Do It With What You Have

The Salatin family has inspired all of us in many ways. Although most of you know Joel the most from his extensive speaking and writing, the whole Salatin family are rooted and loving people.

One of the things I admire about their story is the creativity and resourcefulness which caused Polyface to grow from a small family farm to the inspirational place it is today, feeding hundreds of families all over the country quality, nutrient dense food.

When the Salatins moved to Augusta County, Virginia they didn’t have much, but what they did have (most importantly being their minds and imaginations) they used to implement, what at the time seemed like crazy farming practices. Rotating cows and chickens? Not buying in fertilizer but using compost and animal manure? Building ponds? If you have visited Polyface, you can see that all that work paid off with lush pastures and abundance all around.

We live in a world that tells us that to get to what we want, we need _______ (fill in the blank). This is what marketing is based off of. Every industry will tell you what you need to buy or obtain in order to get to your goals. Farming is not exempt from this and that is why I find it so refreshing to see the Salatin family using their brains to get the job done.

For sure, sometimes we need extra resources in order to complete tasks but let’s not rule out what some creativity and hard work can accomplish. What happens when you look at a bare patch of ground and instead of spending lots of money to buy in fertilizer and machinery to apply it, you decide to take your cow and chickens and let it do the job for you?

Instead of letting money fix our problems by just buying things to help, what if we looked around at what resources were already available to us and developed creative, problem-solving skills?

The truth is that there are so many things available to us at all times that we don’t even think about. For example, gravity! One of my favorite ingenious solutions that the Salatins have set up on their farm is their gravity fed water system. Instead of drilling wells all over the property, Polyface has several ponds up on the mountain which catch rainwater and run off (also given to us by nature) and using gravity, some pipe and fittings, we have water for our animals!

On average, we see thousands of ads in a day, all telling us to get something new. But I already have so much! Instead of chasing more, I can use and enjoy what I already have. This goes beyond problem solving and using what you have to make things work; this changes my heart posture to one of gratefulness, contentment and peace.

Whether you are building a chicken coop or cooking a meal, starting up a farm or deciding on your fall wardrobe, I hope that you can get creative, look around, see with new eyes what you already have available to you and do it with what you have. 

~Priscilla Bower