The Sheer Ecstasy of being a Lunatic Farmer
This month, as we move into Spring and planting season, I thought I’d take a look at a wildly underrepresented population...the Farmer. Making this weeks book The Sheer Ecstasy of being a Lunatic Farmer by Joel Salatin. So let’s do this.
Joel Salatin is one of the 20th centuries pioneers of sustainable agriculture. And this book starts with the dirt under your feet and explains how he built up Polyface Farm into a 100% sustainable farm, where everything serves more than one purpose, and machinery is kept to a minimum. And not necessarily because he is a luddite, although I feel like he described himself that way at least once, but because in some cases, the old ways are infinitely better. And in a lot of farming, the old ways are inconceivably better.
So lets talk dirt, since that’s where he starts. He describes how when the family farm in Swoope, VA first started, it was not a pretty picture...and I don’t just mean it was not picturesque, with the big red farm and white picket fences that people expect of farmland Americana. I mean, he talks about heavily eroded topsoil that has practically vanished, leaving bare rock face exposed to the elements. And you might wonder what the problem with that is. Well, the problem is, that rock face used to be covered with 30” of solid planting soil.
Now, his family purchased this farm in 1961, and over the course of Salatin’s life time they have restored the land spectacularly, and they did through all natural methods. Like heavy composting, using chicken, cow, and pig manure for the nitrogen, and then cast off black walnut shells, when the opportunity presented itself, for the carbon.
There are pages and pages of resources available online for composting and basically all social media platforms have even more pages of people sharing their composting knowledge, as regenerative farming kicks off in popularity. And it truly does start with turning the dirt into soil. And he tells you how he did it.
Once you have the soil, what do you do with it? Well, he rebuilds the health of the land with grass...not the kentucky blue grass golf course stuff, but lovely native grasses that grow naturally wherever you happen to be building your farm. And then use your cows and sheep, or herbivore of your choice, to free graze on those grasses.
What about the cow poop? Well, here’s the thing. You move the cows every day to a new pasture to avoid overgrazing any one acre. After you move the cows, you bring the chickens in behind the cows. The chickens are perfectly happy to eat the flys and larvae that accumulate in the cow manure. While they’re scratching for the flys and larvae, they are also breaking up the manure so it absorbs back into the earth easier.
He talks about working with the lay of the land to maximize rainfall against drought. How do you do that? Where there are swales, aka natural depressions in the land, dig them out a little more so that they fill with water when it rains. If the ground seems too pourous and the swales drain to rapidly, use your pigs to wallow in them. The pigs will create natural mud born concrete to seal up the porous land, allowing you to create gravity fed watering systems.
Rather than the big red barn that is so synonymous with American Farm life, Salatin preaches in favor of mobile hoop houses. His cows and pigs mostly live outside, except for one or two months when the winter gets really bad and they are moved to hoop houses. He lets the cows live on beds of fresh hay and sawdust during that time. Once the weather passes and the cows are moved back to pasture, he sprinkles corn over everything and sends the pigs in to turnover all the hay, sawdust, and accumulated manure, which they gladly do, looking for the corn. And then you have a ton of fresh compost, ready to be moved to the garden.
What about crops? Perennials, not annuals. If it’s something that needs to be seeded every year, it’s not ideal. Perennials like fruit trees, berry bushes, roots and tubers, greens and herbs. Corn...wheat….the crops that are grown in inordinate quantities because the government subsidizes those crops...are not, as near as I can tell, to be found at Polyface Farm.
What about….the health of the animals? Well, it’s weird. Because it seems like anyone I talk to discusses the evils of big agriculture, the way the chickens and cows are kept in feed barns and never see the sun, and everyone agrees this is cruel. And yet...the marketing of big agra goes deep. And those same people think Salatin is cruel for not vaccinating his critters.
Here’s the thing...his critters don’t need vaccines. Why? He breeds them to be healthy. Literally, if there’s a weakness found, he stops breeding that particular cow or chicken. If a cow can’t give birth without assistance, he stops breeding her. He does not use artificial insemination...which hey, I’m in favor of natural sex. People think animals don’t enjoy sex, but will laugh over the factoid that a pig’s orgasm lasts for 30 minutes. If you’re a pig, who is looking forward to that 30 minute O….are you gonna be real thrilled when someone comes at you with a turkey baster?
Artificial insemination means that not the strongest sperm is making it to the ova. Because they will parse out like 10 different samples from one ejaculate. Which means one lucky cow in ten is going to get the golden sperm. The rest of them are getting also rans. Which weakens the genetic pool and opens the way to disease.
Salatin talks about cattlemen who will just let the mama cow who can’t birth without help die in the process and admits that’s a bit much for him...but he understands their logic. In the dog eat dog world of natural selection, that is how the strong survive to pass on the heritable trait of “able to give birth without difficulty.”
Salatin has been building a healthier life for his neighbors for 60 years at this point. And some of his neighbors acknowledge that. A lot more don’t and are stuck in their contracts with Tyson chicken...for example.
Salatin so believes in his process that he has written books and books about his processes and building sustainable agriculture and is happy to help basically anyone who asks him. But he won’t ship his product I think he said more than four hours away. Because the product would lose quality, if it had to ship from his farm in VA to...say...NV.
But he says if you’re dedicated to no longer supporting big agra, find a local regenerative farmer to buy from. The Internet should make this pretty easy to do.
I genuinely liked this book, Salatin has an easy way of communication that gets his point across with lived experience. I already instinctively believe him because...well, humanity has been farming for 12,000 years. It’s only in the last 90 that we’ve been spraying everything with pesticides, locking thousands of chickens into tiny little spaces and debeaking them so they don’t peck each other, growing single crops over and over and over again in the same space until the soil is so depleted we get a repeat of the 1930’s dustbowl. Moreover, I’ve SEEN it work. I’ve made it work myself. In 2020 when the world shut down I started composting and gardening and for the first time in a decade I had earth worms in my yard. It’s considerably more challenging to keep up in a desert urban environment, which is why I’m planting clover this year to choke out the weeds and replenish some of the nutrients.
And my friend Tia has goats she’s using to plant grass. While they eat up the scrub and sage brush, new grass is growing among the goat pellets. Her neighbor who hates her is gonna be PISSED in about five years when her two acres are covered in luscious grass and he’s stuck with...well, the scrub and the sage brush.
So regenerative agriculture DOES work. Salatin has 60 years of proof behind him as the efficacy of his methods, and he believes in them so much he is happy to share his knowledge for free with anyone who asks. And I think if you want to get away from frankenfoods, reading his books is a good way to start. As much as I would love to live on a farm far away from the city, that is not immediately in the cards for me. But I can start on my own city lot and grow my own vegetables. And probably my own small chickens. All with tips from Salatin’s book, The Sheer Ecstasy of being a Lunatic Farmer.
