WEBVTT

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Host: Our next speaker
will be Joel Salatin

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who is a farmer, lecturer, and author,

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whose books include
"You Can Farm", and "Salad Bar Beef".

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Salatin raises livestock using 
holistic methods of animal husbandry,

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free of potentially harmful chemicals,
on his farm in Virginia.

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His farm is featured in the book
"The Omnivore's Dilemma"

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and the documentary film "Food, Inc."

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Please welcome Joel Salatin.

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(Cheers) (Applause)

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Joel Salatin: Thank you.

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A lot of people wonder,
"How did you get to where you are?"

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And so as I've thought 
about this presentation,

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I've decided to just give a story
of exactly how we got to where we are.

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It doesn't start
at the beginning necessarily,

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but it does start with the need
of people fleeing their Dilbert cubicles

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being a cog in the wheel
of a corporate, global elitist,

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wanting to have 
a pleasant life in the country

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and asking us to grow
ready-to-lay pullets for them.

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Now a pullet, for you uninitiated,
a pullet is a non-laying, female chicken.

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OK, like a virgin, or a heifer,
or something like that, OK.

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So we started raising these pullets

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for people who wanted them
in their backyard

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for their McMansion farmettes
out in the countryside.

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(Laughter)

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So we raised these 100 
for this lady that called and said,

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"We want 100 pullets."

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We raised it for five months

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- they don't start laying
till five months -

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they've got to go through puberty
and all that sort of thing.

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So they started laying,
and I called the lady, and I said,

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"OK, your pullets have begun laying,
now you want to come and pick them up?"

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She said, "Oh, my plans have changed,
I'm not going to pick them up."

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Well, we had 100 pullets.

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You know, you don't tell these ladies
to just stop laying eggs.

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You don't say, "Put a cork in it!"

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I mean, they just start laying eggs.

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There's nothing to do except collect eggs.

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We had a customer at the time
that was a Washington lobbyist, actually,

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and he came down,
and we were doing all this ...

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"Buy ten dozen, get one free"
promotional things.

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Now, you've got to understand,
when we raise chickens,

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we provide a habitat

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that allows the chicken
to fully express its chickenness.

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(Laughter)

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The number one question is
what is the essence of chicken?

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Because it is in answering that question,
the chickenness of the chicken,

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that you actually get the best egg.

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Just like you get the best bacon
from the essence of pig.

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You get your best T-bone,

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you get your best tomato
from the essence of tomato.

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See, we live in a culture today

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that doesn't ask

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about the essence of pig;

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they simply ask how can we grow it
fatter, faster, bigger, cheaper.

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That's all the matters:
faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper.

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And so we have this very mechanistic,

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in our Greco-Roman, Western,
reductionist, linear, fragmented,

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compartmentalized, disconnected,
democratized, individualized,

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parts-oriented thought process,
we never think about the whole!

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(Cheers) (Applause)

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And so what happens is, as a culture,

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we basically view that pig or that chicken

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as just an inanimate pile of
protoplasmic structure to be manipulated

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however cleverly hubris
can imagine to manipulate it.

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And I would suggest that a culture
that views its animals and plants

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from that type of manipulative,
arrogant, disrespectful attitude,

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will also soon view 
its citizens the same way,

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and other cultures the same way.

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(Applause)

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So it is asking the chicken,

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"How can we fully allow you
to express your chickenness?"

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that gives us not only
the essence of chicken

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but therefore, the essence of egg.

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So we had these eggs,
and this customer comes down, and he says,

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"It's immoral for you

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to be doing sale-priced stuff
to get rid of these eggs."

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He says, "I'll take a case."

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Now this was a truly entrepreneurial guy,
you know, grandpa;

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he and his wife live down
in Gainesville, near DC.

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And the next week, 
he calls and says, "I want two cases."

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Now, a case is 30 dozen.

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The next week, he calls and says,
"I want three cases."

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Now I knew that he and his wife
were not eating 90 dozen eggs a week.

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(Laughter)

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So I said, "Alright, time to fess up.
What are you doing with these eggs?"

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He says, "Well, I'm taking them
into these chefs in DC,

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and they've never seen an egg like this,
and they're just going euphoric,

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and they want more eggs."

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So he said, "I've got
a business proposition."

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He says, "How soon can you get me

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500 dozen a week?"

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I said, "Well, I've got to buy the chicks,
I've got to raise them up,

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five, six months,
we can probably do that."

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He said, "OK, well,"

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- this is the greatest lie
ever invented by man -

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"you raise them, and I'll sell them."

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That's why farmers go out of business,
believing things like that.

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But, before you're old and wise,
you have to be young and foolish.

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So, we were younger and foolish.

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And we said, "OK, we'll do it."

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So we bought 1,000 little
chick pullets, raised them up,

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they began to lay, right when he got 
very busy with lobby efforts.

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You know, fluoridation
of city water systems,

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and vitamins, trying to make
them into prescription drugs,

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and all this stuff.

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And he just got too busy to market them.

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Well now, instead of 100 pullets,
I had 1,000 pullets.

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(Laughter)

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Big problem!

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So I realized, you know what?

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If it's going to happen,
it's going to be me.

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If it's going to be, it's up to me.

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So, I had a retired chef friend,
who was cheffing in Charlottsville, VA.

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So I called him up, I said,
"Hans, I'm in a problem here.

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I need a hit list.

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I need a hit list of restaurants

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that are interested
in the essence of egg."

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(Laughter)

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And he said, "Oh, no problem."

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This was in the days before computers.

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So he got on his typewriter,

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he typed me out 
about 12 restaurants in the area,

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and mailed them to me,
so I just started down the list.

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I said, "Hello, I'm Joel Salatin.

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I've got the world's best egg.
I'd like to show it to you."

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I've never had a chef turn me down.

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Because chefs are very artistic,

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you don't see salt shakers
in a white tablecloth restaurant,

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they've got bowls
so they can feel it and pinch it.

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They don't have little Tupperware
white and yolk separators,

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they crack the egg in their hands

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and let the white dribble
down through their fingers.

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They get into it; they're sculptors
and so they love a new medium.

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And so my son and I
- he was a little chumper -

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didn't have a business card
at the time, you know,

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so we put some eggs in the car,
I called these six, and I said,

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"I've got the world's best egg.
I'd like to make an appointment with you."

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So we made six appointments in the day.

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That was what we could compress
between morning chores and evening chores.

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Got in the car, put 
a couple of cases of eggs in there,

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and some sample dozen,

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and drove off to the first appointment.

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We made them one hour apart for six hours.

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And the first place 
we went to, we went in

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- this was a small, 50-seat,
white tablecloth, nicely appointed,

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chef-owner-operated restaurant.

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He was busy, he had burns
all up and down his arms.

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You can tell when a chef is a chef;
their body's full of burns.

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(Laughter)

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So, he's there; he's got a stove there,
and he's a man of few words.

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I walked in and introduced myself.

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And he said, "OK,"
and I opened up a sample dozen.

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He took an egg out, and he had
a little, six-inch saucepan there,

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about half-full of water,
sitting on the stove,

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not boiling but almost.

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And he cracked the egg into it,
dropped in it,

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and it floated.

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And he began studying the essence of egg.

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(Laughter)

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And it captured his attention.

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And waited a few seconds,
30 seconds or so,

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then he takes a slotted spoon,
a white saucer,

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and he gingerly pulled it out.

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By this time it was clear
that he was having an epiphany.

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(Laughter)

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He pulled it out;
he dropped it on the saucer.

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And then he put the spoon down,
and he began to stroke it.

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(Laughter)

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Like you'd pet a kitten.

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(Laughter)

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Daniel and I are standing there,
my son, he's about six years old,

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we're looking at each other,
'Whoa, what have we gotten into here?'

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(Laughter)

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And so, of course, I couldn't stand it,
I asked the chef, I said,

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"So, what are we doing here?
What's the deal?"

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And again, a man of few words,
he says, "I'll show you."

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Of course, they all have
some exotic accent

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because they've all been trained
in Europe, and Switzerland, and all this.

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So he has a stack of flatted, regular,
fecal, confinement factory, salmonella,

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E. coli eggs there standing.

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(Laughter)

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So he takes one of those out,
and he drops it in the same pan.

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When the egg hits the water, it explodes.

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The yolk separates from the white.

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The white turns into what look like 
little (sound effect) packing peanuts

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little nurlies.

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He points at it, and he says,
"I can't serve that."

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He said, "I'll buy 30 dozen on the spot."

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I just happened to have a case with me,
you know, just in case ...

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in case we struck it rich.

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So, ran out to the car, got one.

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Now, we were asking him
to pay three times the price,

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and cut a separate check.

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If you've been in restaurant marketing,
you know that's suicide.

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Fortunately, we were too dumb
to know it was suicide.

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So we went where angels fear to tread.

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And we went in there with this,
and he bought them on the spot,

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became a very loyal customer.

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Several weeks later, we found out
the second part of the story,

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and that was that the very next morning,

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the very next morning,
he was having a meeting

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of all of his staff to get together
because, it turns out,

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unknown to us,
that for this little restaurant,

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the only one of 50
in the Charlottsville area,

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the only one that had this
as their centerpiece menu item

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- all restaurants evolve around
a kind of a centerpiece menu item,

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their forte, alright? -

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well this one, their signature menu item,

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was Sunday brunch, water-poached egg
in hollandaise sauce.

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And the following morning
after we showed up,

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he had called together his whole staff
to look at all their options,

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and their gifts, and talents,
and resources, client base, and all that,

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and decide what's to substitute
for their signature menu item

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because they could not get enough eggs
to hold together to make it work.

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And I'd always enjoy - and I always get
chill bumps every time I tell that story,

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and I've told it a million times -

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but the point of the story is

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that if we devote ourselves

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to sacredness in our vocations,

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the world will rise to meet us.

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And I think too often in our culture,
we don't have sacredness,

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we don't have honor, we don't have
nobility of personal ministry.

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That story illustrates the essence of egg,

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and the essence of chicken.

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And that is why they eat bugs,
and grubs, and run on green grass;

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and that's why we move them
to a fresh salad bar every day.

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And that's why we practice
nature's template and biomimicry,

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and move the Eggmobiles behind the cows,

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so the chickens can mimic the birds
that follow the wildebeests

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on the Serengeti,
but do this in Swoope, Virginia,

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and scrapes through the cow paddies,
sanitize the paddock

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so we don't have to shoot
the cows up with Ivomec

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and things that make them eat so bad,
it kills all the bugs.

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That's all illustrative
of why we do what we do.

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And so, in essence, all of us, every day,

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we are writing a story and a legacy
that will be told about us.

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And wouldn't it cheapen our lives

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if we're just doing the expedient thing?

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Just putting in my time; doing my job.

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I'm so tired of hearing people
that dismiss mediocrity,

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and dismiss even dishonorable deeds,
with, "I'm just doing my job."

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What, did you check your mind at the door?

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Did you check your conscience at the door?

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And so, on our farm, we have been deeply
and greatly blessed over these years

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to serve 50 restaurants,
and 2,500 families,

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and to be able to see
the growth of the operation,

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but you know what?

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We still don't and never have had
a sales plan or a marketing target.

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We've never had a benchmark
that we're hitting.

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In fact, we've now made
ten value statements

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that are anti-Wall Street to keep us true

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to a value of faithfulness.

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Because what I've found
is that serendipitously,

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my success is tied
to the cumulative effect

00:14:16.862 --> 00:14:23.826
of everyday stories and faithfulness
to injecting sacredness and nobility

00:14:23.827 --> 00:14:27.811
into every little action of my day.

00:14:27.812 --> 00:14:33.564
And when we put that kind of ministry

00:14:33.565 --> 00:14:37.015
- ours is a ministry of healing the land -

00:14:38.385 --> 00:14:43.965
and when we allow that kind of sacredness
and that kind of nobility

00:14:43.966 --> 00:14:47.263
to permeate every one of our actions,

00:14:48.424 --> 00:14:53.843
the world will be ennobled,

00:14:53.844 --> 00:14:56.750
the world will indeed rise up to meet us

00:14:56.751 --> 00:15:00.585
as we leave our legacies and our stamp,

00:15:00.609 --> 00:15:03.762
of our life, our life's story,

00:15:03.763 --> 00:15:07.712
as it becomes our stories for our children
and their grandchildren,

00:15:07.713 --> 00:15:10.131
what will they tell about us?

00:15:10.132 --> 00:15:12.301
And if they will tell about us,

00:15:12.302 --> 00:15:17.614
"He or she was a person
of nobility and sacredness

00:15:17.615 --> 00:15:20.265
in every aspect of their life,"

00:15:21.035 --> 00:15:25.730
we will have raised a great legacy

00:15:26.611 --> 00:15:29.201
for our families and our heritage.

00:15:29.781 --> 00:15:31.220
Thank you very much.

00:15:31.220 --> 00:15:32.781
(Applause)