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Episode #64: Polyface Micro: Joel Gets Personal · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Your dad was the greatest mentor of your life.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I still have wonderful, wonderful sayings from him.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: So so I'll just mention I'll I'll mention one here.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh one was so he had he had read, so this is early 60s.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: He went to the neighbor uh that lived next to us, uh an old old uh fella, and he just kind of mentioned he's reading this, reading about this stuff, and we we were starting, and we were actually doing some of that.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: We he he he had developed an electric fencing system, we were moving a little bit, and and he mentioned to this neighbor that that someday we're gonna have a hundred cows there.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: And this neighbor just laughed him to scorn derisively.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, everybody.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Beyond Labels.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Stina McCullough here with farmer Joel Salatin.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: We have a special episode today.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be talking about Joel's book, Polyface Micro: Success with Livestock on a Homestead Scale.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: But first, Joel and I want to wish everybody a very happy Thanksgiving.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, what a what a great time of year.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of things to be um uh frustrated about, but um make a list about all the things to be grateful about.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: We have a lot to be thankful for, and uh let's celebrate that this Thanksgiving season.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh amen.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Amen to that.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm grateful for you, Joel, and for this great book.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, again, it's Polyface Micro.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I dove into this book this weekend.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big fat book.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sick, filled with an amazing amount of not only practical information, but great stories.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: You are just a phenomenal storyteller.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: It makes it an easy read.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: What I love about this book as well is that um it's broken down into 26 different chapters and it it walks you through everything from you know picking livestock to pitfalls, pitfalls to your layout, to water, fertility, fencing, grazing, irrigation.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: You break it down by each animal.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: You talk about urban possibilities, which I'd like to talk more about today.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: You talk about regulations and marketing.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's all in here for anybody who wants to start a homestead.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: The information is all in here.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was telling my husband, this is like a homesteading Bible, right?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: You have your Bible next to your bed, and then you have this, the polycase microbook on the other nightstand, right?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: This this is such a wealth of knowledge.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: I I know I'm gonna use this for years to come as I develop my homestead.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: What I want to say from the outset, though, it's it's for a whole host, a whole range of individuals.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just for the person.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: When we say homestead, we tend to think of somebody who's already like pretty self-sufficient.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: They've got cows, they've got chickens, they got a garden.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: It will help them as well, but it's also for someone like myself who is just starting out.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And again, let's start here.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's it also includes urban possibilities.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Joel, can you tell us a little bit about in an urban setting, how you can start your homestead?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, well, thanks, Cena, and thanks for the for the vote of confidence with the book.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: We we've it's it's been uh very well received.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: We're in our we're in our third printing already, and uh it has definitely hit a hit a cord here.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, I wrote the book.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: I always write based on kind of you know what I feel people need.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I don't write for money, uh I write for for serving people's needs.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, since I began uh pastured poultry profits, I wrote in uh what 1991, 92.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: And um and and my my shtick has always been commercial farm, commercial ecological farming.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh, you know, if you want to farm, then then farm.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want you to have to drive to town to support your farm habit.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's kind of and and as well as you know the whole land, uh land uh care and those kinds of things.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um and but but in the last, you know, whatever, five, six years, people were kept coming up to me saying, Well, you know, this is all well and good.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: I love your stuff, but but I've only got three acres.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: I've only got five acres.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: I I live in a Manhattan apartment, you know, what what can I do?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so this just started, you know, coming to me all the time.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: I it seemed like that was half of my my conversations were how do I scale down what our farm has scaled up?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: So for our listeners, I think it's important to to um articulate that that our family came here in 1961, big acreage, but you know, dad's an accountant, mom's a school teacher, us little kids.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we basically had a what I call a glorified homestead, most of my growing up time.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we had we milked a couple cows, had a big garden, we kept a couple pigs, uh, we you know, we we had some chickens for eggs, uh, but but but it was it was not a business, it was not a a going concern in any way.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it was not until you know I got into high school and was was wanting to come back full time as a salaried position that I really drilled into, you know, how do we make a living here?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so the the things that we have developed here, the beauty, the beauty uh uh of what we've developed here, and but we we don't have all the answers.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: We're still learning, okay?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: But the beauty of this is that it is that it is scalable.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and you can scale it down.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the perfect examples, of course, is let's say you're in a Manhattan apartment.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're in a condominium, you have no land whatsoever.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: What can you do with livestock?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so my favorite, you know, my favorite animal, of course, is the is the chicken, as far as you know, the most adaptable, uh um uh risk-free.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And and and what could be more, and Cena, you could speak to this, what can be more nutritious than a good egg?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, a good egg is uh, I mean, I could live on eggs for a very long time.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and so eggs provide that uh for us.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: So um so so one of my favorite uh uh chapters in the book is how can you have, for example, rabbits?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Rabbits are quiet, uh, they're very nutrient dense.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so rabbits are conducive to an urban setting as well because they don't crow, they don't move, they don't, they don't grunt.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they grunt a little bit, but it it's so quiet you can't hear it.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and so the rabbit and the chicken, to me, you're not gonna have a cow in a Manhattan apartment or a sheep or a goat or a pig.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but a chicken and a rabbit are possible, but how do you do it without smells, odors, and all that stuff?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so on our if if we're you know, we are known for several things.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that we're certainly known for these days is what we call the carbonaceous diaper, the the the carbonaceous bedding pack under housed livestock.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now, we just so everybody knows, we're using, I don't know what, 30 tractor trailer loads of wood chips a year in our various, you know, chicken, pig, cow, rabbit uh uh bedding situations for for in winter time.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh not in the summer, but in the winter when we if we have to house animals inside.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: And this carbon, these wood chips um absorb manure and urine, and they balance out with carbon the nitrogenous droppings from the manure and urine and create now a habitat in which worms and other bugs and microorganisms can decompose and eat those uh noxiously odored waste streams.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so, so think about a carbonaceous diaper.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so many people are so caught up on free range, free range, they've got to be out, you know, on the grass, the free, but you know what?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: If you have an extremely small lawn, you don't want chickens out on the lawn because if you do, the kids are gonna be bringing chicken poo into your house all the time.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not a it's it's not a good thing, all right.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so, so in a in a micro space, this carbonaceous diaper, which which is which needs to be thick.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Think about your own kids, all right.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um a diaper, you you want you want um depth there.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want just uh non-absorptive capacity, you don't want a tissue.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you want something that's nice, you know, an inch that can absorb some stuff, right?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we talk about the carbonaceous diaper, we're talking about depth to be able to create a habitat that worms can grow in, bugs can grow in, microorganisms can grow in, and it's thick enough to absorb all of the waste stream coming into it.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so literally you can have five chickens in something that's no bigger than a than a large uh fish aquarium in your apartment with a you know with a deep bedding uh under it, rabbits up on top even, and you could grow rabbit and have your own eggs.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: You take your kitchen scraps, throw it into the chickens, and uh and the chickens, you know, uh scratch around in there.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: You might want to put the, you know, there's it is gonna be there's gonna be some dust.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I recommend a spare room that you could open a window and provide fresh air in there, maybe some uh, you know, maybe a fan uh ducting air out, actually.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so you dedicate you dedicate a room for this, but think of how much room is taken up with you know, dog blankets, aquariums, uh uh durable things, cat cat litter boxes, all cat litter dog, you know, uh whatever.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, here and and Cena, I you're looking at you said dog twice.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're looking at me with my five dog beds in the video.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: So see if you're looking behind Cena right here, those two dog beds right there.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about no more room, no more room than one of those dog beds.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: You could have three chickens in there, provide a couple of eggs a day for you and your family.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you wanted to go just a little bigger, you know, to five chickens, then you could have, you know, uh three eggs a day.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: And um and so when you think about taking up room, you know, this is less than a than an entertainment center.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, it's no more than a than a dog uh uh bed.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's not much more than a cat litter box.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Or or think about cat toys.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you got you got uh paw things, you got, you know, uh uh all sorts of play things for a cat to play with.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Dogs don't need anything to play with.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: You just pet them on the head and tell them they're wonderful and that's all they need.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Cats, you know, they kind of need a little more of the stuff.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: So if you if you took all your cat play things in the litter box and you put that together, we're we're talking about small spaces here.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, but but the key, the key is the deep bedding, the carbonaceous diaper.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's what makes it, that's what makes it no smell.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, once a year, you can grab some of this nice composted material, and that can be your basis for flower pots for in you know, any sort of uh potted plants or or a hanging um a hanging herb tube.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you hang an herb tube off of your southern uh your southern window.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: You just hang it out the window, you reach out, you you know, you can harvest um your fresh herbs from an herb tube that is that is fed by the compost from your chickens uh in the back bedroom.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot that you can do.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's carbonaceous diaper that you're building.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: That you can build that indoors.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to have contact with the soil, like with the with the ground outside to grow that have all these flourish.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, certainly, certainly it is easier if it's outside and on the ground, but uh, but if it's if it's in your if it's in a house, uh if it's in your apartment, then what I would do is just get uh you know a shovel full of of soil uh somewhere.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: And um and and you you do want to inoculate it.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: You can't just put in uh you know uh raw material, but you you know, you can get um and and I do recommend in something like this, something that's less fluffy than uh than, for example, uh wood shavings, you know, from from Lowe's or Home Depot, uh, or peat moss.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Pete moss is extremely dusty.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so something that's got a little more body to it, like wood chips or or maybe some uh some leaves from somebody's yard in the fall, that something's got a little more body to it will be a little less dusty and uh and it'll it'll break down a little bit slower and I think be a little more conducive to what you're trying to do.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it it's uh it's also less sterile.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: If you if you go rake up some leaves, bring in a couple bags of leaves for this, it's gonna have a lot of those microbes from the ground, from the soil, uh, and you'll be bringing those in.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: It'll probably even have a couple of uh stray uh worm, worm ooostists.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they call eggs from worms or oocists.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so you know uh it might even have a couple of those, but uh all of that um, you know, rugged material is a little better than really highly refined, uh sterilized uh material.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, you definitely want to inoculate it with a little bit of soil so you got the microbes in there.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I love that idea.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want to move, I've got lots of questions.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: We may not get through all of them.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um I want to move on to this.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: I love this statement in your book.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: At the beginning, you say I caution anyone to check your motives.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is so profound.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is such an important question to ask yourself.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been asking myself this question lately.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I want I want to get your thoughts on this.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: One question is check your motives in terms of why you're even homesteading, right?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like my my big push to homestead is so that I have food independence, right?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: So my family doesn't go hungry, right?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's not something that's in my blood, it's not something that I have grown up thinking I want to raise a bunch of cows and slaughter my own chickens.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that like I was raised in a city and you know, grocery store shopping all the way.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, while I certainly frequent farms like yours and and support these, it's still not something that I'm like, oh, this is a lifelong dream of mine, right?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited about it when I hear you talk about it.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: I want to go out and get some chickens and you know, start raising them.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: But but it is this great question of check your motives here.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about this in terms of a couple things.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: One is um, uh there's a decision to be made when you're embarking on this journey of do you want to start with a garden or do you want to start with raising animals?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: And some considerations, right, pros and cons of each.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I tell you, Joel, um, before I moved here to Georgia, you know, and I started getting to know people who um who have a homestead, I was much more excited about homesteading before, before I really realized the the reality of it and how time-consuming it is and how it's like you're married to those animals.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: You can't just get up and go away for the weekend.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and a lot of the people that I know that homestead, they're they're tired.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: It they talk about it's a lot of work, it could be very overwhelming and it doesn't stop.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And in my stage of life, with you know, three three young kids and working and homeschooling and stuff, I just think, how can I add anything else onto my schedule, like onto my plate?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: I already feel a little bit overwhelmed, but I do still have this motive of I want food independence.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I know that's a bunch of questions wrapped up.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe if you can address for someone, a lot of our listeners will be in a similar situation as me.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe if you address what we can do that would be be easy.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then the second part of that is how do you decide which one is better for you if you start a garden or if you start with animals?
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh, it's it's a great question, of course.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: As as you can imagine, uh, this book is about is about livestock.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we certainly have a garden and have had a garden forever, uh, and I love the garden, uh, but uh that's not that there there are plenty of good homesteading garden books.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like there wasn't a good homesteading livestock book that addressed the kind of things that I wanted to address in this book.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: I um if you'll notice, you know, I I didn't put in plans for a chicken coop.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't put in plans for a uh, you know, a rabbit hutch.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I mean I talk about those, but that's not the the the primary thing uh here.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I wanted to touch things that uh that that uh that well that I haven't seen in the in the other literature.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I think when it comes to motive here, the the the the most important thing is to realize that animals do tie you down.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, you can't just no more than you can just go off and leave your dog for a week, you got to think about a dog sitter, you got to think about you know somebody who can take care of this thing.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Cats, you know, yeah, you can probably leave them, you know, for uh three or four days, but uh but but other things, um so that's why, you know, with pets, we cultivate friends.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Can you come over and and and and look at the dog, uh check the cat, uh, you know, feed the parakeet, uh, you know, uh make sure the gerbil has water.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and you know, we we we we have no problem doing that.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that same mentality has to be done if we're gonna have chickens and rabbits and a cow or whatever.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we're we're gonna have to have that same kind of uh of mentality.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: So what the main thing I wanted to address here with the motive was don't come to this because you're because you're fearful of everything out there.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Come to this because, as you said, Cena, you want you want to you want to have protection for if the grocery stell, grocery store shelves go empty, you want to be protected from that.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing you want to be protected from is just nutrient deficiency.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: Raising your own, you can raise much better quality.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: You can raise uh you can raise really good stuff uh on your own that's not gonna be in the you know Chef Boy RD uh in the supermarket.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so for for both um uh food security and food quality, the the homesteading is a is a wonderful motive, but don't think that it's gonna be uh you know uh peaches and cream and and it and it won't take some time.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um you have to come to it with a with a you know with a serious um you know a serious positive positive attitude about where you want to go.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now you go through this section, which I think is very helpful.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's chapter three, biggest pitfalls.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you talk about everybody has a nightmare control story.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Can you give us some examples of you know, nightmare stories that you've experienced?
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of people look at you now as, you know, this master of regenerative agriculture.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we forget that you also learned along the way, right?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: And had trials and tribulations.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: So to kind of humanize you a little bit and to give the rest of us some encouragement that we don't have to be perfect from the get-go.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Can you just share a couple of your stories about things that went awry on your, you know, on your homestead or your farm?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, uh, listen, more than once over the years, we've uh bought some, you know, bought some cabs, for example, from somebody that were just, you know, they just seemed to be as as uh docile and gentle as could be.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we brought them in here and backed the trailer in with the, you know, um, and let them out.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: And those things didn't stop running until they were in the next county.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I remember one year, one year we we bought five and and two we never we never found.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's a mountain behind our our farm.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: They went over the mountain into the next whatever uh town and we lost them.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they never showed up.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: We never, we never could find, they never, they never came back.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a pretty big loss.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's uh yeah, a thousand bucks a loss or more.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so we have we have had that more than once.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we know now when they would, I don't care how gentle they are when they come, they either go in the corral or they go in with another with a herd that's already quiet.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Quiet and there so they could, you know, they can assembly in a herd.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: You never just take something and drop it out, you know, in a in a new field.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we we got rid of uh we got rid of the goats.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I and I try to be gentle on goats in here, but when people say, Why don't you have goats?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: I always say, it's because we had goats.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Past tense, present tense.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but anyway, uh, we got rid of the goats.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we had two things happen.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: One was uh the goats kept getting out, and I would go out and find them.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: They they their their favorite thing was to jump up on top of the chicken shelters, and and they would, of course, heavy, they would mash down the chicken netting doors.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'd go out and here they are engorged with the chicken feed, because goats love feed.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they would be engorged with feed standing in there in the in the chicken shelter with the with the top all caved in.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and anyway, making a mess.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we finally got rid of them.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: It was I got up one day and we parked our cars out here in front of the house.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: I got to look out the bedroom window, and there are all the goats quietly chewing their cud up on top of our minivan.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: So they're on the hood, they're on the hood, they're up on top of the minivan.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, This was back, you know, we had a minivan.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, you know what, that's it.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm I'm done with the goats.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they're they're leaving here.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: So we've certainly had our our uh our control issues.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: You you tell another story in here about a little pot-bellied piggy.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: He said, um, with little pot-bellied piggy gets out of the gets out the umpteenth time and eats up all your garden potatoes or pushes through the screen door of your house and deposits poop on your carpet.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the cute pig loses some luster.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Did that happen to you?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Did you have a piggy come in and he pooped on your carpet?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: No, I no, I I didn't.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: I I but I have heard I have heard stories.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I I've met people that that actually has happened uh with pigs, goats, uh, sheep, uh, all sorts of things.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, yeah.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Anybody who's had animals has stories uh of where the animals were not where you wanted them to be.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Joel, this is a question I've wanted to ask you for a long time.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: You said you were raised on the homestead, now you have this farm, you service all these clients and restaurants and whatnot.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever felt so overwhelmed at any one point in time that you wanted to throw in the towel?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I I'm wow, uh overwhelmed.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um just frustrated, fed up with it, and you were like, I'm I'm I need a break.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just done.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, no, and you know, and we I we never take vacations.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I will tell you that we, you know, over the years, we have developed some um some fire pit sites around the farm so that we can take a couple hours and just go kind of up to the woods and cook some hot dogs and just kind of chill for a little bit.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um I call those commas in life.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times um a series of commas can be more relaxing than a two-week vacation.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: And and so um, so three or four uh just where you kind of you you you take off the pressure.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: We you know, we we built a you know, we have a cabin up on the mountain, uh rustic.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we have we we've strategically put some places around where we can go and just kind of um enjoy enjoy the scenery.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so yeah, sometimes you do just get um busy to where you just need to break away and and enjoy enjoy what you have.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll talk about that in the book.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: That um that people pay big money for the scenery for sitting on a pond dam, uh watching their kids catch some frogs or toads or grab a salamander.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: People pay big money to do that kind of stuff, and and we get to do it right here, but you but you have to make time to do it.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: You have to take the time to do it.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, as far as just uh the only time, the only time I've felt overwhelmed um was probably weather things, weather things, but but I didn't I I never wanted to throw in the towel.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was just it was just, whoa, uh we gotta live through this.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh, I remember one time Daniel was real small.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: He was he was like um maybe one year old.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: We had a flood.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: And we had well the broilers, the the meat chickens were out in the field and they were they were um they were wet.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: When when a when a little chick gets wet, I don't care how warm it is, they can they can freeze even at 60 degrees if they get wet because they they don't have any insulation.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so we needed to take some uh some little flecks of hay out and and fluff it up so the chicks could get up on the on these hay pads because because this flood, that the ground was just saturated.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: The the water wasn't actually flowing through the shelters, but the ground was so wet, everything was wet, everything was so soaked, the chicks they couldn't get dry.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: So they were getting cold, and then they were gonna die and then and and get pneumonia.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: So here it is.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's uh it's 12 o'clock at night.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and Teresa and I, and we've got, you know, Daniel's one year old, and we're taking bales of hay from the barn, carrying them out, going through a flooded stream up to our waist.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we could have been washed down the river, carrying these bales of hay out to spread them out for the chicks so that they would um so that they would survive.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, that's the kind of thing that it's not like you want to quit.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know it's not forever, you know this will be over, you know, even this shall pass away, but you just all you're praying for is is just help me to get through it.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Give me the energy and the strength to to punch through this because tomorrow the sun's gonna come out, it's gonna be a beautiful day, everything's gonna be great.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: We just have to live through this crisis.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: And we've had numerous of those kinds of crises uh throughout our career uh that that tax your, you know, uh that tax everything you have, but they're never to me, they're not discouraging.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: They're just well, okay, um, we'll get this behind us, and probably this won't happen again for several years, you know.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it's like I'm glad this is over, you know, or I'm in the middle of it.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, it's gonna be over soon, and and you know, we'll be punched out on the other side, and it probably, you know, you wipe yourself off.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: What are the chances of that happening again?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Probably none, you know, or almost none.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: So that that's kind of that's kind of my attitude toward it.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: The eternal optimist.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it helps that you have such a great supportive partner in Teresa, right?
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Teresa's just fantastic.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, oh, listen, um, you know, every guy I want guys that are looking at you know what they're gonna do, and Mary, I said, look, always marry up, marry upgrade, marry upgrade, you know.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that's that's what I did.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh marry up.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: And and uh the other thing is I married a lady more frugal, frugal than me.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh, you know, neither one of us is a shopper.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: We you know, we don't we just don't have any desire to whatever accumulate stuff or or you know uh get whatever baubles.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they just have never, and so we've we've just enjoyed simple, simple pleasures, you know, uh in an evening sunset, uh, you know, um a good a good comedy, whatever, uh reading to each other.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh she read to me last night in bed, you know.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: She read this 1946 book about this lady in Maine, and and uh anyway, just simple pleasures that's that's worth more than money.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're about out of time, so I got one more question though for you.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then we'll wrap up.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Another great supportive um person in your life has been your father.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned that he in this book, you mentioned he was your dad was the greatest mentor of your life.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Do you mind sharing with us maybe one or two of the most important lessons that he taught you in homesteading, farming, or in life?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Take your pick.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, so I still have wonderful, wonderful sayings from him.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: So so I'll just mention, uh I'll mention one here.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, one was so he had he had read, so this is early 60s, and you got to realize that our farm, when we came seeing it, it was the armpit of the community.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: It had gullies, rock piles, uh, it wouldn't support, you know, uh 15 cows.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I could walk everywhere on the place and never set foot on a piece of grass uh because it was that thin.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: And dad got a hold of some Andre Voyzine uh stuff from the early 1950s.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: Voyzine wrote the book Grass Productivity, which is still kind of the the Bible of managed grazing with livestock, and uh where where you move them, you know, move them from paddock to paddock.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and he went to he went to the neighbor uh that lived next to us, uh, an old old uh fella, and uh they were just and we were friends, it was fine.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and he just kind of mentioned he's reading this, reading about this stuff, and we we were starting and we were actually doing some of that.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: We he he he had developed an electric fencing system, we were moving a little bit and and doing some of this stuff.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and he mentioned to this neighbor that that someday we're gonna have a hundred cows there.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: And this neighbor just laughed him to scorn derisively.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now, dad dad was not um he was not an extrovert like me, he was an introvert.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and he would um and so those kind of things where I have a little thicker skin, he didn't have quite as thick a skin.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: He he he was he was conviction, but he was uh had a had a pretty fairly tender.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh one thing I have from him, I can cry easily.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even when Teresa and I watch a you know, we watch a uh a chick flick.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sitting there bawling, you know, along with her.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so but I got that from dad.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: And uh anyway, he come, he come, he came home from that.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was little, I was, I don't know, maybe eight, nine, ten years old.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember him coming home from that and just being crushed, crushed that this neighbor did not, wow, that sounds wonderful, Bill.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to see you do that.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, it was just that's the stupidest thing, you'll never do it.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's dumb.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know why you're even thinking about it.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: And he came back just crushed from that, and he said, I'm never gonna tell another person what we're going to do.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just going to do it because you can't.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: Here was the thing you can't push on a string, you have to pull on a string.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: So he said, from now on, we're not going to tell anybody what we're going to do.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: We're simply going to lead by example.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that was so powerful.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so powerful for me.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: The other story um is, and this is really apropos today.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: So uh you're not old enough, uh Cena, to remember the Arab oil embargo of the 19 of 1970, 73.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so Jimmy Carter was president, and the Arab oil embargo, they they said we're gonna stop shipping you oil.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: And we had such an oil shortage in this country that you couldn't just go to a gas station and buy gas.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: You had to wait until uh until, like if you had a license tag that ended in two, you could go on a calendar day that ended in in an even number.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: And if you had a uh license tag that ended in an odd number, you could only go when the on odd days.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you could only get it every other day.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: You could only get gas every other day.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: And uh long lines, expensive, you know, um, really, really tough.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh now dad was at that point, he was in his um uh he was in his 50s, he was in his 50s, and he was working as a as an accountant at a metal fabric at a at a metal fabrication shop about um it was across Stanton.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was um, I'm trying to think, it was about 15 miles one way.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: You had to go to Stanton, go through Stanton, and it was on the other side.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: And um and he went out and bought a 10-speed bicycle and bicycle to work.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, if everybody that could do this would do it, we'll just tell the Arab Arabs to keep their oil and leave it in the ground.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and that, I mean, to do that in your 50s when when you could certainly afford to drive.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this wasn't an economic thing, this was a convictional thing.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: This was conviction.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: And and and people who know me know that my I'm very shameless about saying my greatest blessing in life is standing on the shoulders of both parents, mom and dad, who who embraced different.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: They embraced different.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and and most people are just they're they're pure paranoid, you know.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: What are what's the family gonna say?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: What are the neighbors gonna say?
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: What are my friends gonna say?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it it's all this this paranoid about what people are gonna say.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: And and man, both mom and dad, and I've got stories on mom too, but uh both of them I mean they didn't, they didn't want to be weird, they didn't try to, they didn't, you know, it wasn't like they were they were just weirdos, but they embraced they embraced convictional unorthodoxy.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I am so thankful that they did that because it literally, we talk about immune systems.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: Man, if there's one immune thing you need to be, you need to be immune to being dependent on what everybody else thinks you should do.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that'd be a good podcast sometime.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: How do you develop that immunity, you know, immunity from dependency on other people think?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Stop seeking the external validation, yeah.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so so dad bought the bicycle and he rode that thing for you know for years uh back and forth um in his 50s, 15 miles one way, 15 miles back.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: And um it was what what a you know, I I don't think I have the savvy to do that, you know, but but but but but he did, and and I respect him for taking that position.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: And he was exactly right.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, how many people could have driven less, bought less gas, and um, and we just say so.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: My my libertarian spirit uh is it runs deep in my DNA.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: I can see that, and what a great role model.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: He actually didn't just speak about character qualities in a standing for your principles, he modeled the behavior for you.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you can you can see his fingerprints in this book, in the polyface micro, that you've taken that entrepreneurial, the innovative spirit, that determination, the standing for your principles, and you've really applied it in this fantastic book.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: I again I recommend anybody who wants to have more food freedom, you know, nutrient-dense food, more and food independence, to get a copy of this book, Polyface Micro.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: Joel, where can they get your book?
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they can get it from us directly at the Polyface uh at the at our gift shop.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: You can also get it on Amazon.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, it's a it's available uh anywhere.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll put the links in the show description.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um thank you for sharing, not only for writing this book, but for sharing these wonderful stories and insight with us.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna keep this book until I die, and then I'm gonna pass it on to my kids because that's how valuable this book is.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: And once again, happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're so grateful, so grateful to have this platform to share these wonderful stories and insights and educational tools with you.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we're looking forward to many more episodes to come.