Joel Salatin's system (and the many permutations you find on farms like Megan and Erek's) is a beautiful permaculture invention.  However, I think that microfarmers should take a long hard look at each aspect before deciding to copy it whole cloth on their acre or smaller homestead.  Here are some issues you might consider:

• Are you trying to make a living selling animal products?  There is a large and growing market for pastured meat and eggs, but the truth is that you probably will make around minimum wage at such an endeavor if you do it yourself on a small scale.  Megan has a job off the farm and Erek is considering one as well.  I always recommend that homesteaders find a simpler way to make a living that gives them time to focus on the things they enjoy without the pressure of monetization.  If you really want to make a living at permaculture-style farming, your best bet is to scale up and hire interns.
  
• Which aspect of the system is most important to you?  On a smaller scale, it's worth focusing in on what you want the most.  If you try to cram a laying flock, a herd of sheep, and a pig into your 4,000 square foot backyard, you're probably going to ruin your soil structure and end up with unhappy animals all around.  Think about the acreage requirements of each animal and decide which one or ones you're really in love with, then plan those livestock at the heart of your system.  The homesteader might need to think small --- fewer individuals of fewer types of animals perhaps of miniature breeds.
• Can you take advantage of off-pasture inputs?  When you're running two hundred pigs, your family's food scraps won't make a difference, but those scraps might make a moderate dent in the diet of one porker.  Whenever I cut down corn stalks, I smell the sweet juices and wish I had an herbivore to feed them to.  And there's always the possibility of growing or capturing earthworms, meal worms, Japanese beetles, black soldier fly larvae and so forth for your chickens.
• Can you use the permaculture concept of stacking to create more space?  Salatin's system uses stacking to some extent by grazing animals with different dietary habits one after another on the same patch of earth, but the homesteader can go further.  Why not put your compost pile in your chicken pasture so that your flock can scratch through it for worms?  How about letting your animals graze in your orchard during certain times of the year (appropriate only with some livestock and tree sizes)?  You can turn animals into a typical summer garden after the crops are done and let the livestock eat bugs and discarded vegetables (unless, of course, you have perennials and fall crops mixed in.)  And if you live in suburbia, there's always that pasture known as "lawn."
  
• Where are you starting?  Joel Salatin's system assumes your farm has a lot of grassy pasture ready to go with some problem spots.  If your whole farm is a problem spot (like ours), perhaps you should focus on colonizing livestock.  On the other hand, if you've inherited a well-maintained pasture, maybe you only need maintainers.
• Start with the infrastructure.  No matter what you do, think fencing, housing, and watering before you bring home your dream animals.
  

However you tweak the Salatin system to match your unique situation, the results speak for themselves.  Ten years ago, when I walked across the hayfield that later became Megan and Erek's pasture, it was one large expanse of fescue --- the roughest, least nutritious grass that grows in our region.  Today, their pasture is a lush and diverse mixture of foxtail, orchardgrass, clovers, and other species.  The proof is in the pudding --- if you can work the kinks out of a multi-species, rotational grazing system, your pastures will become healthier every year.

This post is part of our Salatin-style Pasturing lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries: Salatin-style pasturing Colonizing livestock: Pigs and goats Maintainer livestock: Chickens, sheep, and cows Electric fences for pasture rotation Bringing Salatin's methods to the backyard

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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