I’m Off to Polyface Farm for Field Day 2008

Many of my close friends know that I think Joel Salatin is the most ahead-of-his-time, revolutionary, forward thinker in agriculture today. He describes himself as a “Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic farmer.” (Michael Pollan, author of Omnivore’s Dilemma). When asked what he does for a living, he replies: “Mob-stocking herbivorous solar conversion lignified carbon sequestration fertilization.” (Salatin, Joel, “Tall Grass Mob Stocking: An Aggressive Approach to Controlled Grazing,” Acres USA Magazine, May 2008, p. 16) Gotta love it. You’ll have to read the article to find out what he’s talking about. Joel strikes so many chords with me I feel like a piano.  Home school father. Unbelievably frugal. Out of the box thinker.  Bob Jones grad. Contrarian. Not afraid to get his hands dirty, and he can string together some pretty powerful paragraphs to make a point. I have a hard time deciding which book of his to recommend first, but way up there is Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front which will make you laugh, cry and get mad all at once. Then there’s Family Friendly Farming: A Multi-Generational Home-Based Business Testament which I think is destined to motivate hordes of Dilbert Cubicle Workers (Joel’s term) to once and for all tell their Faceless Bureaucrat Companies to take a hike and don a permanent pair of overalls.

Here’s a little more about Joel …

Called “the high priest of the pasture” by The New York Times, Joel Salatin likes to refer to himself as a “Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic farmer.” He lives with his family on Polyface Farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.  Salatin has developed a system of pasture rotation that produces nutrient-rich grass and maximizes the composting of animal waste. Each species on the farm is dependent on another. The cows, for example, eat the nutrient rich grass in Pasture A and then are moved to Pasture B. The chickens then move to Pasture A where they pick through the cow pies … LINK HERE

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I want all my blog readers to notice that I have added a new Post Category — Healthy Food & Agriculture — of which this post is the first of many to come. And with that … I’m off to Polyface! See you soon!

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