The GIFT of Limitations

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posted on

March 25, 2025

As the weather warms up, new energy seems to just vibrate through the air.

The seasons change in nature, as well as in life.

As I have navigated different changes in my personal life, I have been reminded of how important it is to learn to embrace the limitations set for me.

This isn’t a message that is comfortable or easy to hear, at least not for me.

In a world that is constantly moving, with businesses that are open 24/7, travel available anywhere in the world, and constant news and information at our fingertips, it can be easy to forget that we are, in fact, human and not meant to be constantly busy and on the move.

There are so many things in our lives that give us natural limits: our need for sleep, food, water, relationships, and rest.

Now there are options to try to circumvent our natural need for these limits!

Did you stay up all night? No problem. Instead of sleep, try an energy drink!

Is your body struggling to fight off an infection? There's no need to rest and replenish your body with broth or a good cup of tea if you have over-the-counter drugs that will keep you going.

What about your need to do life within a community and rely on other people? You know what, it is simpler to just keep your friends on social media and not show the true you. It takes too much work to be vulnerable.

However, as much as our modern world likes to take the “fix it” mentality when it comes to our needs in life, embracing our limits allows us to savor our lives.

Instead of constantly pushing ourselves to the brink of our capabilities, we can learn how to stop when we reach our limits and live out of a place of rejuvenation instead of weariness.

Let me give you the permission to not do it all.

You don’t have to.

You were not made to do it all!

There are seasons where life is going to be full and you are going to be tired.

There will also be seasons of rest. Both are good, natural, and necessary seasons of your life!

The world around us also has limits.

In the world of Amazon, most things are available at the click of a button.

But remember that nature doesn’t work like that.

Trees don’t grow in a day, gardens can’t be planted year-round (in most places), and animals go through natural rhythms of reproducing, working, and hibernating as part of their life cycles.

It is easy for me to see these patterns at work in the world as a farmer. As someone who benefits from and supports local farms, I know you see them too.

At Polyface, we try to embrace the limits put around us, even when it can be frustrating.

Chickens go through molt cycles and don’t lay quite as many eggs in the winter.

Cows need a certain number of months to put on the weight to "finish out", so sometimes we will run out of certain beef cuts.

The grass has to regrow before it is grazed again. (That's one reason we only raise chickens and turkeys seasonally.)

If you are like me, embracing the limits in the world and my own body can be hard and can test our patience. Especially when the world guilts you for not doing it all.

Here are some simple ideas to help you learn to love the gift of limitations in life:

(Feel free to add to this list and let us know your ideas!)

- Prioritize getting good sleep every night. You may have to say 'no' to some social commitments to make this possible.

- Take a “Sabbath” day. One day each week, commit to not working your job (turn off your phone or computer if needed) and engage in restful activities before resetting for the next week.

- Meal plan! When you don’t think through meals, it can be easy to slip into unhealthy habits It doesn’t have to be fancy but think ahead and plan what meat you need to thaw out or bake a loaf of bread, etc.

- Enjoy each season in nature. Slow down and enjoy the world around you. Plan a trip to a lake in the summer or go gather greenery to decorate your house in the winter. Enjoy a starry night or a sunset whenever warm enough.

- Evaluate what a “human-sized” portion of work looks like in your job. Commit to not constantly pushing yourself to go over that. Set up good work/life boundaries to reflect your limitations.

- Decide what a healthy dose of world news looks like for you. We definitely want to be engaged in the world around us, but remember that our forefathers only knew the burdens of the world directly around them. We weren’t meant to carry the weight of the world.

- Pinpoint a couple of relationships (family, spouse, friend) that you could pour time into growing. Remember: you weren’t meant to go through life alone and taking care of everything solo. Accept help and grace from others.

BONUS IDEA: Each month of the year, pick a different seasonal and local food to integrate into your diet for the month. Learn to cook it in different ways.

Be encouraged. I hope this has shown you that the limitations in life, whether in our bodies or the world around us, are truly a gift and not something we need to fight!

Blessings,

Priscilla

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

The GIFT of Limitations

Here are some simple ideas to help you learn to love the gift of limitations in life:

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