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The trip to Swoope was, of course, more than I have time to tell at the moment. Part tent revival, part agricultural seminar, part folk festival, part community barbeque — that begins to sum it up.  Suffice to say that Joel Salatin did not disappoint.  His patience and stamina were amazing and the entire day was so well thought out in advance that 500+ people had much less impact on the farm than you might think.  This affair was so well organized that the lunch lines were shorter than the lines at Fairway on an average weekend morning… and yet it never felt rigidly structured or stressful in any way (for organizers or participants).  That’s really something! 

Everyone we talked to had stories to tell. There were many people and families who had just made the plunge into farming (as retirement or new livelihood) and were using this day to boost their morale and gather information.  There were people who’d started keeping chickens for eggs in their suburban backyards, recent college graduates thinking about studying agricultural philosophy, and a sizeable Amish contingent.  The license plates came from as far as New York (and not just ours!), Ohio, Illinois, and Ontario.

At any rate, once I have some more time to digest it all (quite literally — we came back with a Polyface chicken in our cooler, of course) there will be more.  In the meantime, here are a few more photos that will give you a small sense of what the day was like. And, as luck would have it, it was a picture-perfect summer day. Fate smiled on Polyface, which is pretty much as it should be.

How glad are we that the oppressive humidity of the last two days has cleared out into perfect summer weather? Very! Most especially because first thing tomorrow we are piling a big cooler and all our camping gear into the VW and heading south to Swoope, VA.  There’s a field day at Polyface farm, and that seemed like as good an excuse for a road trip as any.

Charlottesville is just down the road, so there will also be a visit to Monticello, which is equally exciting.  I’ve been doing a little reading about the early history of viticulture in the US, which means I’ve run into Jefferson references all over the place (not that he ever managed to get his vineyard really off the ground, but he was a big booster for American viticulture, at least in theory.) And the gardens are supposed to be marvelous.

I’m sure we’ll return with many ideas, photographs, and schemes.  And, if we’re lucky, a box of Polyface Farm eggs or two, a chicken, and maybe some “salad bar beef”. Our minds are open and our cooler is large…..!