Tag Archives: Pastured Poultry Profits

Joel Salatin’s Vision of a Local Food System

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dinner-in-yard

Joel Salatin believes that if we want to save the environment we need to rediscover our kitchens and learn how to cook. We will rediscover the joy of sharing meals with loved ones and value our world more. Photo courtesy of www.aholliday.com.

This last weekend I had the great pleasure of meeting Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm. He was speaking to a sold-out crowd hosted by the Cowichan Agricultural Society in Duncan, BC. Joel Salatin speaks passionately about family run, grass-based farming. In his own words, he is “in the redemption business: healing the land, healing the food, healing the economy, and healing the culture.” The guiding principles behind “Polyface are:
TRANSPARENCY: Anyone is welcome to visit the farm anytime. No trade secrets, no locked doors, every corner is camera-accessible.
GRASS-BASED: Pastured livestock and poultry, moved frequently to new “salad bars,” offer landscape healing and nutritional superiority.
INDIVIDUALITY: Plants and animals should be provided a habitat that allows them to express their physiological distinctiveness.?Respecting and honoring the pigness of the pig is a foundation for societal health.
COMMUNITY: We do not ship food.?We should all seek food closer to home, in our foodshed, our own bioregion.?This means enjoying seasonality and reacquainting ourselves with our home kitchens.
NATURE’S TEMPLATE: Mimicking natural patterns on a commercial domestic scale insures moral and ethical boundaries to human cleverness.?Cows are herbivores, not omnivores;?that is why we’ve never fed them dead cows like the United States Department of Agriculture encouraged (the alleged cause of mad cows).
EARTHWORMS: We’re really in the earthworm enhancement business.?Stimulating soil biota is our first priority.?Soil health creates healthy food.”

My husband Shaen has read most of Joel Salatin’s books, so much of the information in the lecture wasn’t new to him. Near the end of the lecture, Shaen asked Joel Salatin if there was any big differences in his thinking now compared to when he wrote his books. Joel Salatin answered that in the past he believed thousands of farmers would communicate directly with customers. But most farmers find marketing and distribution very difficult and don’t like the work. Now he sees “clusters of farms” working with “local streams of marketing and distribution”. Joel talked about a six part system for a successful local food supply: producer, processor, accountant, marketer, distributor and customer. My husband and I looked at each other and wondered if there is a place for GO BOX Storage and eatkamloops.org in this new vision.

We realized we could become a local food distribution center for Kamloops. We could form a buyer’s group for Kamloops. We could increase the size of our orders and get better prices for everyone. We could run pocket markets or personal deliveries for a cost. If you do not know about pocket markets please read:?Pocket Market Toolkit.

It was exciting thinking that we could become part of a successful local food system which helps all of us get the best in local food at a reasonable price. If we could develop a successful local food system, Joel Salatin believes “we could give the big-box stores a run for their money.”

Update November 25, 2009: I contacted Sally Fallon and asked if she knew of anyone who could mentor me to start a buyer’s group for Kamloops. She suggested John Moody who started a buyer’s club called Whole Life Buying Club. Before a new member can join the Whole Life Buying Club, they recommend the new member watch The Story of Stuff. The Whole Life Buying Club follows a Food Philosophy which defines the type of products the buying club will bring in for members. John Moody has written an essay for the journal Wise Traditions called Building a Local Food Buying Club.

Updated December 23, 2009: I have just learned from Sandra Burkholder that Joel Salatin will be coming to Quesnel, BC on March 27, 2010. Joel Salatin will be speaking at the 2nd Annual Poultry and Rabbit Forum being put on by the Cariboo Central Interior Poultry Producers Association. Sandra Burkholder and her husband Chris Newton are building a earthship house in Darfield, BC. An earthship house is made from recycled materials and is designed to be completely self-sufficient housing system requiring no outside support. The earthship is the brain child of Mike Reynolds of Earthship Biotecture.

Updated February 28, 2010: I found a series about Polyface Farm on Watch.MeetTheFarmer.TV. You will get a personal tour of Polyface Farm with Joel Salatin. There is an incredible amount of information in this video series about his pasturing systems for the watchful viewer. He will go into the types of grasses and herbage plus the effect of mass group grazing and resting of the pasture. He goes in to some theory but most of the videos are very practice. If you are interested in the theory behind his practices please read his books for more information. Here is Part I, Part II and Part III.

[The road to] hell is paved with good intentions.
English Proverbs

Pastured Poultry Profits

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chicken-radical

Here is a family member of a Kamloops chicken radical. Backyard chickens help people that have never had contact with livestock connect with our food heritage. Photo courtesy of www.aholliday.com.

I have been reading Pastured Poultry Profits by Joel Salatin who runs Polyface Farm. We could not get this book through inter-library loan but fortunately it was someone’s birthday. This book is a must read for anyone interested in a unique system of poultry production.

We are trying to implement Joel Salatin’s system of “perennial prairie polyculture” on our property in Kamloops. As I stated in another blog, we are fortunate to have over an acre of land in the City of Kamloops and thus can have chickens on our property. I believe it would be a very good thing for the City of Kamloops to allow all single family zoned properties this same right. Unfortunately, this is not the case at the moment. If you are wanting backyard chickens contact the Kamloops Urban Hen Movement and work to change this bylaw or you may have to consider civil disobedience.

pastured-poultry-profits

Pastured Poultry Profits is my favorite book written by Joel Salatin.

We have been running the Cornish Cross breed, which is known for its incredible feed to meat conversion ratio. They go from the egg to the freezer in eight weeks. Watching these chicks is a lesson in sloth and gluttony. The chicks gorge on feed, then fall over and pass-out until the next session of gorging. My sister Christine has been horrified watching these selectively bred birds do what comes natural to them. The trick with these birds, when it comes to pasturing, is to make it easy for the birds to get to the pasture. The birds do not like walking much.

Joel Salatin has designed a system of “chicken tractors”, which are small pens that are moved daily to new pasture. This solves the walking problem for the birds. The farmer does the moving and the birds do the eating. The fresh pasture provides diversity of forage and a variety of insect life which makes for very healthy birds with incredible flavor. With daily movement of the pens there is no smell and the birds are not living in their excrement like what is typical for industrially raised chickens. With fresh air, a clean environment, and good food these birds do not need to be given medicated feed just to survive.

In Kamloops we have what Joel Salatin called “brittle” grasslands. The area will produce well if irrigated but some of his methods will not work here. So far, moving the chicken tractors to new pasture has worked on our property. We don’t have what I would consider good pasture and I would like to lease pasture in the area if we were to do more birds.

We will be producing enough birds to have chicken dinner, twice a week, all winter long. Slaughtering day is not a fun experience but at a store price of $20 to $25 for an organic bird, I can find a way to do it. These birds done with Joel Salatin’s method are considered “beyond organic pastured chicken”, and are another product not available through the industrial food system.

We are in week four of our production cycle. I will keep you posted regarding outcomes of our research in using Joel Salatin’s methods in Kamloops.

Update September 7, 2009: For an update please go to the posting called Slaughtering Chickens dated September 7, 2009. We lost one turkey within the first few days and one chicken about a week ago. I found it breast up in the hoophouse. Cornish Cross chickens are prone to heart attacks. We had under 2% death rate. A hoophouse, also known as a gobbledygo, is another Joel Salatin method of chicken rearing. It is used during winter and in areas where pasture is limited. It requires a deep litter to fix nitrogen and not loose it to the air. This system worked well for us.