Northern Farmer

I thought that I would introduce myself and let everyone know that I will be posting on occasion. My name is Nathan V (eldest son of Jim V) I’m 18 years old and currently working for the Salatin family on Polyface Inc. I started October of 2004 as a one year apprentice to the Salatins. I just finished my apprenticeship in october and am staying on for one more year, the reasons I am staying are 1: I think there is more I can learn and 2: Polyface is a great place to make connections with other people in the sustainable/agrarian world (fellow producers, great inovators, connected customers, and the media i.e. writers, tv producers.) My dad when he was asked by Tom to possibly post called me and asked me if I would be willing to contribute from another point of view. I will be posting on what is going on at Polyface but also any other topics I feel are relevant
I have been trying to get around to posting for the last week but have been busy with thanksgiving turkeys to butcher chickens to move inside the greenhouses for winter. Mon we butcherd 110 turkeys and 100 on Tues. We put plastic around the prossesing shed in an effert to stay warm or at least cut the wind. I also maid sure that I got up early to start to old cook stove in the sales building so that by noon when we finished butchering the sales building was toasty warm(those old stoves sure take there time warming up). The turkeys did ok this year if only we had another 800 turkeys we would have had enough to supply every one who wanted one. Turkeys are the hardest animal to raise antibiotic free but despite high death lose are still very profitable because of the high % of grass in there diet compared to chickens. At the end of the year we think we had a breakthrew (added vineager to the water to help with cociedeosis and saw a dramatic change in the death lose) that should allow us to raise enough Turkeys. If any one has anything that worked for them with turkeys I am open to try anything.

Here is a story that really got my blood boiling when I heard it. I read a newspaper artical about The Henshaws and then Joel talked to the couple. Here is there story. The couple lives here in VA Danny was a retired police officer and Cindi also had a succesful career, both are very articulate and well spoken. They have a pig hunting perserve on there 150 acres. They operated the hunting farm with all proper permits and had been in business for 16 years. One morning at 5:00 they were in bed sleeping when they were woke up by loud banging on their door. They answered the door only to find that there was a game warden and that they where surrounded by armed police. The husband they threw in the back of the deputys car and drove him down the road a few miles and then arrested him. Back at the farm nine suvs filled with USDA agents. The USDA immediately started shooting all the pigs on the farm because they claimed that their pigs had Pseudorabies also know as Aujesky’s Disease. The virginia department of ag got the blood sample by sending in a agent as a hunter and then taking a sample of blood from the pig that they killed. It took federal agents 11 days to kill most of the pigs. During those 11 days their farm was under 24hr armed guard. The USDA also killed a couple of pet pigs. The disease is supposedly very easily spread yet there where pools of blood left all over and even a few dead pigs that they did not clean up. The Henshaws were also not permitted to take there own samples to send to an independent lab. Now the Henshaws are trying to find a lawyer the will take their case and so far all the lawyers the have talked to have not been willing to take the case because the government is involved. To top this off there was a identical simultaneous raid on another hunting perserve in another county. After thinking this all over the questions I have is what should be my response if the agents showed up at my door at 5:00 am, where do I draw the line and say enough is enough. I still have not come up with a good response.

I need to go check on the Thanksgiving dinner preperation, do some tastesting make sure it is all fit for human consumtion Ha Ha. God Bless and Happy Thanksgiving.

Nathan V

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 23rd, 2006 at 9:33 am and is filed under Nathan V. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.