Seasons Change

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December 17, 2024

Farmers are well acquainted with the seasonal ebb and flow of work.

Over the course of a year, the pace and tone of agricultural activities change. My role at the farm also shifted with the passing of seasons.

October 1st marked the end of our summer at Polyface. This is when we bid farewell to our summer stewards and begin our fall and winter routines.

My job transitioned from being the summer chef to assisting with shipping and inventory.

My first week back in the shipping department was a blast! I was surprised with just how natural such a dramatic shift in work felt.

How was it that reverting back to my shipping role was so fulfilling?

I know there are multiple factors to this, but one of the biggest ones is that I am essentially doing the same thing.

While peeling potatoes in the kitchen and labeling boxes in a warehouse seem very unrelated, both are bringing food to people.

Being able to work within my calling as both a chef and shipping assistant has been very grounding and personally gratifying.

What about you?

Are you a farmer whose work is intrinsically tied to the changes in weather?

Are you a person who holds seasonal positions?

Perhaps you are someone who rarely has a change of pace in their work but longs for that.

Maybe, on a personal level, this season for you has been really long or hard. (If so, a not-so-well-known country song comes to mind, "Seasons Change", by Scotty McCreery. This song may or may not have kept me going through the doldrums of college.)

Seasons do change; that is the way God designed the natural world to work. If your season is not changing, perhaps consider ways you might encourage that change. Also keep in mind that if you do this current season well, when the time is right, your next season will come.

Here at Polyface, we embrace the seasons - it's built into our very farming model because we believe this is what we were created for; it's what our bodies, our hearts, and our Earth need.

We hope you enjoy this season. As you know, we're all taking a bit of a break for the rest of the year. Be assured that we're still taking care of the animals every day and we're still making plans for 2025 to be even better. We hope you'll partner with us next year to make the world a little better and a little brighter.

- Melissa

seasonal

methods

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.

Interview with the 2026 Stewards -- Part 3!

Closing thoughts on the Summer of 2026 by Polyface Steward Holly Mitchell.

The Full Circle - Utlizing the Entire Bird

The full circle of the poultry world: September musings on utilizing the whole bird, in every season, at every stage.

Seasons Change

More from the blog

Short of Turkeys and Beef

Interview with the 2026 Stewards -- Part 3!

The Full Circle - Utlizing the Entire Bird

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