How it all started: the story of Polyface Farm | Joel Salatin | TEDxMidAtlantic

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Joel Salatin is an American farmer, lecturer, and author whose books include "You Can Farm" and "Salad Bar Beef". Salatin raises livestock using holistic methods of animal husbandry, free of potentially harmful chemicals, on his Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia. Salatin's 550-acre farm is featured prominently in Michael Pollan's book, "The Omnivores Dilemma", and the documentary film, "Food, Inc."

Host: Our next speaker
will be Joel Salatin

who is a farmer, lecturer, and author,

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

Salatin raises livestock using
holistic methods of animal husbandry,

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

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

and the documentary film "Food, Inc."

Please welcome Joel Salatin.

(Cheers) (Applause)

Joel Salatin: Thank you.

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

And so as I've thought
about this presentation,

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

It doesn't start
at the beginning necessarily,

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

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

wanting to have
a pleasant life in the country

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

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

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

So we started raising these pullets

for people who wanted them
in their backyard

for their McMansion farmettes
out in the countryside.

(Laughter)

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

"We want 100 pullets."

We raised it for five months

- they don't start laying
till five months -

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

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

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

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

Well, we had 100 pullets.

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

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

I mean, they just start laying eggs.

There's nothing to do except collect eggs.

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

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

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

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

we provide a habitat

that allows the chicken
to fully express its chickenness.

(Laughter)

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

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

that you actually get the best egg.

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

You get your best T-bone,

you get your best tomato
from the essence of tomato.

See, we live in a culture today

that doesn't ask

about the essence of pig;

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

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

And so we have this very mechanistic,

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

compartmentalized, disconnected,
democratized, individualized,

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

(Cheers) (Applause)

And so what happens is, as a culture,

we basically view that pig or that chicken

as just an inanimate pile of
protoplasmic structure to be manipulated

however cleverly hubris
can imagine to manipulate it.

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

from that type of manipulative,
arrogant, disrespectful attitude,

will also soon view
its citizens the same way,

and other cultures the same way.

(Applause)

So it is asking the chicken,

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

that gives us not only
the essence of chicken

but therefore, the essence of egg.

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

"It's immoral for you

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

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

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

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

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

Now, a case is 30 dozen.

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

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

(Laughter)

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

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

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

and they want more eggs."

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

He says, "How soon can you get me

500 dozen a week?"

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

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

He said, "OK, well,"

- this is the greatest lie
ever invented by man -

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

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

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

So, we were younger and foolish.

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

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

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

You know, fluoridation
of city water systems,

and vitamins, trying to make
them into prescription drugs,

and all this stuff.

And he just got too busy to market them.

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

(Laughter)

Big problem!

So I realized, you know what?

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

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

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

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

I need a hit list.

I need a hit list of restaurants

that are interested
in the essence of egg."

(Laughter)

And he said, "Oh, no problem."

This was in the days before computers.

So he got on his typewriter,

he typed me out
about 12 restaurants in the area,

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

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

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

I've never had a chef turn me down.

Because chefs are very artistic,

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

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

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

they crack the egg in their hands

and let the white dribble
down through their fingers.

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

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

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

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

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

So we made six appointments in the day.

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

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

and some sample dozen,

and drove off to the first appointment.

We made them one hour apart for six hours.

And the first place
we went to, we went in

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

chef-owner-operated restaurant.

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

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

(Laughter)

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

I walked in and introduced myself.

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

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

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

not boiling but almost.

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

and it floated.

And he began studying the essence of egg.

(Laughter)

And it captured his attention.

And waited a few seconds,
30 seconds or so,

then he takes a slotted spoon,
a white saucer,

and he gingerly pulled it out.

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

(Laughter)

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

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

(Laughter)

Like you'd pet a kitten.

(Laughter)

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

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

(Laughter)

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

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

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

Of course, they all have
some exotic accent

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

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

E. coli eggs there standing.

(Laughter)

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

When the egg hits the water, it explodes.

The yolk separates from the white.

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

little nurlies.

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

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

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

in case we struck it rich.

So, ran out to the car, got one.

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

and cut a separate check.

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

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

So we went where angels fear to tread.

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

became a very loyal customer.

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

and that was that the very next morning,

the very next morning,
he was having a meeting

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

unknown to us,
that for this little restaurant,

the only one of 50
in the Charlottsville area,

the only one that had this
as their centerpiece menu item

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

their forte, alright? -

well this one, their signature menu item,

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

And the following morning
after we showed up,

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

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

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

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

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

and I've told it a million times -

but the point of the story is

that if we devote ourselves

to sacredness in our vocations,

the world will rise to meet us.

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

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

That story illustrates the essence of egg,

and the essence of chicken.

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

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

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

and move the Eggmobiles behind the cows,

so the chickens can mimic the birds
that follow the wildebeests

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

and scrapes through the cow paddies,
sanitize the paddock

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

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

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

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

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

And wouldn't it cheapen our lives

if we're just doing the expedient thing?

Just putting in my time; doing my job.

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

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

What, did you check your mind at the door?

Did you check your conscience at the door?

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

to serve 50 restaurants,
and 2,500 families,

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

but you know what?

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

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

In fact, we've now made
ten value statements

that are anti-Wall Street to keep us true

to a value of faithfulness.

Because what I've found
is that serendipitously,

my success is tied
to the cumulative effect

of everyday stories and faithfulness
to injecting sacredness and nobility

into every little action of my day.

And when we put that kind of ministry

- ours is a ministry of healing the land -

and when we allow that kind of sacredness
and that kind of nobility

to permeate every one of our actions,

the world will be ennobled,

the world will indeed rise up to meet us

as we leave our legacies and our stamp,

of our life, our life's story,

as it becomes our stories for our children
and their grandchildren,

what will they tell about us?

And if they will tell about us,

"He or she was a person
of nobility and sacredness

in every aspect of their life,"

we will have raised a great legacy

for our families and our heritage.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)