Joel Salatin Coming to Franklin, TN!!

My husband building pastured chicken pens

The Tennessee Tour: "Polyfaces" with Joel Salatin opens February 26, 2016 at the Franklin Theatre.  A special screening of this highly acclaimed documentary with Mr. Salatin will be showing at 7 pm. For tickets go to www.franklintheatre.com  Time Magazine refers to Mr. Salatin as the most influential farmer since Thomas Jefferson.  There will be A Dinner with Joel at Gray's on Main, 332 Main St., Franklin, TN at 5:45 pm prior to the screening and a book signing and Q & A session with Mr. Salatin afterward.

Pastured Poultry at Blair Brook Farms

Joel Salatin is a hero for many reasons.  He represents a growing movement in farming that is sweeping the nation.  We have our own very personal reasons to respect and admire what he stands for and the passion he imparts to so many.  His belief system and his many practical step by step books helped shape our farming model for Blair's Bird Barn at Blair Brook Farm in Columbia, TN.  For more information on our own Salatin based farm please visit our websites at www.blairsbirdbarn.com and www.blairbrookfarm.com

For a great many of us, Mr. Salatin draws us back to a place in our hearts that feels like home. Some of my most pleasant childhood memories involve horses, chickens and bright red home grown tomatoes and crisp yellow corn fresh from the garden.  I can remember the smell of fresh cut hay, the earthy scent of horse manure in the barn and the gentle clucking of fluffy hens.  My grandmother always had chickens for as long as I can remember.  They would run around on the porch and nest up at night in an old portable building out back next to the barn.  I would sit on the porch swing eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and feed bits to the chicken waiting patiently next to me.  Her soft warm feathers would brush against my arm and she would gently peck at me if I waited too long in between giving her bites of my lunch.

View from one of our pasture pens

When I got older I did what most people do and I moved out of the country and into a subdivision.  At first it seemed nice and convenient to have everything close by.  Work, school, groceries, shopping all in a neat tidy circle close to home.  Small backyards were easy to maintain with perfect bushes all in a row and you waved to your neighbor as you grabbed your mail even if you didn't know their name.  As the years passed and my children grew, I began to long for something more.  Suddenly the perfectly landscaped backyard seemed small and cramped and the noise from the neighbor's backyards seem to echo over the fence.  I started to long for privacy and a fresh tomato, a fresh egg and the sound of chickens.

For a short time I tried to have a few backyard chickens and even a small garden, but it just didn't satisfy what was missing.  I wanted something bigger, something more.  I didn't just want a dog.  I wanted a couple of dogs and a cat and..... a chicken on my porch!  I wanted the farming way of life.  I shared my feelings with my husband who also had fond country memories from his own childhood.  We started reading books and began to study small scale farming.  Our favorite books were written by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm in Virginia.  Mr. Salatin kept things simple.  He said you didn't have to have 100 acres and a perfect barn and a big tractor to start farming.  He stressed that the important thing was to "just start" wherever your were with whatever you had available and if you had the passion for farming the rest would come. 

So in the middle of a subdivision in Franklin, TN we did just that!  We started the chicks in the garage with heat lamps and fans.  We lived in an upscale neighborhood with a home owner's association that would have definitely NOT been happy if they had known what we were doing in that garage!  When the chicks were big enough, we contacted a local farm and partnered with them to finish the batch of chickens on their land.  We moved the 2 week old chicks in boxes in the dead of night so the neighbors wouldn't know and finished raising them on Tap Root Farm in Franklin, TN.  For the next 2 years we raised chickens that way without a farm of our own and built a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) with customers who enjoyed monthly shares of our all natural pastured poultry.  We now have purchased our own land and have two Great Pyrenees dogs for livestock guardians, a cat to keep the mice at bay in our barn, at least 100 meat chickens at any given time, layer hens for eggs, a garden and plans for much more!

Our well worn copy of "Pastured Poultry Profits" by Joel Salatin has highlighted passages and folded down pages and notes in the margins that serve to remind us of the journey we have taken and the miles we have yet to go.  My husband and I are very grateful for the passion Joel Salatin imparts in all of his books and the advice he has given changed our lives and the lives of many others for the better.  We are very excited to see his new documentary will be showing right here in Franklin, TN at the Franklin Theatre.