Touring Polyface Farms - Rural Thursday

Seems like I'd wanted to tour Polyface Farms forever, and finally the other weekend we made it happen.  A multigenerational organic farm located about two hours from us, we'd watched the video, read some of the books, but needed to see it with our own eyes!  I called up my parents, who were also eager to tour Polyface, and we met them there.

 All of the animals we saw looked healthy and happy.  The cattle are moved every day so they stay on fresh green grass.

Cort and Reid had fun exploring.  Reid is in the background, petting a barn cat.  See Cort's shirt?  Reid's shirt says, "Me Neither".  This was the first time they'd worn them, and they were a huge hit!

Beautiful greens.  There were several hoop houses like these stuffed full of beautiful vegetables. 

See the wood furnace in the hoop house?  They can use it to heat the house in the winter, when they have the chickens in there. 

The chickens are moved frequently too, on this day they were in a permanent hoop house, where they were stirring up the dirt and matter that the rabbits had produced.  Let me say that while it was full of chickens in there, there was absolutely no icky smell.  The floor looked nice and clean, too.

Baby chicks!

Rabbits!  Their cage may not be fancy, but it's moved everyday, so they always have fresh grass.

Walking up the road, to find some pigs.

We found some chickens, carefully guarded by a VERY vocal goose.

And we found some chicks too.

Lucky for Cort my Dad was there to be his buddy and carry him...all day long...so he wouldn't get his feet muddy.  He was especially concerned about getting his feet muddy.  So he says.  I think he just wanted a free ride.

This is the barn.  The barn was full of pigs on this day.

The barn where the pigs were was the only place we found to be a little smelly.  However, the place still looked clean and the pigs seemed quite healthy.

Afterwards, we went in the shop, where you can buy their products.  Unfortunately, we hadn't thought ahead to bring a cooler with us.  Their cuts of meat looked beautiful though - the organic bacon was especially tempting.

Just outside the store.  The boys had so much fun touring Polyface with their Cat Cat and Pop Pop!