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Joel Salatin from Polyface Farm and author of Everything I Want to Do is Illegal |
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Friday, 07 December 2007 |
December 6, 2007- Joel Salatin from Polyface Farm
Hear the interview on www.radiosandysprings.com/tastebuts/charli
Check out Joel’s website at: www.polyfacefarm.com
Joel Salatin is a fulltime farmer in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. A third generation alternative farmer, he returned to the farm full-time in 1982 and continued refining and adding to his parents’ ideas. He holds a BA degree in English and writes extensively in magazines such as STOCKMAN GRASS FARMER, ACRES USA, and AMERICAN AGRICULTURALIST. The family’s farm, Polyface Inc. (“The Farm of Many Faces”) has been featured in SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, GOURMET and countless other radio, television and print media. Profiled on the Lives of the 21st Century series with Peter Jennings on ABC World News, his after-broadcast chat room fielded more hits than any other segment to date. A sought-after conference speaker, he addresses a wide range of issues, from “creating the farm your children will want” to “making a white collar salary from a pleasant life in the country”.
Joel has written 5 books and numerous articles. His most recent book, Everything I Want to do is Illegal, is about the constant struggle to resist the rules and interventions that seem often arbitrary of government bureaucrats. It’s the story of his desire to run his farm and sell his products to local consumers without interference from government agencies. He could be angry and resentful, but he tells his story with great humor and equanimity. The farm is organized to raise all animals as pasture fed. They raise what they call salad bar beef, pigaerator pork, pastured poultry, forage-based rabbits, and some forestry products. The animals are moved around the farm to different pastures so that the animals themselves contribute to the growth of the grass. Other farmers who use pasture for animals often call themselves grass farmers, because without the pasture grass the animals would not be able to thrive.
Joel Salatin and his family of Polyface farm welcome visitors. Part of the underlying guiding principle for the farm is that it is important for those of us who eat the food to know the people who are raising our food and know how the animals are treated. One of the guiding principles for the farm is that all of life is sacred. They feel that the attitude of the farmer is important in the products that they produce and that cows should be able to express their unique cowness, pigs their pigness, chickens their chickenness.
Many of the diseases that animals suffer from today and that make the news are because of the way the animals are treated. Take e.coli, for instance. When cows are fed grains and fermented food (silage) as their primary food, their stomachs (yes, they have more than one) become more acidic and the e.coli in their body (normal flora) become adapted to the acid environment. Our bodies have a highly acidic stomach and ordinary e.coli from grass fed beef would be killed off by our own stomach acid, but the ecoli who have adapted to the acidic environment reproduce and thrive in humans and therefore cause serious illness and sometimes even death. Who would think that feeding cows grass would make such a difference?
Being mentioned in Michael Pollen’s Omnivore’s Dilemma has made Joel even more well known. When you go to his website you will see that he is speaking all over the country on a regular basis. He will be here in Atlanta in January talking to the Legal Seafood Restaurant Leadership meeting. Probably we won’t be able to hear him at the meeting, but know that he’s in town, spreading the word.
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