Lunatic Farmer

We live in a world where we perceive that resources are always diminishing. Dollars leave your bank account, food leaves your fridge and pantry, natural resources are removed from their site of origin. But what if things weren’t actually scarce… What if 1 Unit of Resources plus 1 Human didn’t equal an output of zero, but instead multiplied the resources tenfold! That IS the reality that we live in. It just takes wisdom to lean into that equation, looking with an abundance mentality, seeking to steward things well.

Although I would say that I genuinely live with this sort of framework in mind… hence the focus on Continuous Improvement in Toil+Profit as a publication, there are times when I am catalyzed to adopt the disposition all the more. Recently, this instance came while Molly and I watched Lunatic Farmer on Canon+. The well produced documentary follows Joel Salatin (who was Featured in TIME in 2011) and the story of how he and his family farm, over the course of his father’s stewardship and its passing to Joel, brought the farm to the point of achieving several milestones:

• Increased Soil Organic Matter by +700% → Increasing Soil Water Retention by 140,000 Gallons Per Acre

• Natural Hog Composting → Generates Net Value of $3K per Acre

• Efficiency Infrastructure $.5 for every $1 of Gross Sales / Conventional Farms are $4 for Every $1

• Nutritional Composition (Let’s just see a few stats…)

  • Eggs

    • 21x more Omega 3s

    • 7x more Vitamin E

    • 217x more Folate

  • Beef

    • 3x more Riboflavin

  • Chicken

    • 25x Cleaner (Bacteria Concentration)… BTW that’s compared to chicken that is drenched in chlorine in an attempt to make it more clean…

  • All meats also cook around 15% faster… the running theory is that the meat is more tender due to less stress and healthy living.

• And to top it all off, it appears that the the natural pig composting has awakened a latent, pre-European seed-bank within the soil of the farm 😳

Key Takeaways 💡

• 💹 Investment Mission

  • As Christians, Joel and his family are committed to giving Christ a good “return on investment.” Taking note of how Jesus speaks in the parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30) and the Minas (Luke 19:11-27), the Salatin family sees what they have been entrusted with NOT as a resource that they will deplete, but as a stewardship that they are to multiply to the glory of God.

• 📈 Abundance Mentality

  • Immediately connected with the mission of multiplication is the peace of knowing that creation is plentiful and resources have been given for the mission.

    • Joel speaks about how it makes no sense that farms have to depend upon fertilizers and other compounds that are non-domestically generated… God has made the land sustainable via the natural stewardship of the land and animals therein.

• 👥 People Purpose

  • The investment mentality is not just about soil and profits, it’s about people, creating opportunities for people to earn a wage, innovate, and multiply the joys of good stewardship.

    • Joel relays how his father, on his deathbed, asked Joel to go grab a notepad so they could start dreaming of how many salaries the farm could support. That day they dreamt together of 22 salaries. As of 2024, Polyface Farms does indeed generate 22 salaries and is ready to dream of more.

Application Time 💪🏼

• What areas of life do you need to adopt an abundance mentality?

  • If you’re stuck thinking only of limitation, perhaps the following T+P publications will help spark some inspiration of abundance:

    • 💪🏼 Commit to Discipline

    • 🗂️ Get & Stay Organized

    • 🏎️ LEAN: Remove Waste + Get to The Value

    • 🔽 The Focus Funnel

• How are you investing weekly with your time, treasure, and talents?

  • The things you’ve been given are yours to steward. Start by listing off what you have, and then connect that item with a way that it is being leveraged for the sake of personal mission.

    • Perhaps a book recommendation: Ploductivity - A Practical Theology of Work & Wealth

• What are unique opportunities that you have to encourage and equip others?

  • Remember that faithfulness in little leads to faithfulness in much. So perhaps in this season you only have one other person that you are coming alongside. But in the future there might be opportunities for small groups, or even organizational-wide or systematic equipping through a vocation or avocation.

Time to get after it! In all toil there is profit!

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In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty - Proverbs 14:23