Events of The Month

written by

Susan Blasko

posted on

August 11, 2026

What’s happening at Polyface besides farming?

There’s a lot more.

Here are the main attractions in August:

Rogue Food Conference — August 14 and 15

Enjoy the bonfire and load up on information from a dream-team lineup of experts in farming and nutrition. This conference features Dr. Eric Berg, a nutritional expert who touts the keto diet and fasting; John Moody, who took up farming after discovering the healing properties of real food; Max Kane, food freedom fighter, and raw milk activist -- who established www.farmmatch.com, connecting consumers with sustainable and regenerative farmers. Max healed his Crohn’s disease with radical dietary changes. Find out why you have to go rogue if you want to be healthy.

Stockman Grass Farmer Gathering — August 21 and 22

If you have aspirations of farming, this gathering is for you. You will meet eight young
farmers who started from scratch and successfully launched farming enterprises. Each one will share their experiences, the ins and outs, the ups and downs. Once you gain the knowledge, you can avoid the pitfalls and employ winning strategies.

Brownstone Retreat - August 28 and 29

Foremost thinkers in health, politics, economics, science, and policy, speak on autonomy and universal rights in current society. These enlightening lectures present an inclusive approach that will expand your awareness and challenge your world-view. Bring an open mind, as not everyone will agree. Within a framework of liberty, the role of farming in food freedom will be explored in depth.

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.