The Farm of Many Faces

Lexington to Charlottesville: Part Two

Today I visited Polyface Farms.  The sustainable farm was used as a case study in Michael Pollan's The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and, more recently, featured in the movie Food, Inc.  When I discovered how close we were traveling to the farm, I decided that I needed to pay it a visit, and have been quite excited ever since.  I was not disappointed.  

Located in the middle of rural southwestern Virginia, it was a bit of a trek to get out to the farm.  I felt like I had been driving one lane country farm roads for ages before I finally arrived.  As I pulled into the gravel parking lot, I spotted a woman watering her flowers on the porch of one of the two houses.  She turned out to be Lucille Salatin, mother of Joel Salatin, who was featured in Food, Inc.  Joel runs the farm, but Lucille owns it, and so she was able to tell me quite a bit about the farm’s philosophy, which is centered around the health of the grasses:

The cows feed on grass, and move to a new field every day to ensure that the grass isn't overgrazed.

The broilers, or chickens raised for meat, follow the cows feeding on shorter blades of grass and grains.

The "egg-mobile" follows the broilers, and the chickens feed on cow manure while laying eggs.

Inside the egg-mobile.

The broilers are slaughtered right on the farm.

And sold from the farm, too.

There you have it: the (overly simplified) philosophy behind one of the more ecologically healthy farms in the country.

I was also interested in how sustainable food growers dealt with food waste.  Lucille told me that they feed the chickens their leftover food scraps.  I was pleased to hear that, but what about compost?  Don’t they have a pile?

More like a mountain.

Food scraps don’t end up here in the compost pile, but after the Salatins slaughter chickens, they compost the guts, bones, feathers, and other unusable parts.  They don’t want any cannibalistic chickens running around, apparently.  Also in the compost is the farm’s yard clippings.  The chicken parts combined with the brush make a very nutrient-rich compost product, Lucille told me.  With the stench of the piles and the hordes of flies milling around, that's easy to believe.

So many flies.