Freedom starts in the Heart

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posted on

July 25, 2024

Every country has a rich history and story behind it.

As we celebrated America’s birthday this month, I have been reminded of the tenacity of our people to stand up for freedom, to brave new lands, to welcome new people, and to try new things.

America the beautiful, truly is a land worth celebrating and fighting for to maintain the freedoms we have been given. As you gather with friends and family this summer, I hope you can remember that freedom starts in the hearts of the people and is something to think about every day.

The Declaration of Independence tells us of our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Let's look at each of these “unalienable rights” and see how it applies to our lives today in our pursuit of healthy, nutrient dense food that heals the land.

1.) Life!

Our bodies need food to survive. The very matter of what food is made of brings life to our bones and gives energy to our bodies so that we can operate. Unfortunately, most of the food found on grocery store shelves isn’t truly food at all and is sadly disconnected from the living cycle of real food. The whole process of growing and raising food is steeped in life. The sun gives life to the plants which give life to the animals. The farmer gives his life and energy to raise those animals and then eats the meat they provide as the food that he eats to live. It is a beautiful cycle, simple yet complex. No genetically modified or artificial replica will ever replace the life that is found in good food. Is the food that you are eating giving you life and freedom?

2.) Liberty!

As simple as it seems to pursue eating real and living foods that provide for our bodies (giving us the nutrients we need far above any diet or pill can provide), we somehow make the process more complicated than it needs to be. Our society has slowly disconnected from our food system and now we don’t even know what patch of earth our food was grown on or who did the work of raising it. We often neglect the responsibility to care for our bodies and care about what we put into them. You have the freedom to ask questions and learn about the food that you use to nurture your body and your family's bodies. This is not something that should be taken lightly! As your farmers, we seek to be vulnerable and open with you about our practices in raising food. Come take a tour of the farm and see it for yourself or check out our other blog to read more about how we operate. Chicken breast does not automatically become a yummy dinner. Dig a little deeper and learn about your food, how it was raised and processed, what the chickens ate, and how they were handled. What steps could you take to take hold of your right to liberty in the food you eat? What could you learn about the source of the food you eat? And how can you participate in protecting that freedom?

3.) The Pursuit of Happiness!

When we talk about happiness, I don’t necessarily mean that things must be perfect and we must be at maximum comfort. Instead, the definition of happiness is closely linked to contentment and satisfaction. Are you fulfilling your purpose? Are you doing what you were made to do? I think when you are in that place, happiness is right there with you.

To quote Joel from his book, “The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs”

“How do we honor the pigness of pigs? How do we create a farm and food system that respects the pig’s glory? What are the distinctives, the special attributes of the pig? What is the essence of the pig?”

At Polyface, we seek to celebrate the essence of things - whether that be our pigs or our employees. We are all unique and have different giftings and abilities. Happiness and contentment are going to look different for every single person in this world. What is it that makes you come alive? Pursue that! If you were a pig, it might mean munching acorns; if you were a chicken the pursuit of happiness might mean the pursuit of a grasshopper. In my case, moving cows is one of my daily tasks that brings me the most joy but I have friends at the farm who find happiness in different jobs. What does the pursuit of happiness look like for you?

I hope that this year, as we celebrate our country, you can pause and honor the folks who have worked hard to make this country as free as it is and also look at your own life and the choices you make on a daily basis as you work, eat, raise a family and live life. How are you working to maintain your unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

Polyface is here to provide life giving foods, support your liberty as you make the healthiest choices for your family and encourage you on to the pursuit of happiness! We want you to thrive!

Duplication

"How does this scale?" Whenever someone asks me that question, the underlying assumption is that production volume requires consolidation, concentration, and centralization. In other words, the only way to feed the world is to make bigger chicken houses in one place, bigger canneries in one place, bigger machines and bigger warehouses. I remember well being vilified by a Smithsonian historian at a food conference where he and I were both on a panel. When I dared to suggest bigger is not always better, he interrupted me and ranted for 10 minutes on why bigger is always better. "A bigger fort was always bigger than a smaller one. A bigger gun was always better than a smaller one." He went on and on about how historical accuracy and authenticity demands addiction to bigger. But biology is not forts and guns. It's not mechanical. Critters have an optimal size. As animal behaviorist guru Temple Grandin says, living things demand energy for three things: reproduction, growth, and immunological function. All three must be in balance. When anyone selects for only one of those traits, the other two suffer. That's why American dairy cows only have two lactations on average. When they milk as heavily as our one-trait genetic selection asks, they don't breed and have all sorts of sickness problems. Nature does not scale through concentration; it scales with duplication. If nature wants more oak, it doesn't make one big tree; it makes acorns. If nature wants more milk, it doesn't make a great big cow; it makes calves. If nature wants more tomatoes, it doesn't make a monster tomato plant; it makes a bunch of seeds that make more tomato plants. Nature scales with duplication. At Polyface, rather than having a chicken house big enough for 15,000 chickens, we have 170 little 120 square foot portable shelters holding 75 birds apiece and giving us cumulative capacity for 15,000. But they're spread out in modules, duplicated, to give us the production volume. We run pigs in groupings of 35-50. A Smithfield confinement facility might house 5,000 hogs in a bigger-than-football-field-sized facility. The stench is unbearable. By spreading these pigs out across the landscape in small groups we get the same scale without any of the ecological, immunological, or animal welfare dysfunction. This could even be said of farming in general. People see the massive corn, soybean, and alfalfa farms in the mid-west and wonder how we would possibly survive without those massive, single-species outfits. The fact is they aren't even producing food. Half the soybeans are exported to other countries; those markets are drying up rapidly with competition from other countries like Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. Nearly half the corn goes to taxpayer-subsidized ethanol. The alfalfa goes to Japan and Saudi Arabia to feed racehorses. By and large, all that production isn't even food. The fact is we don't need to produce all those commodities and even if we needed it all for food, we could do it in a more spread out, diversified platform. America has 35 million acres in lawns. We have 36 million acres housing and feeding recreational horses. All of this could be turned into duplicative production, like acorns for oak trees. My point is this: scale as commonly understood in modern American lexicon is completely anti-ecological. The real mechanism for scale is duplication. A more democratized production creating volume through multiplicative nodes is the way nature works. This is why farms like Polyface, with spread out infrastructure in repeated modules offers multiple advantages. Polyface can't feed the world by itself, and we have no desire to build an empire trying to. But thousands of Polyfaces can feed the world. Indeed, they're the only way to do it for the next 500 years. This is one reason why we invest heavily in germinating new young farmers. Our stewardship and apprenticeship programs are all about this kind of duplication. In fact, Aug. 21-22 we're hosting the Stockman Grass Farmer's Launching Young Farmers conference where we'll feature 8 of our graduates who were 20 years old, no money, no land, and at 40 are full-time farming without government subsidies. If you ever dreamed of bootstrapping a farming career, you should come. We still have room. It will be the most profound agricultural conference in America this year. Information is on our website on the education tab. For most of you, the fact that you keep us in business to duplicate production and the farmers who will carry these principles forward, indicates your heart investing in an authentic food and farming model. Thank you for making it all possible.

Freedom starts in the Heart

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