More thoughts about the Pollan book

Micheal Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma is one of those books that you keep on thinking about long after you finish reading it. I wrote a review of it a few days ago in case you're interested.

The reason I bring this up is that today while driving past a number of cow pastures on my way to work---have I mentioned that I live in a very rural area?--I was thinking of Pollan's description of Polyface, a small self-sustaining farm in Virginia, and their methods of keeping cows.

Joel Salatin, the owner of Polyface, doesn't just put cows out in a pasture, which is the common practice elsewhere. What they do at Polyface is only allow the cows in any given area for a short period of time and use light portable fences to keep them in that one area. The reason for this is that cows, not surprisingly, like to eat the grass that tastes the best to them. In fact they'll crop that type of grass right down to the ground which often kills the grass. Then the cows will move onto less desirable grasses. Before long, the only grasses alive in the typical pasture are the ones that the cows have the least amount of interest in.

At Polyface, by moving the cows freqently, the desired grasses are kept alive by having the cows just crop the tops of the grass--just like if you or I had mowed the grass there. That just sets up the grass for rapid growth and doesn't hurt it. So in a week or two, the cows can be returned to this plot of grass and they'll have more of the type of grass they like best. Neat.

However that's just the start of the stystem, which is why I use the term self-sustaining for the farm. You see, after the cows leave the plot of grass, Salatin or his employees move chickens into the plot. The chickens will scour the plot for insects and seeds which are often in the cow patties (manure) which means that the chickens will break up the patties allowing for quicker return to the earth--and also add in their own high nitrogen waste. This potent combo is like fertilizer on steroids--but without the actual use of steroids in their cows--and so the grass grows quite quickly and that leads back to the cows cropping it back.

A self sustaining and well thought out method of using regular land to raise cattle and chickens. Yet most farms simply let their cows out onto a pasture everyday and that's it. It's really quite a book and the description of the Polyface farm is the centerpiece in the book. Well worth reading.