“When we get a little money saved up, we don’t put it in a 401k. We dig a new pond.”
I’ve been involved in the wealth-building business for a couple of decades now, but I had never heard anyone say that the way to build wealth was by digging a new pond. I wanted to know more.
Our oracle of H2O was Joel Salatin, the self-proclaimed lunatic farmer. Joel was speaking to about 40 of us who were gathered together (around a new pond) as part of a two-day intensive at Joel’s family property, Polyface Farms.
“Intensive” was an apt description. On both days, we started at 7:00 a.m. and finished at 9:00 p.m., and I think we pretty much covered all 1,000 acres of Polyface, as well as a chunk of a second 250-acre rental farm.
Joel explained that about one third of all rainfall is lost to runoff. In his neck of the woods (Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley), with an annual rainfall of 30 inches, that amounts to 10 inches per acre. One inch of water spread over an acre is 30,000 gallons. 10 inches is 300,000 gallons. Polyface consists of about 1,000 acres. That’s 300,000,000 gallons of water annually that’s up for grabs at Polyface.
Why does Joel care so much about water? Because, as he puts it quite simply, “Without water there is no life.”
Digging ponds is one way Joel stores up this indispensable ingredient of life, but it’s not even the main method. The main method is to increase the organic matter content of the soil itself.
For every 1% increase in the organic matter content of the soil, the soil can retain an extra 20,000 gallons of water. Joel’s family bought the first piece of Polyface in 1961, and since then they’ve increased the organic matter content in their soil from 1% to 8.2%. That seven-fold increase retains an extra 140,000 gallons of water per acre.
In 1961, Joel said, he could walk for acres and not encounter a piece of grass. Today Polyface teems with life. The grass is so thick and heavy with moisture that it flops over, like rabbit ears, rather than standing straight up.
When you pull back a patch of grass, you find endless little piles of earthworm castings, each concealing a hole in the ground that is the earthworm’s home. Flocks of chickens, ducks, and turkeys along with herds of sheep, pigs, and cows feast on the rich Polyface pasture and are moved to fresh pasture nearly every day.
Polyface Farm’s mission is to “develop emotionally, economically, environmentally enhancing agricultural enterprises and facilitate their duplication throughout the world.” I can tell you from firsthand experience that they have succeeded in spades. Polyface is truly an oasis – emotionally, economically, and environmentally. (If you ever get a chance to visit, I highly recommend it.)
For many of us, wealth is represented by numbers flickering on a screen that we look at on a daily basis. Moreover, we have feelings about these numbers on our screens. Up and green is good. Down and red is bad. And we consume endless content about these flickering numbers and the mysterious meaning of their movements.
What exactly did the meme-stock madness of GME, AMC and DOGE do for our emotional, economic, or environmental development? How about the more sophisticated end of the gamified-market spectrum – leveraged buyouts? Leveraged buyouts (LBOs) are the brainchild of our so-called best and brightest, a maneuver in which public companies are taken private and then loaded with debt before being sold off or even taken public again.
According to researchers at California Polytechnic State University, “roughly 20 percent of large companies acquired through leveraged buyouts go bankrupt within ten years, as compared to a control group’s bankruptcy rate of 2 percent during the same time period.” The only guarantee when it comes to LBOs is that the private equity firms behind the LBOs will make a lot of money.
For anyone interested in a different view on business than what is being served up daily in the disgraceful financial media that pimped us Robinhood’s IPO, Joel has put together a web page of Polyface Guiding Principles where he states:
[I]n light of recent Wall Street and economic developments, what values are more important than growth? Especially since cancer is growth. At this juncture of our culture’s reality, I would like us to immerse ourselves for a few minutes in an alternative innovative business philosophy.
I encourage you to check it out and give some thought to what Joel has to say. As with pretty much everything he says, it’s thought provoking to say the least.
Getting back to the pond, why does Joel value ponds so highly?
- A new pond captures an invaluable resource that would otherwise be lost for good, and it does so year after year at a very low cost (pond water costs about $0.01 per gallon).
- Ponds built at higher elevations can leverage gravity to create free water pressure for fields below.
- Without water there is no life.
- A pond reduces the potential for flooding on neighboring land.
- A pond increases the self-sovereignty of the Salatin family.
In short, a pond is emotionally, economically, and environmentally enhancing.
Those sound like darn good reasons for an investment to me, and while I’m not calling on us all to close our brokerage accounts and go dig ponds (though please do if you are so inclined!), I am absolutely calling on us all to think more deeply about why we are investing and what outcomes we want our investments to produce.
A good friend of mine often reminds me that intentionality is a superpower, and far too many of us cede this superpower to others in exchange for the promise of some magic beans. Joel Salatin is not one of them.
After the intensive was over, I had the chance to speak with Joel one on one. I marveled at how much hard work, creativity, and courage had gone into Polyface over the past 60 years, and I marveled at the fecundity and innovation it had produced. He responded with an appreciation of his mother and father. “Yeah, my parents just never cared what anyone else thought,” he told me, “and I’m eternally grateful to them for that.”
Joel’s mother, Lucille, is 99 now and still lives on the farm. She shared every meal with us at the intensive. She’s still moving around without a cane, and she’s bright-eyed with a ready (and knowing) smile. She hardly said a word, but she didn’t need to.
She’s surrounded by three generations of her descendants living on the farm, together with the Polyface staff and a dozen enthusiastic young people who come to Polyface annually for its stewardship and apprentice programs to learn the Polyface way. Oh yeah, and 50,000 admiring visitors tour her legacy each year.
Lucille Salatin may well be the wealthiest person I know.