March 9, 2025
Parallel Polis Publishing
By Joel Salatin, Plain Values
Water is the prerequisite to life. Some living things don’t need sunlight, some don’t even need soil, but all living things need water. Certainly, when we think about water, the first source that comes to mind is rain. But rain is not consistent, and most plants need water routinely. Indeed, some plants need more water than others, but scarcity is often the limiting factor in farm and garden production.
By Joel Salatin, Plain Values
The single biggest cost—and hurdle—in starting a farm of any size is the land cost. Our own nation has gone from free land to extremely expensive land. Old farmers today who acquired their land in the 1960s often have a hard time appreciating the land cost issue for aspiring new farmers.
When my mom and dad bought our place in 1961, it was $90 an acre, and feeder calves sold for $180; one acre would grow half a calf per year, which means the land and production were in a 1:1 ratio ($90:$90). Today, the land is $7,000 an acre, and that calf is worth $700; the land receives no more sunlight or rain and still grows half a calf worth $350. That means today’s land:production ratio is 20:1 ($7,000:$350), which is a far cry from the 1:1 in 1961.
by Shawn & Beth Dougherty, Plain Values
A Child comes in the back door with a full milk can; the screen door slaps shut behind him. There is the sound of a bucket being set on the bench, the clang of a bail handle against the side of the milk can. In the kitchen someone is frying bacon; the smell reaches into the basement, where at a simple counter and sink we process raw milk twice daily.
Sometimes we wonder how we got here! When we first thought we might keep a dairy cow, we worried that the chores would be too much work and that we would not be able to maintain a rigid schedule. Not only were we taking on twice-daily milking, but we would be moving our intensively grazed dairy cows onto fresh grass each time we milked. With all the other farm chores and homeschooling our eight children, were we going to have time for the added work? But while milking a cow does require commitment, it turned out to be not nearly as much work as we expected.
By Shawn and Beth Dougherty, Plain Values
There’s no time like spring for seeing how bountifully God provides for His creatures, and that’s especially true here in central Appalachia, where young, green grass and blossoming fruit trees are everywhere we look. Our seven dairy cows put gallons of rich, creamy milk in the bucket every day. Their calves race around the pasture or lie in the soft grass and nap in the sun. Chicks in mobile pens scratch and forage, new feathers pushing through their baby down. Pigs are growing fast on skim milk and forage. We’re never more grateful for our small farm lifestyle than now when life is so beautiful and abundant.
by Joel Salatin, Plain Values
Last month I introduced the concept of the carbon economy for soil fertility and the numerous ways God designed soil fertility and development to run on sunbeams converted to biomass. From bison on the prairie to wildebeests on the Serengeti, perennial prairie polycultures pruned by herbivores chased by predators built the deepest and most fertile soils on the planet.
That’s the big picture, but how do we apply it to our gardens and farms? How do we catalyze on-site carbon development and utilization to build the organic matter by cycling biomass into the soil?
By Joel Salatin, Plain Values Five hundred years ago, North America produced more food than it does today. That should stir your imagination and make…
By Joel Salatin, Plain Values
In 1961 as our family looked out over this newly-acquired farm property with its rocks, gullies, and weeds, we needed a roadmap to healing. In our imagination, we could see fertile fields, filled-in gullies, and soil-covered rocks, but how to get there was intimidating. Our redemption project seemed impossible.
My dad contacted both private and public (government) agriculture experts to receive as broad a range of counsel as possible. Every advisor recommended borrowing more money, planting corn, building silos, grazing the woods, and feeding the soil chemical fertilizers.
By Joel Salatin, Plain Values
Does God Care How I Farm? That question defines my life’s work and vision because it moves the visceral, practical decisions I make in my farming vocation to a place of sacredness and godly living. If God cares about physical and practical things in my life, then my theology and belief structure are more than academic pursuits.
They are not just discussion groups and conversations. If God cares how I farm, then I should enthusiastically embrace searching for techniques and protocols that please Him. After all, it’s all His stuff. The courthouse may say I own this land, but ultimately I don’t. Legally and culturally, I may advocate for property rights, but really it’s all God’s property. Does He care how it’s handled? Does He care how I leave it? Does He care what I do with it?
The other day I was hauling a couple of cows to the slaughterhouse when a new-model truck with blacked-out windows blazed past me on the left. Big block letters on the rear window read: “LIONS NOT SHEEP.”
It was a nice truck, and I’d guess that the driver was an impressive guy — strong bench press, profitable business, maybe no exogenous mRNA in his bloodstream — but I’m also sure this truck bro is actually a particular type of sheep. A sheep in lion’s clothing, if you will, and I know that precisely because he considered himself to be a lion.
When animals become numbers, human numbers are not far behind. For the past several hundred years since the imaginations of Descartes and other enlighteners permeated our power structures, people have been treated as machines or numbers – abstract variables that can be subtly manipulated, to achieve certain goals. This is how the modern government exercises its power through an upside-down form of Christian “pastoral” leadership.
What if the way a culture treats livestock is an indication of how its political leaders will treat people?
Nature is under God’s control, and all the parts of nature are part of His symbolic language. This means that all of creation offers spiritual lessons. To farm, log, or fish is to interact with an animated parable of Christ, spoken by wordless creatures. A Christian culture needs this natural engagement, because if nobody stoops down and gets their hands dirty in the earth, then nobody can build cathedrals and gather together to pray heavenward.
by Jesse Dustin, of Heartland Goats
If anything has become clear over the last few years it is that certain points of view have become censored, banished, and wiped from our society and our online sphere. While the woke crowd can be as extreme as it wants, without any fear of reprisal, God-fearing Americans have been bloodied in the streets and tossed in jails for simply expressing a different opinion. This brings about a need for those who have been alienated. An urgent need to provide these folks with a life net or even just a basic means of survival. Folks’ abilities to earn a living, or even provide necessities for their own families have been hindered by a media and government that wants them destroyed.
“And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord will set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people”
Isaiah 11:11
