Lingering in Life's Moments

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posted on

February 26, 2024

A beaver has made its home near the bridge at the front entrance of Polyface. Rain storms have come and gone and yet, he soldiers on through life, strengthening his dam when it weakens and building additional hubs further upstream.

Many of our staff have enjoyed watching and tracking the beaver's activity, and we often comment about our little friend in everyday conversations.

“Have you noticed that larger tree he has been working on felling?”

“I took a walk up the riverbank and I found where he is starting a new dam!”

“You saw the beaver yesterday? Lucky you!”

Last week, at dusk (one of the prettiest times of day on the farm) I was rolling out the driveway but was stopped by a fellow team member and her two little girls.

“Look! It’s the beaver!” they whispered with excitement. We all stopped for a moment on the bridge, during that golden time of day and watched him quietly. His broad tail wagged back and forth in the water. He swam about gathering small branches and pushing them downstream toward his dam.

We watched with bated breath, enjoying the peace of the moment until finally he swam out of sight. Even then we craned our necks, peering through the growing darkness, to catch one last glimpse of his slicked-down furry back moving through the water.

Slowly we moved on, each of us back to our respective homes. It was time to finish up our little tasks, cook dinner, and prepare for a new week. But I lingered, enjoying the moment of just sitting in nature and seeing the beauty of a healthy ecosystem play out in front of my eyes.

I am so blessed that, in my line of work, I have daily opportunities to take advantage of moments like these. A cardinal graced me with his presence on the porch this morning; last week, while waiting on a trailer to continue chipping branches, I sat and watched the trees move in the wind.

What good is life if you don’t arrest those small moments and remember how glad you are to be alive?

We live in a world where 'fast' and 'efficient' are always elevated. But think of how much you miss when you rush through life. You will miss the beavers, the cardinals, and the trees.

Our purpose in this world is not just to get things done, but rather to live wholehearted lives. Let’s slow down and truly look at the world. Everywhere, there are wonders to behold, beauties to see, and little things to notice if only we have eyes to see.

Where are these moments in your life? I promise you, you do not want to miss them!

All Related

Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year--that's a lot of stuff going on kind of lumped together. Which brings me to my thought this month: it's all related. Perhaps the signature difference between Polyface and current mainline food thinking is integration versus segregation. I could use numerous words to describe this basic concept, like parts versus wholes, but I think these two are as good as any. Conventional industrial food systems break things apart. We see it on farms that grow only one or two things, without regard for the greater inter-relatedness of ecology, all the way up to packaged and processed food. Modern processed foods don't use whole ingredients; they use pieces of things. They strip out the germ of the wheat, for example. They refine things to the point that the food bears no resemblance to its natural state. Then they put all these pieces together and call it food. But these pieces came from widely divergent places, and the beautiful unprocessed original no longer exists. When Dad and I were brainstorming what to call this farm venture that would eventually become Polyface, Dad's assumption was that we'd call it Salatin Inc.--you know, like Ford Motor Company or Chrysler (named for Walter P. Chrysler, the founder). I was adamant that it NOT be our family name for two reasons. First, I suggested there may be a day when a Salatin isn't at the helm. Secondly, I wanted the name to recognize integrated thinking. I came up with the name "Interface Inc." to recognize the three great environments: water, land, and forest. For 20 years, during what I call our experimental homesteading days, we'd been planting trees, fencing out riparian zones, fencing out the forest to protect it from cows, and developing a landscape plan with these various zones in mind. The State Corporation Commission rejected the name because, unbeknownst to us, Virginia already had an "Interface Inc." It was a labor arbitration company to work out disagreements between labor and management. I was milking the cow when Dad told me the bad news, and I spontaneously blurted: "If we can't be Interface, let's be Polyface--the farm of many faces." Dad laughed, but we both liked the idea, and it stuck and was approved. The point here is that from the outset, all our thinking was about how to leverage the various assets of the diversified ecosystem and then harness the distinctives of the various animals. As a result, we looked at symbiotic natural patterns and have done our best to duplicate them. The Eggmobile follows the cows so the chickens can scratch through cow pies. We use pigs to aerate compost. Our small flock of sheep is like a glorified weed eater, cleaning up fence lines and around farm buildings to reduce mowing. The animals move through the pastures, paddock to paddock; they don't stay in the same place. Illustrative of "conventional-think", Virginia Tech veterinary professors who judged my son Daniel's 4-H talk titled "Symbiosis and Synergy in the Racken (Rabbit-Chicken) House" at the state contest nearly 30 years ago couldn't restrain their skepticism. "Aren't you concerned about diseases with two species that close to each other?" I was never so proud. He was about 15 and, without batting an eye, looked those professors in the eye and replied: "We've learned that most pathogens don't cross-speciate." Folks, I had not prepped him for that question. When he responded like that, those three professors slapped their legs and laughed at the audacious notion. They had no further comments and immediately tried to recruit him to enroll at Virginia Tech and major in Veterinary Science. Instead, he stayed with me on the farm and scaled up these simple integrated relationships to the thousands of animals we have now--with virtually no vet bills. Meanwhile, conventional experts wring their hands over bird flu, screw worm, African swine fever, blackleg, and a host of maladies that attack places where an integrated approach toward biology is severely lacking. Pediatrician Dr. Sharon Goldfield, director of population health for the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, wrote a fascinating op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week titled "Baby Food and Youth Obesity." She slammed "packaged baby and toddler foods" because they fail even rudimentary nutrition standards. Their surveys indicated that "80 percent of children are eating packaged toddler foods, many of which are ultra-processed, from an early age, with 43 percent of them eating these foods at least five days a week." Kids are eating out of boxes and slurping from concoctions created by a segregated mentality from field to stomach. This segregated thinking even permeates parental decision making, divorcing overall health from food and assuming whatever happens, pharmaceuticals can fix it. At Polyface, everything we do assumes that everything we do affects something else we do. It's that simple. Both land health and people health occur when we realize everything relates to everything. You can't just eat well and not exercise. You can't dismiss the value of sunlight on your skin; especially early morning sunlight. Hydration. Sleep. Stress. Forgiveness. Gratitude. It's all part of us. As we celebrate all these holiday times and imagine the relatedness of Thanksgiving with the Christmas story with the eagerness of a new year, imagine all the things going on in your life and how they work together. Or how if you pull them apart, things fray. Be assured that here at Polyface we're trying to integrate ecology, people, and economy in an overall symbiotic whole to deliver you the best food at a reasonable price. And we thank you for helping us build an integrated whole that respects earthworms all the way to our dinner plate and microbiome. We're not feeding you earthworms, but be assured they play an ongoing role in every bite you enjoy from Polyface. Thank you. Joel