All language subtitles for The Lunatic Farmer

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[laughter]

What do I have to say
for myself?

Man, oh man.

[music]

Our next speaker will be
Joel Salatin,

who is a farmer, lecturer,
and author.

He describes himself as
an evangelical,

Christian, conservative,

environmentalist,
lunatic farmer.

He's kind of the godfather,
not of just homesteading,

but of sustainable farming

and a lot of these other practices

that he's put into play.

Which contradict this idea
that the only way

that we could feed a
large-scale population

is through industrial farming.

If it stinks or it looks ugly,
it's probably not good farming.

Good farming should be
aesthetically

and aromatically, sensually romantic.

Your approach to farming
it's so natural and so normal.

And so, in my opinion,
non-controversial.

We were branded Luddites and
anti-progressives, anti-science.

It's never been like this.
What happened?

Regulatory extortion, tyranny.

But yet, you were looked at

as some sort of a wild man
out there.

A lunatic!

Woooooaaaeee!

Come on gals.

Woooooaaaeee!

[old country music]

What gets me up in the
morning is knowing

that I can walk out
that back door,

and I can step in to
a physical expression

of God's abundance.

He lets me come alongside
Him, as His hands and feet

and work in that tapestry of
His grace and abundance.

That's cool.

How can I come alongside
God's marvelous creation

and steward it and manage it

to give him a good return
on investment?

That's our ministry.

Easter morning ice storm.

That was when we were
in college.

Oh my...

There ya go!
Look at that pretty girl.

[Teresa]
yeah, back when i was skinny.

Oh my...

[Teresa]
shoooooo.

Them was the days.

[Teresa]
them was the days.

As far as our story here,

I guess I would back up to
my grandfather, Frederick.

Always wanted to be a farmer.

He always aspired,
but never did.

But he had a great big garden,
compost pile, all this stuff.

And dad absolutely got that
environmental bent from him.

Dad always from a little child,
he wanted to farm.

Midwestern kid, no money,
no land,

you know, what do you do?
"I'll go to South America."

You know, land's cheap,
open commerce,

there aren't very many
bureaucrats around.

And in seven years, he saved
up enough money

to be able to buy a thousand
acre farm

in the highlands of Venezuela.

By that time he'd married mom
and they had two of us kids.

But anyway, started farming.

And so the way it worked was

farmers would come into the
town square.

You know, you got the
banana man,

the pineapple man,
the chicken guy.

And at that time,
the indigenous chickens

all had snot, post-nasal drip,
because it was so filthy.

You know, there were
squat pots, open sewers.

And so when dad took our
first chickens to the market...

They were dry.
Because he kept them clean.

And in no time,

dad cornered the local
chicken market.

Well, the other
chicken growers

accused us of was witchcraft

and that we were practicing
voodoo,

because that's the only way

you can have a chicken
this clean.

In 1959, Venezuela had
a junta,

change of government, anarchy.

When that happens,
when there's a breakdown of

rule of law, it gives license
for scores

to be settled that would
not be

settled under more
normal times.

We were driven out, basically
the machine guns

came in the front doors,
we fled the back door.

and we lost everything.

We left the country.

We arrived back in the U.S.

in the spring of 1961
on Easter Sunday.

And we looked at farms.
and settled on the cheapest

gullied rock pile that
was available.

Here, in Shenandoah Valley.

When we first moved here
back in 1961,

the soil was like brick.

One gully was 16 feet deep.
That's a lot of soil.

And there were large
rock galls.

Where three to five feet of
topsoil had washed off.

We didn't have enough soil
to hold up electric fense stakes.

And electric fence stake is
just, you know,

it just goes in the ground
yay far,

it just a spike, you know.

We'll just dig down here.

Today, all of those areas
have 12 inches of soil on them.

So what you wanna see is
what we call "crumbles."

You wanna see this crumble.

It should be like, you know,
a good chocolate cake.

It's the fluffiness, it's the
air between.

If you go to a regular
chemically fertilized farm

growing monocultures,
soil will be really hard.

And I mean, it'll feel like brick.

You see, that's just soft,
loamy, a lot of air in it.

One handful of healthy soil
that has as many

beings in it as there are
people on the face of the earth.

Think about that. Nine-billion
living organisms in soil.

Right now, as smart as we
are, we only have names

for 10% of all those beings
in the soil.

90% are unnamed and we
don't know what they do.

We know they're there,
but we don't know what they do.

And so to come in like
a bunch of swashbuckling

pirates and say,
"Well, all it needs is

nitrogen, potassium,
and phosphorus.

All we need is, you know,
stick some chemicals in it

and we'll grow stuff."

It completely dishonors
the beauty,

the complexity of what this is.

You know, and these fields
that could only handle

fifteen cows back in that day
now handle one-hundred.

I mean, I'm not bragging.

I'm simply paying humble
homage to...

This is not a scarcity planet.
It's an abundance planet.

And it's our responsibility
to use our mechanical

ability, you know,
opposing thumbs,

and our intellectual
capacity, not as conquistadors,

but as redemptive healers.

You know, starting over
with nothing

and on a piece of incredibly
abused land,

it wasn't easy, and he
[dad] had

every consultant come in.

And every consultant
was, "plant corn."

"Borrow more money."

"Build silos."

"Put in a feed lot."

"Borrow more money."

"Buy chemicals."

And a lot of people don't
realize that there was

a real battle in this country
post-World War II.

Whether we would go
the chemical approach...

The chemical preparations
are used to kill

insects and to change
the growth of plants.

Or I'm going to call it
the "carbon approach."

When the compost is
ready for use,

it is deposited on the
alfalfa field.

Obviously, we know which
side won,

the chemical approach won.

But he saw the chemical
approach

as being like a drug addiction.

It becomes more and
more expensive.

You got to use more and
more of it.

He saw the dependency,
the dependency on

multinational corporations
for fertilizer,

the dependency for energy,

the dependency for equipment.

I mean, we certainly saw it

when Putin invaded Ukraine,
you know, here most recently.

Fertilizer went up 400%

because most of it comes
from Russia.

The very notion that a farmer
has to be dependent

on something on the other
side of the world

in order to maintain soil,
not only is it incorrect,

it doesn't make intuitive sense
that God would set this up

so that in order for me to
have healthy soil,

I'm dependent on, you know,
on Vladimir Putin.

He saw that dependency as
a real economic problem.

So he eschewed all of that
professional advice

and took a job in town.

Mom then eventually
took a job.

and those off-farm jobs pay
the mortgage.

And we basically,
for the first twenty years,

had essentially a glorified
homestead.

[oldie music]

Didn't really sell much.

You know, but we had a
couple milk cows,

had a big garden.

We were canning and eating
our own food.

You know, we grew up
with our church friends

being a bunch of straight-laced

they go to, you know,
when McDonald's came in,

they went to McDonald's.
And we didn't.

And instead, we're drinking

"tiger's milk" from
Adelle Davis.

Our church friends,
they'd ride dad, you know,

and call it, "Hey, is that
what they're drinking,

that panther puke again?"
They didn't call it tiger milk.

I have older brother,
younger sister,

neither of them was
interested in the farm.

I was the only one that
really liked the farm.

And um...

I started my flock of
chickens when I was ten.

But it was a hotbed for
experiments

and dad was constantly
experimenting.

One of the earliest things
that I remember.

It was a Sunday afternoon,
we all got in the car.

We've visited a farmer who had

portable shelters
out in the field.

All I remember coming home
was dad basically levitating

of the idea of mobile
infrastructure.

"Why! You don't have to
build a barn.

If you don't like it here,
you can put it over here!"

So he built a portable shelter
to milk cows in.

He built a portable shade-mobile
for the cows to be under.

And then, you know,
composting

and then the
mobile infrastructure

and seeing how confining
animals

and moving them along
the pasture,

you know, increased the fertility.

So this is the Egg-mobile,

and it follows the cows.

So the cows were here about
three, four days ago,

and the chickens follow
the cows,

and the chickens then scratch
through these cow patties.

They spread out the cow patties
so it covers more ground,

and they eat the fly larva

and parasites and things
like that,

and act as a biological
sanitizer behind the cows.

This is one of the most
symbiotic relationships

in nature is the bird-herbivore
relationship.

So all we're doing is
we're mimicking that

pattern and that keeps the
cows healthy

and it makes a wonderful
wonderful egg.

And the chickens then are
doing that work instead

of us having to put the
cows through

the corral and shoot them
up with things that

make the meat so bad
it kills all the bugs.

It is working within a
framework like in Isaiah

where God says, "I am for you."

He says that over and over again.
"I am for you.

I am for you.
I'm not against you."

If you go to the average
farm conference,

90% of the conference
is about disease

and pests and sickness.

It's as if nature
has it out for me!

And I suggest no.

Alright, now we're
going to the cows.

We move the cows every day
to a new paddock.

And if it's done well, it actually
stimulates production

just like pruning an orchard
or a vineyard.

The way God set this up,
there are kind of three

things that wild herbivore
herds exhibit,

and that is they're
constantly moving,

they're mobbed up for
predator protection,

and then they're mowing,
they're pruning, okay?

Moving, mobbing, mowing.

Those are the three principles.

The problem is that 95% of the

domestic herbivores on the
planet violate at least one,

and many of them,
all three of those three "M's."

They're not moving,
they're not mobbing,

and they're not mowing.
They're in a feedlot,

and when you violate
moving, mobbing, mowing,

you take something that
is a beautiful,

synergistic, soil-growing,

abundance-encouraging thing,

an asset, and turn into a liability.

And so we move the cows
every day to a new paddock,

and this keeps that grass
in that rapid growth cycle.

So that at the end of the day,
in Augusta County,

our average is 80
cow days per acre.

A cow day is what one
cow will eat in a day.

So an acre will support
one cow for 80 days a year

or 80 cows for one day a year.

And here we average about
400 cow days per acre.

We haven't bought a bag
of chemical fertilizer

and we haven't planted
a seed in sixty years.

As we stand here, there
are tons of different plants.

I mean, here's an Onion,

Fescue,

Orchard Grass,

White Clover,

Dandelion,

Narrow Leaf Plantain,

a Morning Glory vine,

Wide Leaf Plantain,

Chicory coming up right here,

a Cheatgrass here,

this is Bluegrass,

Here's just the beginning of a

Queen Anne's lace coming,
wild carrot.

I'm not sure what that is.

There's a little Posy.

So each one of these
plants concentrates a

different kind of enzyme,

different vitamins, different
minerals.

The single thing that they
found in beef,

for example, that defines
nutrient density

is how much variety of
plants did the cow take in.

And this kind of grazing
stimulates diversity.

It's not a monoculture of
just one kind of plant.

In the industry, there's
one goal,

faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper.

That has nothing to do
with nutritional quality,

with preserving soil,
preserving water.

It's not about preserving

acres for future generations.

And below the ground, the roots

mimic what's above the ground.

And so if you let the plant
get some length to it,

then it also makes great
big long roots.

And so then you're
more drought resistant,

you start building
organic matter,

all sorts of things.

In our time here, we've gone
from 1% organic matter

to 8% organic matter.

And every 1% increase in
organic matter increases

water retention by 20,000
gallons per acre.

So we've gone 7%, which
is 140,000 gallons of

water per acre that we
can hold now today

that we couldn't hold in 1961.

Not only does this feed
the world,

it's the only system that can.

Our county average is
80 cow days per acre.

We're averaging almost
400 cow days per acre.

That's five times.

Just be real conservative
and say three times.

What if the neighbor did this

and had three times to
as many cows?

What if our whole county,
what if our whole state?

The fact is there is
so much more

abundance here than
we can imagine.

The agra-industrial
complex views

our resource base from
a view of scarcity

that we're running out.

"Population growth and
climate change

thats pushing down the
productivity that we have

on those farms today.

So this is quite alarming."

Even a reluctant partner
that I've got to get you

in a half Nelson and
I'm going to

make you grow cherries or

apples or cows or
whatever it is.

When actually God has given us.

A loving partner here of
abundance that we just

need to caress in the
right places.

That's all.

It is appreciating the order

and the pattern that God set up.

and leveraging it to
its full potential.

rather than, either dismissing
it or adulterating it.

Smithsonian did a working
landscape study here.

There were 29 sites and
we were the only one

where they were able
to find all eight species of

bumblebees known to exist
in Virginia.

And I think it's because
by moving them like this,

you get a vegetative mosaic,
so there's

always something in blossom.

How can I come alongside
God's marvelous creation?

And steward it and manage it.

To give Him a good return
on investment.

So that what I give back
to God as a result of my

living here is more soil,

more health,

more pollinators,

more wildlife,

more earthworms.

That's a return on investment.

It's a pretty nice office
to work in.

[laughter]

Alright, it's probably time
to go to breakfast.

[laughter]

I haven't seen that.

This thing's been in ponds
and cow troughs and it

just keeps on ticking man.

You put it in a bag of rice,
you know, and you

dry it out and then baby
she just keeps on going.

So my earliest memories
as long as I can remember,

I wanted to be a
full-time farmer.

I worked off the farm for
two and a half years

after college at the local

newspaper as an investigative reporter

so I'm there, you know,

and I'm in the same tension
that dad was all his life.

I want to be on the farm,
but I got to earn a

living here in town and
you have this tension.

And Teresa and I got married.

We remodeled the attic in
the farmhouse upstairs

and drove a $50 car.

If we didn't grow it,
we didn't eat it.

We lived on $300 a month.

And by living so cheaply,
we were

able to save half of our income.

And so within a couple of years,
we had enough

saved that we could live for

one year without outside income.

September 24, 1982, I walked
out of that office,

I said, "I know we can live
for one year."

And as it turned out,
we never went back.

I mean, Teresa and I were
completely wrapped up in a farm.

She was my tractor driver.

I mean, we were just
together all the time.

We lived in the attic.

You know, if there's one

thing that has made
me successful,

it's marrying a lady who's
more frugal than I am.

You know, as frugal as I am,
I'm the spender

Teresa's the saver.

And it was family,
we were just together.

We had two kids.
Daniel and Rachel.

We didn't have a bunch of toys.
We didn't have a TV.

And by this time, we had
absolutely embraced the notion

that we were not sending
our kids to public school.

We read a lot.
Our kids would sit for hours.

And then of course as
Daniel got older

he started taking over
more and more

of what Teresa had done.

They were good days.

You know, we didn't
make much money,

but man, life was rich.

I mean, it was tight.
We couldn't afford vet bills,

we couldn't afford sickness.

And so the whole goal was
how do we create a

habitat that makes
happy animals?

Because happy animals probably
aren't going to get sick.

They're getting fed what
they want.

They're sanitary, their hygiene,

their social structure,

all this is in a place that
gives them no stress.

That was the goal.

Hey, piggles.

Ohhh!

How are ya, piggles?

Hi, piggles.

How you doing? Hmm?

One of my favorite things
that ever happened up here,

we had a new chef.

And this new chef,
he was pretty young

and he wanted to see the pigs.

He was getting a bunch
of pork from us.

So he came up here and he
stood out here and he said,

he said, "I'm 28 and I've never
seen a live pig."

You know, he's cooked
lots of pork

and he's broken down
carcasses and all that,

but I've never seen a live pig.

I said, "I don't know anything
about him like this,

but I just believe that
if I were a pig,

this is the way I'd wanna live."

And that just says it all.

So we move these pigs
every five to twelve days

through the paddocks.

So they get their salad bar
and they get their feed.

And they get exercise.

There's no smell.
There's no flies.

The pigs get to fully
express their pigness.

And in the confinement
animal feeding operation,

they're just confined in
little slatted floor cells

and high stress.

The problem is that
we have allowed ourselves

to take a very mechanistic
view of biology.

And we inanimate it so
that it's no more special,

distinctive, different,
than a wheel bearing.

Not only do we
disrespect the spontaneity

and livingness character
of biology,

but we also erode
its specialness

as an expression
of God's creative power.

Just as an example of
some of the things that are

done in our land
grant universities.

Right now, or at least there
has been quite a bit,

an effort to take out the
stress gene in pigs.

Because when you got
5,000 pigs in a confinement

house and they've got these
little cells on slatted floors,

and you've had to cut the
tails off so that it's

tender enough that when
they try to cannibalize,

they run away from each other.

I mean, and they just run,

they're just under
stress all the time.

So there's a lot of effort
within the industry

to try to find out, well,
what's the gene for stress?

If we take that out...

then we can at least
abuse them more

and at least they won't
be stressed.

And I would ask anybody,

is that the kind
of society we want?

Because it's not very far
from there to say,

well, I wonder what
the libertarian theme

or what the conservative gene,

you know, is in a person,
let's take that out.

That is the kind of thinking,
it's this slippery slope.

It's not okay to abuse animals.

It doesn't mean that
we don't eat them

because there can be
no life without sacrifice.

But what makes
a sacrifice sacred

is the honor of respect

bestowed upon the
act of sacrifice

prior to slaughter.

There's nothing sacred about
slaughtering a Tyson chicken,

that's just sacrilege,

that's just putting it
out of its misery.

But one of our chickens,
thats out here

in fresh air, sunshine,
green grass, bugs,

and not living in fecal
particulate all the time.

That becomes a sacred sacrifice

because it is fully honored
and respected

the chickenness of the chicken.

One of the things that
we've learned from our

chefs over the years,
we've supplied a lot of

gourmet restaurants,
and one of the things you

learn from chefs like this
is nuances of stuff,

because, you know, they cook
so much of the same

thing over and over
and over again.

So things that we wouldn't
pick up, you know, they pick up.

But one of the things that
we've picked up from them

is that all of our stuff cooks
about 15% to 20%

faster than regular
industrial stuff.

We don't officially know why,
but our sense is,

is because our animals don't
secrete any adrenaline,

because they're not
under stress.

And when you secrete adrenaline,
your muscles tighten up.

Our animals are happy.
They never secrete adrenaline.

And so the meat is real tender
and it cooks way faster.

So the question is, can you
eat happiness?

Yes, you can eat happiness.

And by the same token,
can you eat stress?

Yes, you can eat stress.

I'm not about to suggest
that if you eat a

McDonald's hamburger,
you're going to hell,

or even that it's sinful,
especially for a person

who doesn't know better
or hasn't come

to this point of conviction.

The problem I've come up
with with Christians is,

don't tell me, don't tell me,

I don't want to know!
I don't want to know!

That's the response.

And I think the problem
is that the

Christian community,
the faith community

has been so emasculated by the
Gaea, creation workshipping,

environmentalist, persona
that we have allowed ourselves

to believe that stewardship
is somehow unchristian.

And that's why I'm suggesting,
let's be Jacobs. Let's wrestle.

Let's be willing to wrestle.
I don't have all the answers.

But to say that God doesn't care

is skating on pretty thin ice,
in my opinion.

There's few things that
can bring you more joy

knowing that you're
making this many beings happy.

Pigs are pretty cool.

Interestingly, they're the
smartest of all the animals

with the poorest eyesight.

So if you combine intelligence
with not being able to see,

it means you're never quite
sure what's going on.

"What are they doing to me?"

And so they are the
hardest of all the animals

to develop trust with.

So that's why all these

paddocks have a wooden
gate in them,

because you know the cows,
you can open the electric fence

gate and you've seen them,
they just come running

right on through, no problem.
High trust.

Pigs...

"What are they trying to do?
Is that gate up or down?"

You know, they can't tell.

And so, the wooden gates,
you open that up

you open that up and
they just come right through.

And you don't have
a heart attack

and lose your religion.

Trying to chase them around
to get 'em in there.

As soon as I came
back full-time.

At that point...

All the financials were pretty

much on Teresa and
I's shoulders.

It was sink or swim time.

So here we are,

realizing if we were
going to make it

we had to brand and
direct market.

If you know a farmer at all,
you know,

he's always complaining
about the middleman.

"Middleman makes all the money.

Middleman makes
all the profits."

Because basically you've
got four streams

going into the retail dollar.

You've got production,
processing,

marketing, and distribution.

The average farmer is
only participating over

here in this production end.

That right now across the U.S.
that accounts for about

nine cents of the retail dollar.

So 91 cents of the retail
dollar comes from

processing, marketing
and distribution.

That's a lot.

And so if we can now
wear those other hats,

suddenly we get off of that
scale treadmill and we're

not hooked to the grain mill.
We're not hooked to, you know,

industrial systems.

We can be price makers
instead of

just take whatever the,
you know,

whatever the industry says
we're paying for this.

And so I had to start marketing.

And so I put together a slide
program about how to heal land

without chemicals and
do it with animals.

And so I would go and do
these twenty-minute dinner

programs for these
philanthropic organizations.

And every time I'd get,
you know,

two, three, four customers.

You know, we started with
the beef, then we added

the chicken, then we added
the pork, then we

added the eggs, and then
we added the turkey.

Here we are, there's year
two with the chickens.

Yeah, we started in and we
realized we were over our skis.

Dad and I tore down three barns
in the community to get lumber.

Because we didn't have
money to buy lumber.

We just let word of mouth.
We just kept trying to

service people and do better.

And it was about three years
until we kind of, you know,

where we felt like we
could exhale.

From day one, dad was,
he was stepping back

for me to take control.

And so,

I was making most of
the decisions, you know,

on the farm and uh...

he got sick...

There's no spark here. No spark.

There we go.

The writing's on this side.

He got diagnosed with cancer
and one of the

reasons I don't go to
the doctor is because

I watched him die in a day.

We always milked a couple
of Guernsey cows

and he'd gone [in for a]
regular checkup

and they said,
"Hey, maybe we better

check out this prostate."

And so he'd gone
and gotten a biopsy

and he hadn't come home yet
and so I went, you know,

he'd milk his cow,
I'd milk mine.

Well, he hadn't come so
I went ahead and started

milking his and he came
in about halfway through

and when he walked in the barn
door, I didn't recognize him.

He'd gotten a prognosis,

got the big "C," and that
was it.

[soft guitar music]

It took about four years.
So, you know,

from 1984 and then he
starts going downhill.

And then he got
pretty incapacitated.

He passed away
in February of 1988.

We put the casket
on a hay wagon,

invited all the friends,

I said, "everybody
bring a shovel."

And so it was a
really unconventional,

unconventional to the last day.

We have a joke around here

you know, my grandfather
wanted to farm.

He never did.

Dad wanted to farm full-time,
and except for the little

piece in Venezuela,
he never did.

And we joked that it took us

three generations to
finally get here.

But you know, I stand on
the shoulders of greatness.

Most American families today,

live a little bit above
their means.

So every generation is
getting a little bit

farther and farther in debt.

And our legacy was every
generation lives a

little bit below its means.

That way you have a little extra

launch pad for
succeeding generations.

Oh, he'd be so thrilled.
There's not a...

Sorry.

Not a day goes by that I don't
wish that he were here to enjoy

what he put together.

When dad died in 88, about 89...

I finally was able
to find a logger.

And we traded thirty acres
of timber for roughly two

and a half miles of graded
all-weather road.

Because we didn't have any
access, there was no road.

It was 300 acres of wilderness
up the top of the mountain.

That was a big change.

Because now, now we
could start building ponds.

One of the single biggest issues
in a farm, of course, is water.

So normally, as soon
as you say water

people assume digging a well.
Gotta dig a well.

But the problem with
digging a well is you're

punching a hole into the aquifer

and you're putting a straw
down there

and you're sucking the water out

and you're actually
depleting the commons

rather than increasing
the commons.

Five-hundred years ago,
North America was 8% water.

North America was 8% water.
Today we're less than 4%.

We're still less than half of the

water that we had
five-hundred years ago.

Where did all that water
come from? Beavers.

There were 200 million beavers,

and they built dams
all over the place.

And so all this water
maintained aquifers,

springs,

streams,

as well as evapotranspiration,

that created consistent
cloud formation.

It ameliorated ambient
temperatures because water

is a thermal mass heat sink.

Now here's the thing,
globally, one third of rain

runs off its surface runoff.

It either comes too fast
for absorption,

or it comes too much
at one time.

So if you're in a 30-inch
rainfall area,

that means 10 inches
of rain a year,

becomes surface runoff.

Well, what's an inch of rain?

So one acre, which is about
the size of a football field,

one acre inch, so an inch
deep covering a football field,

is 30,000 gallons.

So if 10 inches a year runs off,

10 times 30,000
is 300,000 gallons per acre.

So if you own a 10 acre place,
3 million gallons

of water runs off of your
place every year.

That's the average.

The fact is we're going
to have droughts,

we're going to have floods,

we're going to have blizzards,

we're going to have these things

and so we believe part of
our building forgiveness

is to build impoundments
that collect surface runoff.

So the cows, this is the
water they're drinking.

The chicken's in the pasture,

this is the water
they're drinking.

That water there is
coming gravity,

gravity from over a mile away.

So that's how we build
forgiveness into the landscape.

So that the climatic shocks
of a fallen world,

we enable the landscape
to absorb.

So that you actually
increase hydration

rather than
decreasing hydration.

And that, I suggest,

gives God a return
on His investment.

Looking back now at that time,

boy, was I glad that we
had Daniel soon,

because we didn't know that
dad was going to get sick.

And so by the time dad
died in 88,

Daniel was already seven.

Well, tell you what,
seven year old

that's gung ho and ready
to roll,

They can do a lot of things.
They can run for a lot of tools.

Teresa and I had to go
get a conservation award.

We had to be gone for a
couple days when he was eight.

So he stayed with mom,
grandma, you know,

and he moved the whole
herd at eight by himself.

Same deal, same way, you know.

Boy, you know what that
does to self-worth?

I'm not a child psychologist,
but if you notice,

every single school shooting,
the guy that

did the shooting has some
sense of not fitting in.

You know,
he's not worth anything.

He's either been bullied,
he's been told he's

weird, you know, all this.

And I believe that
self-worth comes from

successfully accomplishing
meaningful tasks.

You can't get self-worth
by saying,

"Johnny, you're a good
little boy," or "Amy, you're

a good little girl."

Good for what? You've got
to be good for something.

And that's where doing
something meaningful,

not just video games and
screen time, is critical.

I gotta get the salt box here.

And so we were direct marketing,

we started getting these
customers, you know,

they were just so appreciative

and we're actually attracting
media attention.

The phone started ringing.

People all over the country,
you know,

"Tell me about this
chicken thing.

Tell me about this
chicken thing."

And it just got to be a burden.

I'd come in from out on
the farm all day,

have supper, and I'd have

six to ten phone calls
at night. "Okay, calling

you back about this chicken
thing. Take a piece of paper,

draw a rectangle.
It's 10 feet by 12 feet

by 2 feet high." You know,
and I told Teresa,

I said, "I can't do this,"
you know, and I said,

"We got to make a little
manual," and took out

our savings to print the book.

"Pastured Poultry Profits,"
in 93.

And that changed our lives.

Then in 95, I wrote,
"Salad Bar Beef."

Then in 97, "You Can Farm."

Well then, you know, we're in
the National Geographic,

Smithsonian Magazine.

You know, this idea
of a small family farm

actually making a profit
was a big deal.

That's when things...
I don't know...

started going out of control.

We got a knock on the door.
And there was this guy

and he pulls out his badge
like the FBI.

But it's not the FBI,

it's the Food Safety
Inspection Service.

And he says, you've been
selling illegal meat

and we've confiscated it all
down at the slaughterhouse.

And at that time,

that was basically half
of our farm income.

And then around that same time,

the state came in and said
we couldn't process

chickens in an open-air
facility.

You know, we were just
at that point where...

A lot of people were,
they were counting on our story

to give them courage to
proceed with their own.

As all this seems to be
just coming in on me,

I'm out there in the morning.
Moving chicken shelters.

I'm just in consternation
of soul.

You know, Lord,
if we lose this thing,

what do you have in mind here?

And it wasn't an audible voice,

except that it was just as clear,

it was like just out
of the sky came—

"For such a time as this."

"For such a time as this."

And if you'll recall, Esther,
she cannot approach the king

without his invitation.
That's death.

And so she's in this
quandary, you know,

okay, I want to save my people.
She was Jewish.

But if I go before the king
without his invitation,

he'll kill me.

And Mordecai says, "Esther,
for such a time as this."

And she comes in.
Of course, we know the story.

She saved her people.

But that, "for such a time
as this," hit me.

It's gonna be okay. This is
what you're put here for.

You're put here to
produce good food,

to show people how to do it,

to pave the way for other
people to do it,

and to stand in this gap.

So here we were with
this terrible situation.

As divine intervention
would have it,

before the chicken
thing developed,

we had a couple biology

majors at James Madison
University come,

and they'd taken
samples of our chickens,

where they'd taken our
chickens and

chickens from the supermarket.
They cultured them for bacteria,

and the ones from the
store averaged 3,600

colony-forming units of
bacteria per milliliter

to the second permutation.

And I've already told you
more than I understand.

I'm just telling you, that's
the way they write it, Ok?

Ours—133.
So we were 25 times cleaner

than what was in the store,
drenched in chlorine.

And they had the audacity
to walk in here and tell us

that this was unsanitary
and adulterated.

See, the law says that
the chicken has to be

processed in a sanitary
and unadulterated way.

That's all it says.

Which, as you know,
that's very subjective.

Another thing that happened,
we were down here eating supper.

Knock on the front door,
I go up,

and there's a guy at
the front door,

he's standing there
holding his wife in his arms,

she looks like she's
maybe 80, 85 pounds.

She just looks like a skeleton.
He says, "The doctor says,

if we don't get toxin-free,
chemical-free meat,

my wife is gonna die,
can you help me?"

I said, "Absolutely."
So they bought a bunch of stuff.

So here's the inspectors
out here telling me

that they're gonna close
me down.

And I've told them the story
that this guy had showed up,

and I just looked at those guys,
I said, "You know what?

She's gonna get our meat.

Now, you can either
make this difficult,

or you can make it simple.
If you take me to jail,

you know how much stuff
I can write if I'm in jail?

I can write a lot of stuff."

And you could just see
their faces melt.

Next calls I make are
to my elected,

my delegate, my congressman,
our state senator.

For the Republicans, I said,

"they're trying to shut
down an entrepreneur."

For the Democrats, I said,

"they're trying to shut
down an environmentalist."

So now we've got our
senator and delegate

calling the inspection service,

and they said, "Well, could
you write up

an explanation of why
you think you're legal?"

Haha oh! Debator man.

Hey, boy! Give me a first
affirmative case, you know?

And they accepted it
at the federal level.

They pulled the tape,
released everything,

and that was a major thing,

and it brought us a lot
of notoriety

within the regulatory system
as the junkyard dog.

Don't mess with the
junkyard dog.

I don't wanna be
proud about this.

I mean, they could show
up tomorrow

and we'd be back in trouble.

And we've had numerous,
that wasn't the last.

I mean, we've had other,
not those issues,

but other issues, different
things, over the years.

And we have just been, uh, very
aggressive, very aggressive.

And I think that that is a,
I think that's a good approach.

So after that showdown,

you know, we started
getting some traction,

fame and different things,
and we wanted Daniel to...

everybody says, "Well, you
know, your kids,

if they're gonna take
over the family business,

they need to go work for
somebody else for a while."

Well, we homeschooled,

and so even when Daniel
was 13, 14, 15,

don't tell the government,

but we had good friends
that were in construction,

and different things

and so we'd send him
with work crews,

you know, for a week,

so he could learn other skills
and work for somebody else.

But he never had any

desire to actually, you know,
go to college.

And so, you know, we
just rocked along.

Well, you know, by the time
he gets about 22, 23,

something like that.
I passed the baton to him.

And that's something
that I learned from dad

and you don't see in
farmers very much.

Dad, he was wanting to
put me on the stage,

"Here, I'll come back here
and pull the curtains.

You know, you get
out on the stage."

Man! that is so unusual
in farming.

You never hear about the older

farmer wanting to get out
of the way.

I mean, they want to take
the tractor lugs to

wherever they're going,
with them.

And the hardest thing is
for the new generation

to feel like they have
responsibility,

like they can make decisions.

And so I've taken that
and used it with Daniel.

[soft guitar]

And he took over
daily operations.

He's just run with it
and he is fantastic.

As we progressed,
I started writing more.

Then I was in Michael Pollan,
that was a big deal,

"The Omnivore's Dilemma."

He acted, less like a
cowboy than a maître d'.

He just kind of opened the door,

and the cattle moved from
one to another.

And then of course
on the heels of that

was the documentary "Food Inc."

"The idea would be to have
such nutritionally dense food

that people actually
felt better,

had more energy, and weren't
sick as much!"

It's first run sold out.

The movie offers an
alternative vision

of how we should be
producing and eating food.

You know, here we were
on the periphery,

for all this period of time
as we were building

this reputation, this brand,
these systems,

and then millions of people
caught up with us.

[rock music]

Demand for organically grown
food is at an all time high.

The organic food movement
has grown substantially.

Tthe organic food business
is booming.

It's been exciting for us

having been in it for
these many decades,

to actually see the
awareness grow.

It grows not only from people
who are looking for better food,

but also just from the lack of

trust in the industrial
food system.

You couldn't hide the negative
consequences of junk anymore.

So often we have this
idea that if we actually

eat local, that that's not
really a credible food system.

We can't really feed the
world with local food.

And I'll try to debunk
that this evening.

Buying local is the big draw.

The number of farmers
markets explodes.

Nationwide, that number has

grown 64% in the
last five years.

And I would suggest right
now that that wave has

almost morphed from buying
food to producing food

in the Homestead Movement.

That really got rolling
after 2020.

The breaking news stay at home,
that is the order tonight

from four state governors as the
coronavirus pandemic spreads.

When those supermarket
shelves were empty

and people walked in here
and realized,

"whoa, it's actually fragile.

There's no food in the store.
What are we gonna eat?"

You know, in 2020,

one million backyard flocks
of chicken started up.

You know, the number
one Googled food item

in October, 2020
was how to make sourdough mother

for sourdough bread.
There's just this

incredible interest in
the country right now.

In food authenticity

and in actually having a safe,
secure, stable food system.

And then you've got the black
swan of Putin invading Ukraine.

Suddenly the corporate
system can't get fertilizer.

You've got Palestine.

We've been disturbed. And we'd
better wake up and be ready.

[rock music]

Whenever there is dysfunction
and disturbance in a society,

you don't want to be
in an aircraft carrier.

You want to be in a little
speed boat.

Compare a smaller
food production

and processing business,
but lots of them

compared to centralized
mega facilities.

Here's the obvious question.
If in the spring of 2020,

if instead of the U.S. being fed

by 300 mega-production
and processing

and distribution organizations,
if instead the U.S. had been fed

by 300,000 community-oriented,

smaller scale producers,
processors,

would we have had as
big a hiccup as we did?

Of course not.

On our farm, we didn't have
a hiccup at all.

Oh, yes. Haha, COVID.
Woo, boy, that was a year.

I mean, I do a blog.

And I knew I was pretty
healthy, so some of my

very first stuff was, "I want it,
I want it now!"

Knowing that your immune system
actually gets stronger.

And of course people
just went nuts on me.

Then I knew the whole
thing was a sham

the day the governor
closed churches

and farmers markets

and kept ABC stores, Costco,
Walmart, and all that open.

And started calling
workers "non-essential."

You know how demeaning
it is to tell a person

you have a non-essential job?
I mean, I can't...

well, I guess
I would tell a bunch

of bureaucrats that, but
in general, I mean,

I can't imagine telling a
person that he's non-essential.

We lost restaurants,
we lost customers,

you know, the health
department called

because we weren't demanding
masks in our farm store.

We had to sign,

"Masks, your body,
your health, your choice."

Nine out of ten of our
folks who come in,

they'd take pictures of it

and then they put it
on social media.

Well, then that inflamed
the health department.

They went ballistic.

And we were getting
phone calls here,

"We're gonna get a
group together

and come and burn
down your barns.

We're gonna come and
shoot your cows."

We were on edge there
for a while,

and it's not a, it's okay.

What I've found is that
every time

something fairly big like
that happens,

then five doors open
the other direction.

I think that if you say
you're a Christian

and you have not faced
some real stiff opposition,

not every day by any means,
but, you know, along, routinely,

you're either hiding your
light under a bushel

or you're a wimp or you're too
blind to see what's going on.

We're known for our
pastured livestock,

but anyone who really knows me

knows that my favorite
tool is a chainsaw

and I get really excited
when I get in the woods.

So here's where we want to stop.

"This grass is just wispy
and soft!"

Yeah, and you know what?
Nobody knows what this grass is.

Not me. Not the NRCS.
Nobody.

They've never seen it before.

"Really?"

No, what it is, it's ancient
pre-European grass.

It's what was here when
the bison were here.

So I don't know where you,
pick a spot

and I'd just like to sit
and talk about this a minute.

Okay. You ready?
"Yep."

So this is a pig silvopasture.

[soft banjo playing]

We started with woods.

This was just regular woods,
just like over here.

This is what happens if you
just walk away and leave it.

And we open it up,
cut the big trees.

And we put in the pigs
and we let them disturb

the ground and move
them strategically.

And when the pigs disturb
the ground just right

with enough rest in between,

forages started coming up
and that disturbance

awakened the latent seed bank.

I mean, notice there's a
bunch of different kinds here,

and we've had NRCS agents out,
who know their forages.

"What are these? I've never
seen these before!"

And so we believe that
we're tapping

into the pre-European
seed bank that was here

when the bison and
the Native Americans

were here and to think that

these seeds have
been unexpressed,

waiting for three-hundred
years to germinate.

Using pigs as a management
tool, but awakening a

latent seed bank that was
here waiting for a new steward.

That's pretty cool.

[soft country music]

So we go from here.
And it turns into this.

You know permaculture
has the saying,

"We need more forests
and fewer trees."

And we have to realize
that the dense forests of

North America are
a European creation.

The Native Americans
didn't like dense forests

because you can't see

you know, somebody
might sneak up on you.

So they wanted not
only open for safety,

but it brought the
bison and the elk

and the birds and all that.

And in fact, the first
Europeans who came to

America wrote back
in their diaries,

they said, "we could take a
European continental army

and march it from
the Atlantic Ocean

to the Mississippi
without any roads."

One of the reasons
people don't take care of

their forests and their woods

and trees are so
neglected in America

is because the only value
on that land is lumber.

Here, we're getting $10,000
an acre per year from the pigs

while growing the next forest.

This is one of my favorite
places to bring my

radical environmentalist friends

that view the only credible
way for us to interact

with the environment
is to abandon it.

We've got to lock it
up in a park,

Bureau of Land Management,
or a wilderness area.

Our sense is we want

environmentalism
by participation.

That's the juxtaposition.

Do we have environmentalism
by abandonment

or do we have environmentalism
by participation?

And I suggest that
the participation

is the one that pleases God

because that runs to His creation,

not away from His creation.

So here we are.

[soft country music]

My dream is here, okay,

so Teresa and I got a
piece of raw land.

It was not a business. It was
not a going concern at all.

We stood on the shoulders of
greatness. We had a launch.

You know, God blessed
us and we built this thing,

and we don't know
what God has for us.

But we believe and we
trust that this will simply

launch the next half-century
way beyond us.

And so I've been backing
away for Daniel.

He runs the farm.

When I go home,

he tells me what I'm supposed
to do till I, you know,

before I leave.

And he is fantastic
team building

and developing these
young people.

One of my sweetest memories.

Dad was going downhill

and he calls me into
the bedroom on day,

he said, "Bring a piece
of paper."

He said, "Let's make a
list of all the salaries

that we can generate here."

Most farmers, who would think?
They're all down in the dumps,

"I can't even make
one salary here!"

You know, I mean,
it's all scarcity

and can't, and won't, and don't,
and all that.

So we sat there and
brainstormed and came up,

I think it was twenty-two,

twenty-two salaries
at that time.

And today,

we generate twenty-two
salaries on the farm.

And if we did that exercise
today, it'd probably be eighty.

I mean, this is the
thing about God's grace.

It doesn't quit.
It doesn't give up.

You know, I think about that
with Israel.

He said, "from this mountain
to this creek to this

hill to this mountain
to this rock."

He gave them a very
clear boundary.

Here's your promise land.

Here's where you're going
to be blessed.

"Now be fruitful and multiply."

Well the average person thinks,

"well, that's a recipe
for famine!"

Not in God's economy.

God's economy,
you know, your stewardship,

your innovation,

your pond building,

your composting,

it's more. You never
scratched the surface,

and so we have a saying
around here,

"fill it up."

"Fill it up!"

I've never been on a farm in the
world, including this one,

that's anywhere close
to being filled up.

You can always add
a hive of bees.

You can add a flower garden.
You can do so many other things.

And so I want, when people
come to visit the farm,

I want them to exit
and I want them to say,

"Oh, we just saw abundance."

"Oh, we just saw redemption."

"Oh, we just saw forgiveness."

So we just keep experimenting
and keep serving our customers.

And how big it is,
how little it is, what it does,

that's not necessarily
up to us to decide.

What's ours to decide is today,
today, be faithful.