Daily Chores

written by

posted on

May 23, 2024

“Chores” is a word you may hear farmers use a lot. The main reason for this is because farmers do a lot of them.

The word “chore” simply means a routine or everyday task. There is nothing derogatory about this word around here! Doing chores repetitively is one of the main ways that Polyface has trained up generations of young farmers, teaching them how to care for the land and the animals well.

The chores that need to happen daily change a bit as the seasons change.

Currently, chores include: moving, feeding, and watering the broilers (meat chickens)/pullets (young egg-laying chickens)/poults (young turkeys) in our chicken tractors, moving our "Feathernet" and "Eggmobile", feeding and watering the rabbits and moving "hare pens", gathering, sorting, and cleaning eggs from both the ducks and chickens, feeding and monitoring the chicks in the brooder, checking pigs, moving cows and more.

These daily tasks happen rain or shine. Every day is different as we step out the door at dawn to do our work.

One morning this week, I ended the morning very wet, due to the heavy mist and soaking dew on tall grass. The next morning felt worthy of poetry as the sun rose in hues of orange and pink splendor, wisps of clouds slowly unveiling the lush mountain backdrop.

I may not feel like getting out of bed every single day in the dark but I know that I have the privilege of meeting the new day head-on as I start my day with chores. Spending your early morning out in nature, caring for the animals' needs as they awake gives you a little “sneak peek” of the day ahead of you.

After thinking about it, a lot of the other work we do exists to support our daily chores, whether it be bringing feed out to the broilers or fixing electric nets for our "Feathernet" paddocks.

Never underestimate the little jobs. It may seem a small thing, but Polyface has seen the simple chore of moving chicken tractors one space each day transform landscapes and bring fertility and nutrients to barren ground.

Far from being rote and boring, chores bring a new adventure every day.

It is an intimate act to care for something day in and day out, to monitor your birds' health and notice how they're growing, to know a stretch of land as you cover the ground on a regular basis, to give of yourself in order to make something else prosper.

Daily chores may require faithfulness, perseverance and love but I have found it produces in me a sense of joy, beauty, and gratefulness that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Here’s to early morning chores!

Priscilla

Short of Turkeys and Beef

For the first time in many years, we’ll be short of turkeys for Thanksgiving. Consistent with our policy of full transparency, here is why. And we’ve been short of beef now for some time. The underlying theme of this explanation is to inform you completely about why and what we’re doing about it. Unlike many businesses, we don’t call up other outfits to supplement ours when we’re short. We figure out how to produce more and until then, simply run behind. Because of that, when we explore new markets, we can’t adjust our inventory instantaneously.We’ve had a couple of incredibly exciting market developments this year. We’ve always tried to experiment with new opportunities when markets request product. You never know which ones will be long term, short term, positive, or negative. Over the years, we’ve given away turkeys when we overproduced due to assuming a certain market opportunity would come through; that’s not financially viable. As a result, we’re pretty careful about expansion. Three years ago, a large corporation in Virginia asked us to supply turkeys and Christmas hams to their 300 employees. We had no idea they would hang with us this long, but here they are, happy and showing unbelievable loyalty. We’ve been reluctant to count on them simply because these kinds of things normally don’t last. But isn’t it exciting and even exhilarating that a big company is buying our kind of turkeys and hams for their employees? The other thing that developed—and these things develop slowly—was Azure Standard asked us to supply them with 1,000 turkeys as a trial to see if their customer base would like them. By the time that deal was formalized, we were too late to order more turkeys and did not have the full number for them, but we we did the best we could. Some of you who are Azure Standard customers will no doubt see our turkeys pop up on their sales platform. When an engine going somewhere wants to hook to us, we always try to at least collaborate in an experiment. That’s where we are; if all are happy, this could be an extremely positive strategic client for us in the future. In the same way, we’ve been contacted by a new internet marketing outfit wanting some of our beef. We’ve agreed to let them have five in 2027. We’re hoping ongoing discussions will lead them to carry our poultry and pork as well—right now they’re only beef. None of this is about building an empire. It is about collaborating with the cutting edge of authentic food and circumventing Big Food, Big Ag, and Big Pharma. Innovation comes in many ways. Polyface perhaps leads the world in the production element. But processing, marketing, and distribution are also undergoing innovation and staying relevant is a daily objective. That some of the most creative significant players in the integrity food movement are asking us to play with them is wonderful. They could just handle industrial organic meat poultry, which doesn’t see pasture and doesn’t enjoy the happiness context of Polyface livestock. But they’re talking to us, and that’s awesome. All innovation carries a ragged edge as it develops, refines, and hopefully becomes efficient over time. Thank you for indulging us the freedom to explore these new venues and to collaborate with some of the best players in the good food movement. As you can imagine, growing and experimenting create their own sore muscles. Being short is not fun for either of us, but be assured it’s not because our animals are sick or we’re getting tired of being farmers. You can laugh at that. It’s because, true to our history, we are committed to putting food worth eating on plates held by friends. We count you as friends; that’s why we’re taking you on this little explanation behind the curtain. Hang in there and thank you, thank you for your loyalty and patronage.

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Daily Chores

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