Summer Vacation - Day 5 - Final Day

The whole reason we vacationed to Virginia was to attend Polyface Farm's Farm Field Day.  It's a day long event they do once every 3 years. The day consists of guided tours, topical discussions, and vendors to see hands-on how a pasture-based, organic farm operates.  Their mission is to leave the land in better condition year after year and feed people clean, healthy food in the process.

Although the day's activities didn't officially start until 8am, we arrived at 6am to watch morning chores and have free time to roam around before the set schedule started.  Since we're most interested in poultry, we headed out to the fields to get a close look at their chicken tractors, feed and water setup.

The chicken tractors and watering system are nearly identical to ours, but each morning Dan drags and I push our tractors.  Polyface has this cool, custom-made dolly that goes under one end so one person can pull from the other side.  We need to get out hands on plans to make a few of these!

Next we moved onto the butchering area.  They have a really nice covered area to work and a good equipment layout.  Dan and Samuel are checking it out...

At 8am, a whole-farm tour started.  Our first stop was at the FeatherNet - a portable hen house on skids that can be moved from paddock to paddock.

Then we saw their combined broiler and turkey tractors...




Not pictured on the whole-farm tour were also cows and pigs.  They had several discussion topics throughout the morning that we attended:

Interns, Apprentices, and Young Farmer Germination
Hay Shed, Deep Bedding and Pigaerator Composting... (and boy, do they have a lot of hay!)




Then they had quite the spread for lunch.  Grilled Polyface meats - chicken, pork and beef, tomatoes, cucumbers, peaches and chocolate cake.

After lunch we had more discussions:
Metropolitan Buying Clubs and Online Software
Chick Brooding...

We had about an hour before our final discussion. We wandered around the main hub of the farm trying to see everything we hadn't gotten to yet.  Some of the vendors that we purchase supplies from were there, so it was nice to meet and chat with them in person.

Our last topic was a Q & A session with farm owner, Joel Salatin.  It was an open forum where you could ask anything you wanted.  A lot of great questions were asked and Joel always has an interesting answer.  Usually a very long answer, but a good one.



Samuel started wearing down a little after 5pm, so he and I headed back to the car so Dan could finish the Q & A session.  At 6pm, we departed Polyface and started heading Missouri-bound.  We stopped around 10:30 for a good night sleep.  We woke up bright and early and continued our drive home, finally arriving around 5pm.  Fortunately, we had the good sense to take the following day off work too, so we could lounge around the house and recuperate!


THE END!