The Summer Stewardship Program of 2026 is nearing the end of the second monthalready! I chatted with stewards Carter Martin and Kai Wright to get their thoughts and perspectives on life here on Polyface farm!
Scattered throughout this interview are a few of Kai's great photos taken around the farm capturing glimpses of his time here this Summer-- which he has kindly shared with us all.
So, without further ado, let's hear from Carter and Kai!
Photo Credit Kai Wright
Day in the life of.../Second Month Impressions?
Carter: "I have been impressed with the simple functionality of the farm. How so much good can be accomplished with relatively little. I have also been impressed with how hungry the public is for this refreshing view on farming."
Kai:"...I'd say a typical day goes something like this: Chores to begin the day of course. I usually am out of bed around 5:45 and dressed, ready to be down by 6:00. Depending on what I'm doing that week, I could be done by 7:00 or 7:30, but sometimes we don't get finished until after 8. Then I head up to get some breakfast (usually eggs and breakfast sausage, my favorite!). So far, the rest of the day up until evening chores is usually spent with several different apprentices on several tasks or projects. For example, today I helped switch out some nets by the pullets right after breakfast, worked on fixing a shoulder brace on the Feathernet with Asnake, and helped Chris chop multi-floral roses with mattocks. Around 3:30 or 4 is when we have been getting afternoon chores started. Today I helped with the broilers and eggs, but every day is different. After that I head to dinner! I would say my initial impression is that it isn't as much work as I'm used to at home (I know, everyone keeps telling me, "It'll come, it'll come"). I manage my family's homestead/farm, which was neglected for over a decade, so I was doing a ton of heavy clearing and cleaning. However, I have already seen the wisdom in slowly easing us into the harder work, because several stewards have gotten sick, so I do really appreciate that so I can let my body adjust better."
Photo Credit Kai Wright
First Unexpected Thing?
Carter: "One of the things I surprised myself at, was killing chickens on a processing day. You might think me strange, but I have come to enjoy killing chickens. Before I came to Polyface I was very insecure about taking the life of an animal. I have helped to slaughtered chickens numerous times before coming here and I was barely able to stomach the process. I was originally taught to do it with methods that were more inhumane and difficult to stomach. Polyface processes chickens in one of the most efficient, and humane ways that I know of, while producing a very clean bird. Being taught these methods, as well as seeing more clearly the necessity of something to die so that I might live, has helped me to overcome a lot of the qualms I originally faced over this task. That being said, every time I set about the task, I realize anew the reality that I can only live (spiritually and physically) through the sacrifice of life."
Kai: "This week we butchered three times. The evening before we were going to butcher the first day Daniel basically said we had enough experience on the kill floor, so it was time to lock in. The next day we achieved the benchmark of 200 birds per hour and 15 birds per man hour, getting slightly under 500 chickens killed before 11:00. That was really cool because it showed all of us what was actually possible in terms of the speed that we were capable of and, at least for me, gave me the drive to try to get faster and better at the whole process. It was a pretty amazing thing to see how, just with a little encouragement, everyone dialed it in and knocked it out. "
Photo Credit Kai Wright
Most enjoyed task?
Carter: "I have learned to really enjoy moving broilers. Every morning we move the broilers during our first chores of the day. The goal is to move, feed, and water a row of ten shelters in 30 minutes. Completing that tasked with a few minutes to spare has brought me a lot of satisfaction."
Kai:"The thing I enjoyed the most was when we yeehawed some pigs into the corral from Flat Field. Almost everyone around joined in, helping keep the pigs from going places we didn't want them to go and push them down the road and into the corral. It was a lot of fun.
I really like working with the pigs. They are definitely my favorite animal, so if I get to do anything with them it's a good day for me. In my free time I've gone up the mountain to their paddocks and spent at least a good hour with them."
Photo Credit Kai Wright
First Big Task?
Carter: "One of the bigger projects we just completed was a cattle corral for a new rental farm. I helped out with a lot of nailing boards and pounding posts. The most interesting part was learning how to set up an effective corral for managing cows. One of the unique factors about this corral compared to some other designs, is that the cattle chute is curved. Cattle like walking in circles. A curved chute helps to keep them calm."
Kai: "Recently we built a new corral at the Vinegar Hill property, a project I was involved in. I really liked being able to see the planning and thought that went into the design and placement of the corral, and seeing the project come together quickly was also really neat."
Photo Credit Kai Wright
Interesting Visitors?
Carter: "One interesting visitor we've had around the farm recently is a young black bear. One evening around 8:30 I took a stroll up the mountain. I had walked approximately 2 miles from the main farm facilities up the mountain road. It was getting quite dark by that time, and I was contemplating how much furthur I would walk before turning around. Well, what do you know, I came around a sharp bend in the road and there, about 200 ft. in front of me, was a Black Bear! Now to me he looked pretty big. Being that I was on my own he was bound to look big. Your imagination does some funny things when you're by yourself. I really don't know how big he was. Probably just 200 lbs or so. I tell you what, I high-tailed it down the mountain pretty quick."
"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.
