on the
other half. And so that gives them fiber and stuff
in the winter and completely changes the odor of their
manure in the winter because they're getting all this wonderful
you know, carbonaceous fiber in their diet. They don't grow
quite as fast, but they are much cleaner, much healthier.
(26:17):
It's a much more enjoyable work environment, you know, to
work with your pigs when they don't smell bad, when
you can go up and rub on them and love
on them and uh, and it's all enjoyable.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
You mentioned chickens and laying eggs. About how many eggs
do your chickens lay in a week, Joel.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
So we try to average something over fifty percent per year,
So in other words, there are three hundred and sixty
five days in a year so you know, we like
to get somewhere around one hundred and ninety to two
hundred eggs a year per hen, and that will fluctuate.
Obviously in the spring they lay more, you know, they'll
(26:55):
jump on up there to eighty percent in the spring.
And this time of year, we're in December. We're just
a few days away from the December solstice. Listen at
our farm, we live for December twenty first. December twenty
first is a huge day around here because as soon
as December twenty first comes, the days start getting longer.
(27:17):
Within a week of December twenty one, you can see
the chickens start to perk up in their egg production.
So chickens like you know, increasing day length. That stimulates
all their you know, hormones, all that stuff. So right
now we're down probably at thirty percent lay for our hens,
and within a month will probably be at fifty five.
So and now those numbers, if somebody's listening to this
(27:39):
and they know a lot about chickens, they'll say, well,
those aren't real high numbers, no, but we're not using
the hybrid you know, super hyper ultra you know layers,
these are heavy breed old you know, bard rocks right
island red and you know black austral warps and silver
laced wine dots, old heavy dual purpose birds. And so
(28:00):
we're not trying to get maximum production per bird. We're
enjoying a longevity. So these birds will lay goodness into
their third year even and do quite well. So what
we want is heartiness and longevity. And not only that,
but if they don't lay quite as well, they're not
pulling as much energy from the chicken's body. You know,
(28:21):
these super hyper egg layers that do you you know,
ninety five percent in the industry. Those birds burn out
in a year. They literally suck the calcium, they suck
everything right out of the body. To me, intuitively, it
makes sense that a chicken that's not sucking all of
her energy out of her body can make a more
nutritious egg than a chicken that's, you know, that's every
(28:44):
day right on the edge of her maximum capacity. A
little bit of cushion in there, a little bit of forgiveness,
you know, comes through with a little more power in
the egg.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Here's something I've never really kind of understood, Joel, is
the labeling on egg cartons when you get them in
the grocery sto or you know you have farm raised,
you have the Omega three title. What exactly do all
those titles mean on the egg cartons, Joe.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Well, they mean whatever the USDA says they mean, and
that's not always it's not always what you and I think.
You know, when it says free range, it does mean
the burger outside. It means that they have access to,
you know, a pop door that gives them access to
a patio that they can step outside if they want to.
(29:31):
But it doesn't have to be pastor doesn't have to
be grass, and they certainly never have to step outside,
and most of them don't. So you know, all those terms,
the Omega three stuff, that's all about the Omega three
Omega sixes, and there's a lot of manipulation of that,
you know, with merry gold pedals and things. We do
it with grass, or you can manipulate it with artificials.
(29:52):
We don't manipulate with any artificials. And so, you know,
just because something well, let me answer it this way.
It's like getting flour fortified with vitamin A and D
if they hadn't taken the brand out and taken all
the nutrition out of it. In the bleaching and the milling,
it would have had plenty of vitamin A and D
(30:14):
in it, but they strip all the nutrients out and
then add something back and call it, you know, better flour.
And so a lot of that kind of manipulation is
done in the egg industry as well, and of course
there's a lot of clever speak and stuff going on
in the the egg industry. You know, Loose owls just
simply means they're not in a cage. You know, Natural
(30:36):
of course doesn't mean anything. You know, Cage free obviously
means they're not in cages, which you know, we can
argue is better than if they are in cages. But
certainly even you know, pastured or free range has now
been you know, very much abused in the you know,
in the industry. And so you come back to check
(30:56):
out the website, look at the pictures. You know. In general,
if you want my bottom line, I don't think that
you can raise poultry properly in a stationary house. Now
I'm not talking about you know, in in clement weather.
We have ours inside for you know, for about one
hundred days in the dead of winter. Otherwise they're out
(31:17):
on pasture and they're and the portable housing allows you
to move them routinely to new pasture. That's the signature
of true pastor and poultry.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
So what's your best suggestion for someone that's starting a
backyard garden and trying to produce the best compost for
their plants.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Joe, Well, the first thing is to find a source
of carbon. And that can be you know, look around.
That can be leaves, it can be wood chips, it
could be bark tailings. But you know, find a source
of carbon. That's number one. And of course it can
be your own lawn. You know, you can use your
(31:54):
own lawn clippings, has mults in your garden. But the
main thing is to find the source of carbon. One
of the best things you can do is a backyard
or you have a you know, a backyard is to
have a small flock of chickens or even some rabbits.
You can raise rabbits for meat. They're quiet and don't
stir up the neighborhood with you know, with noise. And
(32:17):
one of the reasons to have either some backyard rabbits
or backyard chickens is as a fertility source for your garden.
Because good compost needs carbon and nitrogen. Well, carbon is
you know, leaves and anything brown, and nitrogen comes primarily
from manure. Obviously, you know, you could poop in a
(32:40):
bucket and get you manure, okay, and that's of course
been done around the world. But barring that, you need
some source of nitrogen rich material in order to really
make your compost. Now, you know, some people in an
urban sector will hook up with like food, most feod
(33:00):
waste is highly nitrogenous, and so if you can get
a lot of lettuce, you know, green lettuce, leaves, you know,
sloppy stuff, meat scraps, things like that, those are all
high end in nitrogen. So think about nitrogen as related
to protein and carbon as related to round leafy type stuff.
(33:23):
And so composting is an art as much as a science.
You know, it should smell good. One of the problems
in the backyard is getting enough material at one time
to make a compost. Paul to get as much ingredients
together as possible, which is one of the reasons why
I like, you know, for the backyard or just a
little you know, five to six chickens and a little
(33:43):
chicken run with deep betting. Let the chicken stir it,
air rate it and every year, you know, you'll get
a couple of cubic yards of composts. And in a
backyard situation, that can be a great way to you know,
keep your soil fertile.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
What's one of the things that maybe was a challenge
throughout this journey that you turned around to you and
your family's advantage.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Yeah, so one of the one of the first ones
that comes to mind was as we started getting a
little bit of notoriety and fame, people began coming. And
we have a twenty four seven three sixty five open
door policy. Anyone can come from anywhere in the world
anytime to see anything anywhere unannounced. That's our commitment to transparency.
(34:25):
And I will tell you, shardan that keeps you on
your toes when you know anyone from somewhere in the
world can come and see things. There's no locked doors,
and so I keep you on your toes well as
more and more people start coming. Of course, I'm the extrovert,
and so I love people, and so you know, i'd
always want to greet them. Where you're from and what
are you doing that sort of thing. Well, Teresa, my wife,
(34:46):
is the introvert she's great one on one, but doesn't
like crowds and donet like she likes her space. And
so as people started coming more and more, Yeah, this
is back whatever twenty years ago, we started feeling pitched,
both of us. I was feeling pitched because, man, I
can't get anything done. I'm out here talking to people
all the time. I can't get any farm work done.
She was pitched because why I can't go out and
(35:08):
work in a flower bed because somebody's gonna cost me,
you know, and and start yacking. And so as we
talked it over, we said, you know what, let's let's
see if we can if we can funnel people in
at a certain scheduled time, and that way, if people
want to talk to us, they'll schedule their visit at
(35:29):
that time, and you'll know when a lot of people
are going to be here, and I'll know that I
don't have to greet everybody that comes, because if they
wanted to talk to me, they'll come on a schedule time.
And so we started the lunatic tours. Of course I'm
the I'm the lunatic farmer. So we started the lunatic tours.
These are you know, two hours, two hour hay ride tours.
We didn't charge the dime for it. We just wanted
(35:49):
to see can we funnel this. It worked very well
the first season, except by the end of the season
only half the people that signed up came because they
didn't have any skin in the game. But we said, basically,
it's working. We just got to tweak it with a
little bit of skin in the game. So we start
charging ten bucks, you know, ten bucks for the seat
on the haywagon. Kids are free. We could take one
(36:12):
hundred at a time, you know, four hay wagons, two tractors,
and take this tour of the farm and then you know,
I stay around and talk to people in the afternoon
and that sort of thing. Boy, that was a game
changer because now suddenly, when I see somebody come, I
can just wave at them and keep going. I don't
feel like I have to go over and say hi
to them, because if they want to see me, they're
(36:34):
going to look on the schedule, see who these tours are,
and they're going to come on that day. Teresa knows
that when we have the tour day, that's the day.
She stays in the house and does stuff in the
house and doesn't have to go out and see everybody,
and so it freed us up. So it was a
it was a pain point for both of us for
completely different reasons, and it solved both of our pain points.
(36:57):
And today, you know, those who become quite an instant.
People come from over the world to come for the
And now it's gone to two and a half hours
because the farm's a lot bigger, gone to two and
a half hours, and I think it's I think it's
twenty five bucks an now. But basically, we viewed like
a movie. You know, we do hot dogs. People can
have our hot dogs for lunch, some kombucha and some
chocolate milk from a local organic dairy, you know, and
(37:19):
make a day of it. Has solved both of those
problems in that kind of situation.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
And finally, Joel, I know you have a podcast, but
have you considered or have you done an episode featuring
you and another seasoned farmer just sharing your stories and experiences.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
I don't think I have. I don't think I have.
That would be fascinating.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
You could call it the back porch.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yeah, the back porch. It's a good idea. You're full
of good ideas.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
I'm full of something. That's what they say. I'll leave
you with this, Joel. I wanted to thank you for
giving me and my grandson a personal tour this past hour.
And let me tell you. We were coming off that
dirt road and we saw the sign that got out,
took a picture and went over your little bridge there.
I had the GPS on and it was funny because
I'm still looking at the GPS as I'm heading down
(38:04):
to your place and then boom, no bars and I
look at my grandson. I said, I bet everybody sleeps
good out here, and he's like, yeah, because of the farm.
I'm like, no, no ems no emr hitn't you you
know that's what it is.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Yeah, that's right. Now we're in this little where again.
As you know, we're kind of surrounded by these hills
here down into this wonderful bowl. So we're yeah, we're
happy to be here. It's a very quiet space, but
we're always glad, always glad to have visitors. We love.
We want people to come here and feel encouraged and
rejuvenated in their spirit and their emotions and physically, you know,
(38:38):
give you something good to eat. Always welcome folks to
come and visit well.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Thank you for coming back on the podcast, Joeld. You
are a gentleman and a scholar and the most famous
farmer in America. I see what I did there?
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Yeah, you did, you did. Thank you, Shardana. It's wonderful
to be with you. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
The Good Foods podcast is the entertainment purposes I mean
the claims, comments, opinions, or information heard should never be
used in place of your medical provider's advice or your
doctor's direction. Thank you for listening, Follow us on social
media and wherever you get your podcasts. Good Health through
good food, Good Foods, Grocery
Hello. I'm Joel Salaton, a poly fased farm and this
is the Good Foods Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
All of us are on a journey towards better health,
and we're grateful that you've allowed us to join you
on your quest in this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
I'm kind of with Michael Pollan when he wrote Omnivore's Dilemma.
He said, if it wasn't available before nineteen hundred, we
probably shouldn't eat it. And we can all be thankful
that hot dogs were introduced at the eighteen ninety World Spare,
and so hot dogs just came in, you know, ten
years under the marker for the nineteen hundred cutoff of
decent food.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
This is the Good Foods Podcast and now here's your
host show Dan.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Joel, thank you again for coming back on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Thank you for having me. Great to be here.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
I was thinking about something that you said in our
first conversation about old farmers aging out, and I wondered
what retirement looks like for Joel Sallison. Is it just
passed the pearly gates.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Well, I'll tell you I get kind of emotional on
this particular spot because most farmers, when they're my age,
they're alone. I mean, farming is a little bit of
a lonely thing anyway. You know, you're out there in
the field and you're doing your thing. But most farmers today,
when they're you know, past their mid fifties, their kids
are gone. You know, a lot of times the farm
(01:24):
kids don't want the farm. They want to get away.
And even the farmer doesn't want their kids to farm.
They want a quote unquote better life for them. I'll
be sixty seven in February, and you hit this age
and you're and you're alone. And so the blessing of
my life is that I'm surrounded by this team of
young people late twenties, early thirties that are just gung ho, enthusiastic,
(01:48):
ready to go. And I can almost just wish something
would happen and they just go do it, you know.
And it's just wonderful to have this level of bright eyed,
bushy tailed, you know, enthusiasm around me every day. It
really helps to keep you young. It helps me to
I got to hustle to keep up with them, you know,
and that's a good thing. And so for me, I
just see you know, continued encouragement from my part and
(02:13):
providing vision and mission focus, stay current. And of course
you know, these young people, they know all the technology.
So I don't even touch the website. I don't touch
any of this stuff. But they do all that sort
of thing. So they're not all just carrying buckets of
water to chickens there. You know, it's a team that's
you know, that's involved with you know, marketing and the
(02:34):
sales and different things. But to be able to just
be with them every day and have their enthusiasm rub
off as you age is truly a delight and a blessing.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
All kidding aside. I mean, it's kind of hard to
leave the gig when it's right outside your front door.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yeah no, I don't intend to leave here. I intend
to die with my boots on and maybe with a
chainsaw in my hand or something. But I have no
intention of you know, leaving slowing down, but you know,
not slow down, slow down physically, but not mentally. And
so yeah, I'm I'm here for the duration. I'm not
planning to go anywhere.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
You know. It's funny because people, you know, our age,
you'd hear people say, and you're still hear it. I
still say, you know, I'm going to work, you know,
till I drop and that was a bad thing. And
I was talking to my tax guy and he's up
there and I said, well, i'll see you next year,
and he's like, god willing, and I goes, well, hopefully
you keep going. He goes, yeah. I talked to my
doctor and told him I was going to keep working
and my doctor said, yeah, keep working.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Why not? Yeah? Absolutely. You know, the medical whatever studies
show that when you drop out of kind of drop
out of feeling needed. I mean, feeling needed is one
of the deepest you know, human needs, feeling needed, And
as soon as you don't feel needed, then you know,
(03:54):
you plummet pretty fat. That's why even a pet in
an elderly person's house, even a pet can extend life.
They've shown just because well I need to get up
and be the you know, and so just that alone
is enough. And so if you're staying mentally and physically
active with you know, important things to do. The world
is full of people who retired with no hobbies and
(04:15):
within a year or two they're gone because you know,
suddenly their life purpose is gone.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah, and your worldview probably just all of a sudden shrinks.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah. So I mean, if you stay active with even
you know, even volunteer service or or something. You know,
if you're going to retire, there's nothing wrong with retirement.
But if you are, then stay active with something. Devote
your attention to something that's meaningful, that adds meaning and
purpose to your life.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Absolutely. What's different between the summer versus the winter as
far as the to do list is concerned, and what
stays the same no matter what the season.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Well, let's see for us, certainly, what stays the same
is gathering eggs. Chickens lay every day, and so we
gather eggs every day of the year. That's one thing
that stays the same. The thing it changes, The big
thing is the poultry out on pasture in the summer.
Of course, we have broilers and we have turkeys. This
time of year, we don't have any meat chickens or turkeys.
(05:10):
That's the broiler of the meat chicken. We do have
the layers. That's why we gather eggs. The chickens are
not out in the pasture anymore. We move from the
pasture management and all that entails with, you know, setting
up electric fences, moving portable shades and things like that.
Those layers are now in hoopalses on deep bedding, and
so the actual daily chore time is a little bit
(05:33):
less because you know, we're not moving them around on pasture.
We did put a lot of attention on putting a
nice deep tar carbonaceous diaper in there for the winter,
but that's the extent of that. The cows are still
out on rest. They'll be out through most of January.
I'm sure. Then once they start on hay, then they'll
you know, we'll have to start feeding hay for them.
(05:53):
But the main difference for us between warm season cold
season is the the meat birds of the turkeys, that
are basically a six month on, six month off program,
And so in the winter when they're not here, that's
when we catch up on you know, construction projects, maintenance.
You know, obviously cut firewood where I mean, that's a
(06:14):
huge difference. Right now in the summer we don't burn firewood.
Now I'm burning firewood, so I have to stoak the
stove every day, and you know, do that sort of thing.
We have an outdoor wood furnace that heats our house
at Mom's Allison. I got to keep that up and
do that routinely.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Bill Gates, the farmland owner, good thing or not.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
You know, I don't get all bit out of shape
about that. I think that he is trying to hedge
his bets. He's thinking that we're going to eliminate livestock
and authentic meat. Notice he's buying crop land. Now, when
Ted Turner, and you're old enough to remember, when Ted
Turner was America's largest landowner, he was buying range land
(06:56):
because he was trying to bring back the bison, and
he raised you know, thousands of thousands of bison. But
Bill Gates is not buying range land. He's buying cropland
farmland because he thinks that he's going to be the
supplier for the lab meat, fake meat, the whole bioreactor
cell culture stuff. That's the big thing that a lot
(07:18):
of people don't understand. They hear about these you know
these we're making meat in these you know, vats of
stuff as if it just can you know, grow out
of thin air. But it takes a feedstock, and the
feedstock is usually corn and soybeans, and you know it's
grain crops. And so Bill Gates is buying cropland, he's
not buying rangeland he's not wanting animals. He's wanting to
(07:40):
produce grain with chemicals, of course, to be the feed
stock for these this artificial fake meat movement. That's where
he's positioning himself. Now, as far as you know, I
can't do anything about it, and so I'm a kind
of a big believer of Stephen Covey. Stay within your
sphere of influence. And I can't do anything about Bill Gates,
(08:02):
you know, buying farm mESC It is what it is.
I can't change it. I can't do anything about it,
So I don't worry about it. What I do. What
I can do is encourage other people to farm better,
to eat better, to you know, invest in homesteads and
some self reliance. That's what I can do. If that
ends up over time making Bill Gate's irrelevant, that's fine.
(08:25):
And if it doesn't, well, it's still the right thing
to do.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
So you're probably thinking this weird notion of eating real food,
what's going on there?
Speaker 1 (08:33):
I sure am. I'm kind of with Michael Pollen when
he wrote Omnivor's Dilemma, he said, if it wasn't available
before nineteen hundred, we probably shouldn't eat it. That's kind
of the cutoff point. To industrial food. And we can
all be thankful that hot dogs were introduced at the
eighteen ninety World Spare, and so hot dogs just came in,
you know, ten years under the marker for the nineteen
(08:55):
hundred cutoff of decent food.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
How was your trip to South America.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
It was good, It was fascinating. It was quick, but
the reception there was fantastic. A couple of high points
of that was that from the airport to the city
of Median, which was you know about I don't know,
thirty or forty miles through over a mountain and around.
What was most striking to me was that every single
(09:21):
place had a fence around it and was grazed by animals.
You know, even when you go by like a hospital
and the hospital lawn was being grazed by a Jersey
dairy cow and so you know, they weren't running a
bunch of lawnmowers and everything around. There's still very much
a culture of agriculture and animals there, and so it
(09:44):
was really refreshing to see the you know, the roadside
ditches and the you know, there was production going on.
That was one thing, even kind of in the urban area,
you know, it would be a flock of sheep or
a dairy cow or something, you know, even kind of
in the urban area. Thing that was interesting was that
the country, and several people told me this, that the
(10:07):
country is not that far removed from a true agrarian background,
and so a return to agrarianism is a lot easier
in a culture like that than it isn't a culture
like America or Germany or you know, what we call
a first world country. An awareness and a return to
(10:30):
self reliant food production locally and regionally and even nationwide
is much easier when you have it veered so far
from those agrarian roots. So they said, for here. As
I was presenting, you know, my stuff to them, they said, man,
the road back, the road to what you're doing, is
much easier here than it is, you know, in the US.
(10:54):
That was interesting. I did have dinner with one family.
They had a large dairy. They were milking five hundred cows.
Now get this, they were milking five hundred cows by hand,
by hand.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
They were yeah, no machinery, you know, labor's cheap, and
they were milking them in the field that they had
about what they tell me, maybe twenty people maybe thirty
through milk hand milk, and they drive out to the
field with a great big bulk tank with a compressor
on it to chill down, and they actually pour the
(11:31):
milk into this big portable bulk tank and so the
cows don't have to walk to a parner and the
milkers are out in the field and it's all done
right there. And then they toke this big milk tank
back to the headquarters and the truck comes and picks
it up. But it was just the thought of having
a five hundred cow dairy. Was no equipment. It was
(11:52):
like something from Afar, you know, from well it was
a foreign country, from a you know, front, from a
strange place, so it's very different. But my goodness, what
a climate there. I mean, you know, no frost, sixty
seven inches of ray in a year. I mean, it's
just a burdened resource rich, abundant vegetation. And it was
(12:14):
truly remarkable.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Milking that many cows. That's an all day adventure because
I was a team the last time I milk the cow,
and that takes at least a half hour minimum, So
you're talking right sometime.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Well, it depends on how good a milker you are,
and how much milk the cow gives. So these cows
are kind of a dual purpose. They only give a
galloner two a day, and so they're not milking you know,
five and six gallons. And so they said the average
good milker could milk out a cow in about ten minutes.
I would love to go back and see. You know,
(12:47):
I just can't imagine what looking at thirty hand milkers
running through five hundred cows out of the field. I mean,
just that would make great photography, I would think, true.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
True, So are the those types of gatherings just a
lecture followed by a Q and A walk me through that.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Yeah, So that was a lecture followed by yes, the
Q and A. And then I went and I met
with folks outside for a good while. Then I met
with some families. We had lunch, and then they had
me talk to actually do a Q and A with
(13:26):
about I don't know, twenty five young farmers, all under thirty,
maybe even under twenty five. In other words, they had
a kind of a young farmer track, and it was
absolutely delightful. We of course had an interpreter, so you know,
I spoke through an interpreter in real time. But yeah,
it was delightful.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
What sort of topics did you discuss? Is it kind
of always the same when you do these things.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Well, it depends on what they want. I mean, obviously,
this was my first time to Columbia, so there I
basically did a you know, did my a dog and coney,
you know, a PowerPoint walk through the farm, you know,
come take a virtual tour poly phase, which allows me
to touch on not only what we do, but why
we do it, and you know, the different things. If
(14:13):
I've been to a place several times obviously, then they want,
you know, different kinds of information. But yeah, I'm scheduled
to go to Paraguay in February, so i'll, you know,
I'll get to do a similar kind of approach there.
I'm going to Austria to do a two day master class,
so that's kind of my signature pieces. A two day
master class. What that is is the first day is
(14:36):
a practical how to, how to do you know a
carbon economy, pasture based livestock, that whole thing, basically how
to Day two. The morning is devoted to all about marketing,
how do you market this stuff? And then the afternoon
is devoted to team building. How do you get labor,
how do you inspire labor, how do you build a team?
(15:00):
Those sorts of things. That's kind of my signature thing.
And I'll be doing that in Vienna, in Austria in April,
i guess. And then I'm going on to boodhet Pesh,
Hungary for the first time to do a condensed I'm
going to do a condensed one of those in Hungary.
They only want me for one day. You know, budgets,
(15:20):
some people want you for two day, I want you
for one, so I'm want you for three. There's plenty
of material to go for. You know a long time,
you know, you expanded and contracted. However you want to.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
What's the farthest you've ever traveled, Joel to give one
of these presentations.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Well, probably Australia. I've been to Australia sixteen times. They're
hot for this kind of stuff. The neat thing about
Australia is they speak English, so you don't have the
language barrier. And even though it's a harsher climate than here,
it's a relatively wealthy country. And so what that means
is that they have a little more freedom. Like when
(15:56):
I went to South Africa last fall and did several
seminars there. In South Africa, you know, the beauty of
a place like South Africa is labor is cheap and plentiful.
But the downside is marketing becomes a little more difficult
because because things are spread out and you don't have
(16:18):
good distribution, you don't have good infrastructure to be able
to move stuff around. And so every place has its
silver lining and its problem to Australia is overregulated by
like crazy like here, but people do have money to
if you say, well, you need to buy a chicken plucker,
well they can go out and buy a chicken plucker.
Whereas in South Africa, you say buy a chicken plucker
(16:41):
and they you know, man, you know, I don't know.
I'll take half a year's where the salary is to
buy a chicken plucker. So, you know, the economics changes
things dramatically. So in Australia it's yeah, we can buy
the equipment, but we can't afford the labor. In South Africa
is we can afford the labor, but we can't buy
the equipment. You know, to always something, Yeah, everybody has
(17:02):
a liability and an asset.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yeah, what's been one of the most surprising things that
farmers from other countries have asked.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
To ooh surprising things? Ooh man. I think one of
my biggest kind of aha moments was in Australia actually,
where I was speaking on the steps of Parliament. I
arrived there and they were in the throes of some
legislative stuff, trying to create some whiggle room for farmers
(17:30):
to direct market stuff into their communities, and I quipped
something about, well, at least we have freedom of speech,
and I was quickly reminded by them, no, we don't
have freedom of speech. They don't have a Bill of rights.
(17:52):
And so that was a bit of an aloha moment.
You know, we Americans, we take these things for granted.
We assume everybody has this, but they don't. They don't
have that, the Bill of rights. That's not a good
answer to your question you ask you know, what's the
strangest thing you've been asked? But I can't think of
a strassing I've been asked as much as I've just
been touched by the cultural differences that are Sometimes you
(18:14):
don't think about you think, well, we have common roots.
I mean, you know, Australia came out of Great Britain,
the US came out of Great Britain. We have well,
we do have a lot of commonality, but boy, we're
the only country with a Bill of rights. And when
you can look at that bill of rights, I mean,
it's it's powerful, it's profound, and we just don't appreciate it. Here.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Our content coordinator, Morgan Mark, has a better nickname for
you instead of the lunatic farmer. She calls you the
most famous farmer in America. And I think it's got
a nice ring to it.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Joe, Well, that may be. I didn't aspire to that,
of course, But if I'm the most famous farmer in America,
I wish I had a larger ability to affect how
farming is done in America, you know. But anyway, maybe
I'm most famous among you know, non farmers, right to
the farmers. That's probably the case. That's probably the case.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Could you take your farming knowledge and farm anywhere? Would
the knowledge you possess transfer easily to another place, another country?
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yes, the principles are the same. Now, the the actual
outworking of it is not the same. But the actual principles,
whether you're sandy soil, play soil, cold, hot, dry or wet,
it doesn't matter. All soils respond to organic matter and
decomposition compost is what has driven fertility forever. And so
(19:37):
now with that being said, if you're on the you know,
if you're out on the beach and you're near the ocean,
you have sandy soils. Probably the best you can ever
get to is maybe four percent organic matter. If you're
out in you know, in the middle of Germany or
Great Britain, you can probably go up as high as
twelve or fifteen percent organic matter, you know, when it's
(19:59):
more temperate and don't have the freezing thaw. So every
place has its difference, obviously with livestock, which you know
that we're into livestock more. Obviously, your grass growth, you know,
changes as you go into colder areas. One of the
most interestating things about asture growth and grass growth is
that as you head north, let's just say, up into
(20:21):
Alberta and Saskatchewan, they get the same amount of sun
per year as we get here in Virginia, or you
get even in Florida. The difference is that it's concentrated,
so they have longer days in the summer, shorter days
in the winter. So the sunlight as the Earth tilts
(20:42):
on its axis and goes around, and it's yearly moved
as you go away from the equator. The amount of
sunlight per square yard is the same everywhere, but some
places it's compressed. I mean, like, why can they grow
you know, eight pound cabbages in Alaska in five weeks? Well,
(21:07):
because in Alaska in the summer they get as much
sun in five weeks as we get here in ten
because as longer than in the winter, you know, they
don't even see the south on for a couple of weeks,
you know, it's completely dark, and so that really changes
the whole livestock grazing, pasture growth system when you have
(21:28):
either elongation like you have in the tropics, for example,
versus the compression that you have in the north. So
you know, those things are the same. But even with
those differences, still the grass grows in a sigmoid curve.
The animals it responds to rest, rest and you know, impaction,
(21:49):
and all the basic principles stay the same. It's just
how you actually implement your actual you know, schedule and itinerary,
you know, function and of course, what you can grow,
you know, the amount of time between your frost dates,
you know. I mean there are some places in the
US where there are you know, some places in Idaho
(22:10):
and stuff where there is no frost free date in
a whole year, you know, And so that of course
complicates things. But you know the silver lining. For example,
in dry areas, dry areas can never grow as much
grass as diepparate areas, but the grass is weigh stronger.
So a pound of grass in the Vada is worth
(22:30):
three pounds of grass here. So even though they can
never produce as much, it's much stronger because it's more
mineralized than ours here. So their big problem is drought here,
but they have lots of minerals because they don't get
any rain here. Our problem is leeching and lack of
(22:50):
minerals because we have more rain. So yeah, you have
those differences, But the basic foundational principles of movement or
game anagmatter, you know, mineralization, those kind of things stay
the same anywhere in the world.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
So I know, you can test it in the lab,
but is it possible to bring a patch of soil
up to your face and smell it, and now know
that it's healthy. Or does all soil just smell the same.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Yeah, you can smell the actinomycets and the micoriza, and
you can smell like putrification. You can smell. You can
definitely smell the differences. I will tell you that you
can taste them even more. And so as soil becomes
(23:35):
or an acidic, it moves into a more acid bitter taste.
If it's very fertile, it has a much more a
less brittle or less bitter, sweeter taste. And so yes,
you can smell it, and you can also see it.
(23:55):
I mean, the structure of good soil should look like
chocolate cake, and or soil tends to look more like
like bricks because you don't have the poor structure in it.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
One would look like a moist chocolate cake, and maybe
the bad one would look like seven day old brownie.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Yeah, that's a fair assessment, assuming they both have you know,
some black you know, black soil in them. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Speaking of smell, do all pig farms smell bad? Does
that just come with the territory?
Speaker 1 (24:25):
No, we raise several hundred hogs a year here and
they do not smell. You could go eat a sandwich
in with the pigs. Now, pig manore generally is smelly.
But what you have to do is there are two
things that we have found that really change obviously the odors.
One is you go to deep betting what we call
a carbonaceous diaper. Pigs are actually very fastidious. If you
(24:48):
ever raise a guinea pig, a little pet guinea pig,
they pick a corner and they poop in the corner
all the time. And pigs are that way. Pigs choose
a bathroom spot and that's where they go, and whether
they're out in a field or in a building or whatever,
they tend to go in a particular spot. And so
when they're outside during the season, obviously we're moving them
(25:11):
every few days to a new spot so you don't
get the accumulation of the manure in that spot. The
other thing is that when they eat a lot of fiber,
whether it's hay or grass or weeds or whatever, that
completely changes their manure because they're getting way more carbon
through their manure than they get when they're just on
concentrated feeds. And so in the winter, when we have
(25:32):
the pigs in these oop houses for the winter, we
have them in for about one hundred days in the winter.
You know, they're on a deep betting pack usually you know,
wood chips, and then every day we feed them some
old junkie a you know, something that's got moldy or
rained on or something, and we feed them about double
what they would possibly eat, and we actually a lot
(25:54):
of times dump it on their toilet area, so they
eat about half of it and they poop on the
other half. And so that gives them fiber and stuff
in the winter and completely changes the odor of their
manure in the winter because they're getting all this wonderful
you know, carbonaceous fiber in their diet. They don't grow
quite as fast, but they are much cleaner, much healthier.
(26:17):
It's a much more enjoyable work environment, you know, to
work with your pigs when they don't smell bad, when
you can go up and rub on them and love
on them and uh, and it's all enjoyable.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
You mentioned chickens and laying eggs. About how many eggs
do your chickens lay in a week, Joel.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
So we try to average something over fifty percent per year,
So in other words, there are three hundred and sixty
five days in a year so you know, we like
to get somewhere around one hundred and ninety to two
hundred eggs a year per hen, and that will fluctuate.
Obviously in the spring they lay more, you know, they'll
(26:55):
jump on up there to eighty percent in the spring.
And this time of year, we're in December. We're just
a few days away from the December solstice. Listen at
our farm, we live for December twenty first. December twenty
first is a huge day around here because as soon
as December twenty first comes, the days start getting longer.
(27:17):
Within a week of December twenty one, you can see
the chickens start to perk up in their egg production.
So chickens like you know, increasing day length. That stimulates
all their you know, hormones, all that stuff. So right
now we're down probably at thirty percent lay for our hens,
and within a month will probably be at fifty five.
So and now those numbers, if somebody's listening to this
(27:39):
and they know a lot about chickens, they'll say, well,
those aren't real high numbers, no, but we're not using
the hybrid you know, super hyper ultra you know layers,
these are heavy breed old you know, bard rocks right
island red and you know black austral warps and silver
laced wine dots, old heavy dual purpose birds. And so
(28:00):
we're not trying to get maximum production per bird. We're
enjoying a longevity. So these birds will lay goodness into
their third year even and do quite well. So what
we want is heartiness and longevity. And not only that,
but if they don't lay quite as well, they're not
pulling as much energy from the chicken's body. You know,
(28:21):
these super hyper egg layers that do you you know,
ninety five percent in the industry. Those birds burn out
in a year. They literally suck the calcium, they suck
everything right out of the body. To me, intuitively, it
makes sense that a chicken that's not sucking all of
her energy out of her body can make a more
nutritious egg than a chicken that's, you know, that's every
(28:44):
day right on the edge of her maximum capacity. A
little bit of cushion in there, a little bit of forgiveness,
you know, comes through with a little more power in
the egg.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Here's something I've never really kind of understood, Joel, is
the labeling on egg cartons when you get them in
the grocery sto or you know you have farm raised,
you have the Omega three title. What exactly do all
those titles mean on the egg cartons, Joe.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Well, they mean whatever the USDA says they mean, and
that's not always it's not always what you and I think.
You know, when it says free range, it does mean
the burger outside. It means that they have access to,
you know, a pop door that gives them access to
a patio that they can step outside if they want to.
(29:31):
But it doesn't have to be pastor doesn't have to
be grass, and they certainly never have to step outside,
and most of them don't. So you know, all those terms,
the Omega three stuff, that's all about the Omega three
Omega sixes, and there's a lot of manipulation of that,
you know, with merry gold pedals and things. We do
it with grass, or you can manipulate it with artificials.
(29:52):
We don't manipulate with any artificials. And so, you know,
just because something well, let me answer it this way.
It's like getting flour fortified with vitamin A and D
if they hadn't taken the brand out and taken all
the nutrition out of it. In the bleaching and the milling,
it would have had plenty of vitamin A and D
(30:14):
in it, but they strip all the nutrients out and
then add something back and call it, you know, better flour.
And so a lot of that kind of manipulation is
done in the egg industry as well, and of course
there's a lot of clever speak and stuff going on
in the the egg industry. You know, Loose owls just
simply means they're not in a cage. You know, Natural
(30:36):
of course doesn't mean anything. You know, Cage free obviously
means they're not in cages, which you know, we can
argue is better than if they are in cages. But
certainly even you know, pastured or free range has now
been you know, very much abused in the you know,
in the industry. And so you come back to check
(30:56):
out the website, look at the pictures. You know. In general,
if you want my bottom line, I don't think that
you can raise poultry properly in a stationary house. Now
I'm not talking about you know, in in clement weather.
We have ours inside for you know, for about one
hundred days in the dead of winter. Otherwise they're out
(31:17):
on pasture and they're and the portable housing allows you
to move them routinely to new pasture. That's the signature
of true pastor and poultry.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
So what's your best suggestion for someone that's starting a
backyard garden and trying to produce the best compost for
their plants.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Joe, Well, the first thing is to find a source
of carbon. And that can be you know, look around.
That can be leaves, it can be wood chips, it
could be bark tailings. But you know, find a source
of carbon. That's number one. And of course it can
be your own lawn. You know, you can use your
(31:54):
own lawn clippings, has mults in your garden. But the
main thing is to find the source of carbon. One
of the best things you can do is a backyard
or you have a you know, a backyard is to
have a small flock of chickens or even some rabbits.
You can raise rabbits for meat. They're quiet and don't
stir up the neighborhood with you know, with noise. And
(32:17):
one of the reasons to have either some backyard rabbits
or backyard chickens is as a fertility source for your garden.
Because good compost needs carbon and nitrogen. Well, carbon is
you know, leaves and anything brown, and nitrogen comes primarily
from manure. Obviously, you know, you could poop in a
(32:40):
bucket and get you manure, okay, and that's of course
been done around the world. But barring that, you need
some source of nitrogen rich material in order to really
make your compost. Now, you know, some people in an
urban sector will hook up with like food, most feod
(33:00):
waste is highly nitrogenous, and so if you can get
a lot of lettuce, you know, green lettuce, leaves, you know,
sloppy stuff, meat scraps, things like that, those are all
high end in nitrogen. So think about nitrogen as related
to protein and carbon as related to round leafy type stuff.
(33:23):
And so composting is an art as much as a science.
You know, it should smell good. One of the problems
in the backyard is getting enough material at one time
to make a compost. Paul to get as much ingredients
together as possible, which is one of the reasons why
I like, you know, for the backyard or just a
little you know, five to six chickens and a little
(33:43):
chicken run with deep betting. Let the chicken stir it,
air rate it and every year, you know, you'll get
a couple of cubic yards of composts. And in a
backyard situation, that can be a great way to you know,
keep your soil fertile.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
What's one of the things that maybe was a challenge
throughout this journey that you turned around to you and
your family's advantage.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Yeah, so one of the one of the first ones
that comes to mind was as we started getting a
little bit of notoriety and fame, people began coming. And
we have a twenty four seven three sixty five open
door policy. Anyone can come from anywhere in the world
anytime to see anything anywhere unannounced. That's our commitment to transparency.
(34:25):
And I will tell you, shardan that keeps you on
your toes when you know anyone from somewhere in the
world can come and see things. There's no locked doors,
and so I keep you on your toes well as
more and more people start coming. Of course, I'm the extrovert,
and so I love people, and so you know, i'd
always want to greet them. Where you're from and what
are you doing that sort of thing. Well, Teresa, my wife,
(34:46):
is the introvert she's great one on one, but doesn't
like crowds and donet like she likes her space. And
so as people started coming more and more, Yeah, this
is back whatever twenty years ago, we started feeling pitched,
both of us. I was feeling pitched because, man, I
can't get anything done. I'm out here talking to people
all the time. I can't get any farm work done.
She was pitched because why I can't go out and
(35:08):
work in a flower bed because somebody's gonna cost me,
you know, and and start yacking. And so as we
talked it over, we said, you know what, let's let's
see if we can if we can funnel people in
at a certain scheduled time, and that way, if people
want to talk to us, they'll schedule their visit at
(35:29):
that time, and you'll know when a lot of people
are going to be here, and I'll know that I
don't have to greet everybody that comes, because if they
wanted to talk to me, they'll come on a schedule time.
And so we started the lunatic tours. Of course I'm
the I'm the lunatic farmer. So we started the lunatic tours.
These are you know, two hours, two hour hay ride tours.
We didn't charge the dime for it. We just wanted
(35:49):
to see can we funnel this. It worked very well
the first season, except by the end of the season
only half the people that signed up came because they
didn't have any skin in the game. But we said, basically,
it's working. We just got to tweak it with a
little bit of skin in the game. So we start
charging ten bucks, you know, ten bucks for the seat
on the haywagon. Kids are free. We could take one
(36:12):
hundred at a time, you know, four hay wagons, two tractors,
and take this tour of the farm and then you know,
I stay around and talk to people in the afternoon
and that sort of thing. Boy, that was a game
changer because now suddenly, when I see somebody come, I
can just wave at them and keep going. I don't
feel like I have to go over and say hi
to them, because if they want to see me, they're
(36:34):
going to look on the schedule, see who these tours are,
and they're going to come on that day. Teresa knows
that when we have the tour day, that's the day.
She stays in the house and does stuff in the
house and doesn't have to go out and see everybody,
and so it freed us up. So it was a
it was a pain point for both of us for
completely different reasons, and it solved both of our pain points.
(36:57):
And today, you know, those who become quite an instant.
People come from over the world to come for the
And now it's gone to two and a half hours
because the farm's a lot bigger, gone to two and
a half hours, and I think it's I think it's
twenty five bucks an now. But basically, we viewed like
a movie. You know, we do hot dogs. People can
have our hot dogs for lunch, some kombucha and some
chocolate milk from a local organic dairy, you know, and
(37:19):
make a day of it. Has solved both of those
problems in that kind of situation.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
And finally, Joel, I know you have a podcast, but
have you considered or have you done an episode featuring
you and another seasoned farmer just sharing your stories and experiences.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
I don't think I have. I don't think I have.
That would be fascinating.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
You could call it the back porch.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yeah, the back porch. It's a good idea. You're full
of good ideas.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
I'm full of something. That's what they say. I'll leave
you with this, Joel. I wanted to thank you for
giving me and my grandson a personal tour this past hour.
And let me tell you. We were coming off that
dirt road and we saw the sign that got out,
took a picture and went over your little bridge there.
I had the GPS on and it was funny because
I'm still looking at the GPS as I'm heading down
(38:04):
to your place and then boom, no bars and I
look at my grandson. I said, I bet everybody sleeps
good out here, and he's like, yeah, because of the farm.
I'm like, no, no ems no emr hitn't you you
know that's what it is.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Yeah, that's right. Now we're in this little where again.
As you know, we're kind of surrounded by these hills
here down into this wonderful bowl. So we're yeah, we're
happy to be here. It's a very quiet space, but
we're always glad, always glad to have visitors. We love.
We want people to come here and feel encouraged and
rejuvenated in their spirit and their emotions and physically, you know,
(38:38):
give you something good to eat. Always welcome folks to
come and visit well.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Thank you for coming back on the podcast, Joeld. You
are a gentleman and a scholar and the most famous
farmer in America. I see what I did there?
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Yeah, you did, you did. Thank you, Shardana. It's wonderful
to be with you. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
The Good Foods podcast is the entertainment purposes I mean
the claims, comments, opinions, or information heard should never be
used in place of your medical provider's advice or your
doctor's direction. Thank you for listening, Follow us on social
media and wherever you get your podcasts. Good Health through
good food, Good Foods, Grocery
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