I have an Earth Day entry for you but you have to go to The Next Family to read it. I’m guest blogging in the hopes of spreading my little green tentacles in an ever widening web…
I also wanted to leave you with some eye bytes from Joel Salatin’s talk last night at Kane Hall. He’s an amazingingly magnetic individual, perfectly suited for the amount of attention he’s gotten in the last few years.
In case you’ve been living under a rock but somehow found my blog, he is a pastured meat farmer in West Virginia whose Polyface farm is prominently featured in The Omnivore’s Dilemma and interviewed in the movie Food, Inc. as well as Fresh which screens next week in Seattle. He raises pastured meat for Chipotle restaurants which we seek out when we have to eat fast food.
Much of the talk centered around the symbiotic relationship between the various animals, and between animals and farmland. I’ll add that he sells meat so much of his operation is raising and slaughtering these animals for sale. From what I can gather he does not raise vegetables or grains to feed the animals but chooses instead to buy those things from other local farmers. He didn’t quite get into the logistics of that or why he is not a bio-dynamic or self-contained farm in the sense that all inputs and outputs stay on the farm.
Polyface Farm has been in his family since childhood and in the last 50 years they have increased the organic matter on the farm 7% by continuously adding compost, bringing in wood chips, allowing people to dump their spent Christmas trees on the farm and perhaps his strategy of bringing in grains to feed his animals plays into that.
He made the point that by increasing the carbon matter on all farmland by just 1% we could sequester all the carbon lost since the Industrial Age. Is that not a powerful thought? He claims that pastured livestock is the most efficacious way to sequester carbon. Then boy are we doing our part to lower our carbon footprint by eating only pastured animals!
Extolling the need for more “loving stewards” on the farming landscape he believes we should “create an atomosphere where the best and the brightest go into farming.”
The exciting thing about this to me is that I see this happening. Thanks in part to Nash Huber who inspired the PCC Farmland Trust, the WSU extension Small Farming program which makes grants and information accessible for small scale farmers, and to Chris Cassidy and the Seattle Farmers Markets I see nothing but bright and loving faces at local farmer’s markets and delight in reading about new local farmers. It seems that being a farmer is finally not only socially acceptable but trendy!
If mud boots, large brimmed hats and gardening gloves are in then I’m at the height of fashion.
Not surprisingly, Joel’s vision of the farm of the future is one without large barn structures and grain silos that we generally associate with the word “farm”. In fact, Joel’s name for grain silo was “mortgage tube.” His vision of a healthy farm is one utilizing portable infrastructure: portable electric fencing to rotate ruminants, chicken tractors and movable rabbit hutches. He believes his most valuable crop is grass and works the animals according to the needs of the pasture and not the other way around.
This is where I expected something to come up about his vision for growing foods other than meat, including animal forage, but that never came up. That’s a pretty big gap since I’m in full support of pastured meat but I don’t believe it should dominate my palate, as tasty as it is. I highly doubt I’ll get the number of reader responses to a blog entry featuring brussel sprouts than I got when I blogged about making bacon.
My favorite theme of the evening was just how important your eating choices are.
Historically revolutions have begun with food, or the lack and control thereof. The real food movement is currently at the same point of progression the homeschooling movement was some 30 years ago. It’s early and it’s supporters are the minority but that group is growing, articulate and passionate.
According to Joel, “The way we choose our menus becomes one of the most important moral and cultural acts we make…Next to getting married, eating is about the most intimate thing you can do.”
He makes the point that we build our houses with materials we don’t know from where, fill it with things we don’t know from where, use utilities, we don’t know from where and send out our refuse we don’t know to where. We have no connection with the consequences we have on the planet…Reconnecting people with the face of their food is a good place to start.
My parting eye byte to you from the mouth of Joel is this: “Each one of us can create a noble and sacred legacy.”
What will yours be? Happy Earth Day – make your mother (Earth) proud!
That sounds like it was an amazing lecture. My goal for this year is to get all of us at our house eating even more vegetables than we do now and branch out more in what we are eating.
Wow, two great articles today; thanks!
I really enjoy your blog because I love seeing what can be done on a small, single-family scale to opt out of the mainstream food system. Also, thanks for sharing your recipes!
I didn’t know about the 4 Rs – I passed that on and a link to your Earth Day blog to the getrichslowly blog, where they are also celebrating Earth Day by talking about scaling back consumerism. What a great day to read blogs.
I just have to say how much I am really enjoying your blog. I wish I would have known about that talk last night – it sounds wonderful! I have 2 kids also, but have felt overwhelmed by the thought of trying to eat more off our own land. You have given me much inspiration!
Anna Katherine, that is my goal too – especially the kids! I loved your last blog entry on how you had the discussion with your kids at the store about which kind of chard to get. How cool is that they choose a color of chard?
Trini, thanks! I am seriously behind on posting recipes but trying to balance not staying up until 2 a.m. every night like I did all winter. I’m pooped lately!
Shannon, thank you! It was a fun talk but honestly I didn’t learn much new. I was furiously taking notes though because I just agree with everything he says and he says it so well. I’ve been gardening for years, although not on this scale so don’t overdo it in the beginning. I think an 8×4 garden or 5-10 things is a great first season intro. Otherwise it gets really overwhelming managing planting and harvest and maintaining things.
The other thing that might be an easy transition is planting perrenials like blueberry, raspberry, apple trees or something that doesn’t require much pruning or knowledge and sort of grows by itself. Even just planting leafy greens which are hardly any work and can be harvested as needed, unlike fruit which must be harvested when ready. Dip in the big toe before plunging in head first. ;p
I am so glad you got to see Joel and hear him speak, his so inspirational even to farmers who have been following him for 20 years!
It’s hard for Joel to convey all his practices in his talks, and the single most important thing that gets missed many times is that his farm is symbiotic because he doesn’tfree range his animals, he manages the grazing and utilization of the land very carefully. Just having multiple species of livestock running around willy nilly will not result in the carbon sequestration and increasing organic matter, it will in fact cause uneven impact which will over time weaken the soil. But, many people get upset with Polyface when they see that the animals are “confined”, expecting more the Disney or Chicken Run ideal of freedom.
If you ever get a chance to visit Joel’s farm in Virginia – please do, the difference between his pastures and the neighbors is startling.
Nita, he was amazing. I’ve seen snippets of him and knew he would be entertaining but wow! I’m chugging the koolaid. It’s ironic how many folks appreciate him from afar but his immediate neighbors, not so much. It doesn’t surprise me but it takes a strong person to weather that for so many years.
From following YOUR blog I get that free ranging is not the answer but otherwise how would a city slicker have a clue? There is a reason there were shephards, right? And it wasn’t just to keep the wolves at bay.
I really loved your post on how weeds were a symptom of greater soil needs. It makes sense and I’m still shifting my paradigm, albeit a little more rapidly these days. My new weeds to protect are arugula, dandelion and purslane. When I see grass I put on my “must erradicate” hat now. ;p
Augh, how did I not know he was in town?? Oh well I was at a choir rehearsal anyway, but still….what a neat event that must have been
(And I did not know that about Chipotle- my brother-in-law will thank you, I think he misses fast food! He hasn’t been able to eat any since watching Food Inc.)