Leadership Journal

Polyface Farm is best described as "a gathering of many faces around the table." Owned and stewarded by the Joel Salatin family, Polyface hosts a variety of creatures in natural symbiotic relationships, with food as the natural attractor. Managing a farm around food honors William R. Inge's observation that "all of nature is a conjugation of the verb 'to eat,' in the active and in the passive."

On Salatin's farm, made famous in Michael Pollan's bestseller The Omnivore's Dilemma, cattle graze to prepare for the movement of floorless chicken pens over the pastures. The chickens eat clover, bugs, and other feed to produce manure that fertilizes the grass the cattle eat. Humans eat the meat of both animals, then compost the offal from the butchering process, and spread it back on the land to feed the grass. Each creature fits into the system by doing what it does best: eat. Salatin's genius is that he patiently observes the way things eat together in nature and structures his farm accordingly.

Salatin's farm is not a factory fueled by money and governed by a global economy. It is a living household of flocks, fields, and families nested within God's Creation.

It's a helpful picture of the church. Centered in the Eucharist, the church is a place of diverse creatures in natural symbiotic relationships with food—Jesus, the Bread of Life—as the natural attractor. The church's leaders are "pastors," who steward the flock around the food of its creatures.

Twenty years ago, as a small-town pastor who lived on a small family farm, I became interested in raising a few meat chickens, so I bought Joel Salatin's booklet explaining floorless chicken pens. I built three pens to his specs, populated them, used his suggested feed recipe—and it worked.

Eventually I bought more of Salatin's books and began attending workshops on sustainable agriculture. I wanted to better understand how to manage my hobby farm with health as its goal.

It soon became apparent that I was farming differently than my neighbors. I kept my animals outdoors, while they confined theirs indoors. I built fences to make small fields, while they tore theirs out to create larger ones. I refused to use chemicals and pharmaceuticals, while they studied how "purchased inputs" might increase their production.

My farming neighbors thought I was woefully misguided—until they tasted my chicken. Then they started asking questions (in the roundabout way of country folk) about what I was doing and why. I noticed my responses were similar to those I gave when asked about my work in the church. Turns out I was using a similar paradigm with all my "flocks," methods based on health rather than production.

Likewise, in the church, my eyes were on the qualitative aspects—maturity in faith, resilience in life, and balance in relationships—rather than quantitative—producing more dollars, more members, more programs. I realized I'd been studying farming to learn about working in a congregation.

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