Pictures from today... More Skating

Here I am pulling Travis and Andrew Salatin on the frozen pond out by the sales building.  The knee pads are very important... Look below to see why.

I would run along the ice at a high rate of speed, then glide down on my knees as the boys slide past me.  As you can see Andrew is really enjoying himself.

Andy (other apprentice) and I standing on the ice getting ready to start our hockey game.  If you look behind me you can see the new hoop-house we are building.  I really enjoy doing construction work and this project has been really fun.

Bring It On!!  Though this is a pose... I was a pretty intense goalie.  Notice the gear: one home-made hockey stick (thanks to Andy), two knee pads found on the back porch, and one little league version baseball glove (came in useful).

Another pose... still intense.

Here is most of the group.  Like I said yesterday only a few with skates but still loads of fun.

Thanks Rachel for taking all the pictures!!

Cold Enough...

The current temperature is 10 degrees (F) here on the farm.  Its cold, but...

I like the cold!  I know, I know.  Who really enjoys the cold.  Well I must confess, I wouldn't like just sitting out in the cold doing nothing, but cold weather allows for certain activities that can only be done in the cold.  It allows for snow, which allows for skiing, snowball fights, snowmen, sledding, etc.  Today that activity was ice skating on one of the ponds.  We don't have any snow for sledding but since the temperature plummeted to well below zero last night and the low tonight is -6 degrees (F), ice skating is very possible.  

This morning after chores we began to discuss what we were going to do on such a cold day.  Not much was on the agenda so after breakfast we all went to the pond nearest to the house.  Daniel and Rachel both had skates on by the time I got out there and were skating around.  Daniel had some hockey sticks and Andy and I made a wooden puck (which worked awesome I might add) and the games began.  There were only 3 pairs of skates so most of us were just sliding around in our boots attempting to pass and shoot the puck.  After Daniel got tired and had to go back to his house for lunch, I borrowed his skates and played a short game with everyone that was left.  I think if I would have grown up in a cold weather climate where hockey was part of everyday life, I would have loved it.  I probably would have went pro... right?

Anyway, today was a fun play day on the ice with the whole bunch.  Just goes to show you that life on the farm can be a lot of work, but life on the farm can also present itself with a lot of fun.  A kind of fun that can only exist on the farm... "The Good Life."

Rabbits and Layers

One of the great things about being an apprentice on Polyface is the realization that opportunities for food production are ENDLESS!!  Now don't run out and buy 1000 cows and expect to have money just rolling in, but people need to eat and some if not all of Polyface's production models are simple enough for anyone to take on.  I've been watching the rabbit production model for the past few weeks and I have no doubt that rabbits could provide a nice side income for someone wanting to produce healthy, tasty meat.  Rabbits alone could work but rabbits plus laying chickens equals great success.

Let me explain...

Rabbit meat is highly sought after by restaurants and many people.  Here at Polyface we cannot produce enough to keep up with the demand.  Currently we are not selling any rabbit meat to restaurants or through our buying club.  At least one restaurant asks our delivery driver weekly if we have any rabbits or if we will anytime soon, and our buying club customers ask the same questions.  You might say to yourself (as I have many times), "I don't know anyone or any restaurant the eats or serves rabbit meat."  Here's why... because they don't have a source or producer to get it from.  I'm starting to believe that many restaurants and costumers would love and may in fact prefer rabbit over many other meats.

During the summer we try and get the rabbits out to pasture in the "Hare Pens" and if not in the hare pens they get some sort of fresh green clipping.  When they aren't out on pasture during the summer (and winter for that matter) they are kept in one of the hoop-houses in 2ft x 3ft x 4ft hutches.  They are feed alfalfa pellets while in the hutches and watered via spigots that fill from tubes hooked into one central bucket (for 10-15 hutches).  Chores for the rabbits take minutes to complete and they reproduce quickly.  Gestation is only 28 days and litters contain up to 11 bunnies.  Lots of meat... FAST.

Adding chickens is the logical next step.  If you raise the rabbit hutches off the ground so they are easy to feed/water/check then they are also high enough for their manure to fall down below the hutch.  Without chickens it can pile up and reek of ammonia.  With chickens however, their manure disappears.  The chickens scratch trough the manure and eat anything nutritious and the rest gets spread throughout the wood chips and saw dust used as bedding.  So even without providing more income with the eggs they lay, chickens act as sanitizers for the rabbits.  This is what I call a WIN-WIN situation.

  

Question #1 (Thank you Tracy!)

Man have I been busy!!!

Sorry I haven't written anything in over a month.  I went home for Thanksgiving and when I got back it was right at the start of the last Polyface buying club delivery of the year and it was a BIG one.  The last delivery went out today.  Let me tell you, HUGE weight has been lifted.  Anyway... enough about me, on to the first question!!

Question #1

A couple weeks ago Tracy asked:

Well, from reading your blog and viewing your photos (both here and your other blog) I'm almost a little disappointed in the Polyface model. I mean, it seems like it has grown to be so huge now (in numbers of animals) that it has become just another 'industrial' model. Perhaps a better model, for sure, but still an industrial model. I afraid it will lose the mission he originally had for it, and lose the whole "family farm" type of atmosphere. Do you feel that way at all -- being there in person and able to see it at work?

Great question... here's my answer:

The Polyface model is definitely not anything close to an industrial model... not even close.  I'm guessing that you saw the pictures of the chickens in the hoop houses and thought... thats not right!  If that was the case let me explain my pictures.  Those were taken in early March when I came for my checkout/interview for becoming an apprentice on Polyface.  The chickens were still in the hoop houses because it was still too cold for them outside.  Polyface only keeps their chickens inside during the winter months and I must say that the chickens would much rather be inside the hoop house where it's warm than outside in the rain, snow, cold, wind, etc.  Once it warms up the birds go outside on fresh grass and are moved to fresh grass every couple days.

As far as the number of animals go, Polyface is growing, but Joel knows better than to increase the stocking rate beyond that of what the farm can handle.  We will only keep increasing animal numbers as we keep increasing the amount of land Polyface uses through leases.  Which brings me to the part about the farm having a "Family Farm Atmosphere."

Fear not... this is most definitely a farm with much family atmosphere.  Joel and Daniel work in tandem to keep things running.  I think its safe to say that Daniel is the Operations Manager where as Joel is the CEO.  Both of their wife's, Teresa and Sheri, are very involved with marketing, accounting, etc.  Not to mention their help on the farm and in the kitchen feeding the MANY mouths that need food.  They are the ultimate farmer of strong men and we are VERY glad to have them around taking care of us.  Without them... crash and burn.  The longer I'm here, the more I feel like part of the family.

Polyface has also extended their training from apprentices and interns out to families.  On one of Polyface's rental farms, Joel has enacted a former apprentice to train a couple to eventually take over operations.  Polyface has essential started planting families in farms with a great model to follow.  I don't see how you could get anymore "Family" than that of any farm.

So, have no fear about Polyface turning into a big industrial mess... It won't happen.  He is a little bit from the Polyface website:

Today the farm arguably represents America’s premier non-industrial food production oasis.  Believing that the Creator’s design is still the best pattern for the biological world, the Salatin family invites like-minded folks to join in the farm’s mission:  to develop emotionally, economically, environmentally enhancing agricultural enterprises and facilitate their duplication throughout the world.

I hope this answers your question.  Thank you so much for asking!!

And remember... If anyone has a question about me, the farm, pluto... just ask in the comment box.  Thanks.

New Cattle and RAIN!!

Over the past few days the Salatins have been buying weaned calves to replenish Polyface's stock.  We send about 7 to the slaughterhouse that is partially owned by the Salatins every two weeks.   Yesterday we received 25 calves and today we received 50.  We also had about one and a half inches of rain fall over the same two days.  

Moral of the story... If you need rain, plan on working cattle in the corral and the rain will come and make everything sloppy.

New Calf Protocol  (How do you prefer your tail pulled?)

I had always wondered what Polyface's protocol was for receiving new cattle and after the last two days I have a pretty good idea.  Both sets of cattle came from local cow/calf operations.  In fact the first 25 came from the neighbor bordering the south side of the home property.  The others came from about 30 minutes away in Stuarts Draft.  

(It was nice to get local calves since local is a huge word around here.  I heard somewhere that the average steak travels 1100 miles from birth-to-grill or womb-to-tomb, so its nice to think that some of the meat I will eat here on the farm walked everywhere but to the butcher.)

Anyway... Once the calves were sorted off their mothers and/or put into the corral, we had a series of tasks for each calf before turning them out onto fresh pasture.  Here at Polyface we run both steer and heifers.  (We have some cows that produce calves every year also, but to keep up with the beef demand they started buying calves and finishing them on grass.)  One task involves putting each calf on a set of scales to get there weight.  Then we run each calf into a head gate that holds them still so we can put in new Polyface ear-tags.  Both the bulls and heifers are pretty easy up until this point, the only difference being that we still need to castrate the bull calves into steers.  The heifers are turned loose to hang out in the coral, but the bulls are held a little longer by the head gate and a human (I had the lions share this week, but its wasn't to many).  Try and imagine this... I stood on the fence straddling the bull, both feet about belly high on the bull, facing toward his hind end.  This allowed me to pull on his tail and sit on his back while either Daniel or Joel did the castrating.  This worked pretty well under the circumstances and we only had a few that really fought what we were doing.  Once you get their tail pulled over there back, they calm down quite a bit.  In between bulls I would just climb up into the barn, over the chute and cattle to wait till the next calf.  This put me out of sight and allowed for easy access when I was needed to pull tail.

I keep saying calf but I think a different word needs to be used because some of these "calves" weighed in at over 600 lbs.  One in particular weighed 712 lbs.  Surprisingly enough, he didn't fight as much as he could have.  I guess you could say he stood there and took it like a man... or a lesser of a man now?  

This way of working new calves was a little new to me.  I'm used to having the calf either at the end of a rope pulled by a horse and cowboy, or in a head-gate with a squeeze chute.  This is how I've always castrated and tagged cattle growing up.  I can say that I prefer roping over all, and the squeeze chute is next followed by this new method.  With that said, I also respect the way Polyface does it.  All the infrastructure was low cost (home-made head gate with home-milled lumber and posts for the corral) and we got the job done right.  It's not worth doing unless you do it right.

 

Any Questions?

It dawned on me today that there may be questions from people who visit my blog about what I'm doing.  If you are one of those visitors and have a question for me just add it in the comment section of this or any of my previous blogs.  

I would feel like I'm actually telling people what they want to know about the work I do on Polyface.  Needless to say I am not the spokesperson for Polyface, but I can give insight from the inside looking out.

"There are no stupid questions."

Farm Food Deliveries

"The Bus" (Delivery Vehicle)

On Thursday of this week, I spent the day making deliveries with Richard (our full-time delivery driver).  We delivered to several restaurants and stores, and did two buying club drops.  Needless to say it was a long day.  (Wake-up time = 5 AM... Start Work = 5:15AM... Arrive back on farm = 8PM)

RESTAURANT DELIVERIES

As I said before, Polyface delivers to several restaurants in Virginia.  One of the more popular ones is Chipotle (big mexican-style burritos and such).  They focus on getting meat that is  naturally raised, no antibiotics, etc.  Polyface sells them about 250 lbs of pork a week.  If you haven't had a Chipotle burrito, I highly recommend you go and try one soon.  Anyway... I had lots of great experiences on the delivery run while going to restaurants, but I'm going to stick to one story that remains the most memorable for me, the Rev Soup Beef Drop.

Revolutionary Soup Beef Delivery

That morning we loaded up a half of a beef into coolers that were headed to Rev Soup.  The half beef was only cut into 4 pieces, so none of the coolers shut all the way (imagine beef legs sticking out the top).  I wasn't sure what kind of place Rev Soup was but I figured that they would have a back door that we could bring in these HUGE pieces of meat.  We arrived to the drop location and Richard had never delivered to this particular Rev Soup (there are two), so he went in to ask where the service/delivery door was located.  Turns out there wasn't one.  Only the main entrance.

So there we were pushing this cart loaded with coolers with beef sticking out the top for all the world to see.  Though I shouldn't have, I felt as though I was wearing a dress and the world had a free shot to look up it.  We got to the front door and Richard took the first cooler in while I held the door and the cooler cart.  When he got back I picked up the largest and heaviest of the coolers (96 lbs of grass-fed beef!) and asked him where to take it.  He said to go straight back to the kitchen and they'll be waiting for me.  I hadn't noticed till now that the place was PACKED full of customers.  It was a little after noon, so you can imagine the lunch rush this place had going.  As I walked in the door carrying this huge leg of beef I looked toward the kitchen and realized that I had to walk right through the long line of patrons studying the menu.  I thought immediately, "What are they going to do when they see this huge piece of meat, sticking out of the cooler, headed into the kitchen."  I pressed on through the line and into the kitchen and when I got inside the owner was there and SUPER excited to see the giant piece of meat I was carrying.  That ease my anxiety a little.

This happened a total of four time between Richard and I, and it gave me kind of an adrenaline rush.  I was thinking about it afterward and it dawned on me that, to my knowledge, not a single patron realized what we brought into the restaurant.  The restaurant was located next to the University of Virginia so most of the customers where college-age young-adults.  This lead me to ponder this, "Is my generation so removed from our food that we don't even recognized what it looks like before its soup?"  I hope not, but I think we are.

RETAIL STORES

As far as retail stories go, most of them sell Polyface eggs and pork products.  Some of the places were awesome little hole-in-the-wall places but there were a couple large, unfriendly places on the route.  It seems to me that the larger any store of any kind gets, the harder it is to keep employee moral up (no just food stores).  Maybe a thought to ponder in my other blog.

Anyway... at one of the retail stores, they returned several packs of bacon that they couldn't sell.  Why were they having trouble selling Polyface bacon you might ask?  Was it the taste?  Was it old? NO!!  It was because of the USDA blue edible ink that they stamp everything with at the USDA inspected abattoir.  "Our customers won't buy the bacon if it has the ink on it." says the man at the store.  WHAT A JOKE!  Thanks again USDA.  

So now what?  We can't sell our product in retail stores because in order for it to be "Safe" the USDA must have an inspector on site using his stamp at will.  But because he deems it "Safe" with his stamp, no one will eat it because of fear of the ink.  So were stuck having to sort through bacon each time we send it to this store and forced to explain to customers this ridiculous reasoning and the fact that the ink is soy based.  Awesome... more petroleum being used for a totally natural product.

BUYING CLUB DROPS

In the middle of all this we made two buying club drops in Richmond.  I love doing buying club drops.  Every six weeks customers order online and we delivery their product(s) to them at several drop sites.  (You can learn more at www.polyfacefarms.com)  The day before the drop (or a couple days... whatever works) we put together orders in coolers and store them in the walk-in freezer until the morning of the drop day.  On the day of, we load the coolers in the bus and head to the drop.  Once there we unload the coolers for each specific drop and customers arrive with coolers of their own (or sack, boxes, etc.) and we hand over the order as they hand over the money.  It works out really awesome and in 30 mins to an hour we've handed out between 30 and 80 orders.  Polyface has a well oiled machine and I was able to jump right in like a greased cog.  Its wonderful to know that a lot of the customers have been to the farm and most have read about the farm and are excited not only by the good food, but by the awesome stewardship on the farm.

Stay tuned... I'l try and take some pics...