Okay, now that I have calmed down (funny how killing something will do that for ya
)...
The main reason behind Joel Salatin popularity (and he would be the first to tell you) is because he was prominently featured in
The Omnivor's Dilemma, one of the hottest selling books of the last decade and the best of those books detailing the flaws of our modern food system. In it, Salatin's style of farming was set up as the ideal sustainable farming system, above even free range and organic farming. That is why he is famous.
And it is true. He didn't invent sustainable grass farming, even though he is very very good at it. He didn't invent it, but his father did.
Well, I'm kidding, but only a little. This is a whole movement, not just a few people, with its own conferences (yes, Salatin speaks at those and yes, they are attended by real farmers), magazines, and organizations. Salatin's father was a charter member of one of the early journals on grass farming Stockman Grass Farmer.
This sort of farming is not just a throwback to yesteryear. It was and is a refusal to follow the herd by buying into the industrialization of our agricultural system. Salatin certainly isn't the only practitioner. But he
is one of the best at it, and one of the most successful. He definitely doesn't do things the way grandma did. Grandma didn't use chicken tractors or eggmobiles or pigerators or the principle of intensive rotational grazing. This segment of the agricultural community has not been sitting still for the past 50 or 60 years. It has continued to learn and research and grow upon the good information and knowledge of the past, and does use modern technology only in a more sustainable and humane fashion.
While I was born and raised in the country, and grew up in and around agriculture my entire early life, I was blissfully unaware of all this. My interest in vocational agriculture waned during my teen years largely because the way things were being done didn't really appeal to me all that much. If I had known about this sort of stuff then, things might have been different.
I discovered all of this a couple of years ago when I read Barbara Kingsolver's book
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I had been working toward a simpler and more sustainable lifestyle for a couple of years, but when I read this book, something clicked. As in, yes, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.
So I put my money where my mouth is. I bought a farm.
But I see that as merely returning to my roots. My family has been farming in this country forever, and my dad always dreamed of owning his own small place on which to raise food.
As I walked down this road, friends encouraged me to read Omnivore. So I did. I was already raising animals for food, but when I read that this interesting Salatin guy had written a books on raising meat birds, I thought I would give it a read. I found it incredibly inspirational and easy to follow. It just clicked that I could do this meat bird thing. This is the best book I have found on the subject (if anyone knows of a better one, I'm all ears). He makes it all look and sound so easy, like anybody can do it.
And the more I learn about Salatin and his methods, the more I like him, the more I agree with him, the more I want to emulate. I recently had the pleasure of meeting a young man who just returned from a year's apprenticeship at Salatin's Polyface farm. How fortunate for me! This fella is a treasure trove of great information, and I look forward to learning from him the Salatin way.
Joel Salatin and people like him have had a huge impact on how people think about the way they eat. Industrial agriculture has caught on that he is a threat to them, so they have started spending big bucks in a war on sustainable agriculture. I sat in on a conference on beef production where a Washington lobbyist was flown in to rant about Salatin and Michael Polin and others, talking about how dangerous they are and what a threat they are to farmers and indeed the well-being of the country.
Some of this guy's rationale I am seeing here on BYC. The industry has been using a couple of tactics that people seem to be taking up here. He talked about what a bunch of nutcases the sustainable agriculture community is, that people who follow or are interested in it are just a bunch of yuppies. City folk who don't know anything about farming. Not real farmers. And they just want us to go back to the olden days, where agriculture was in the 1950s, the way grandpa used to do it.
None of that is true.
Look, folks. I have a confession to make. I'm not obsessed with chickens. My chickens aren't my pets. They are here on my farm for two reasons and two reasons only: meat and eggs. The turkeys are here for meat, period. If I can make a few bucks by selling some, thus paying for the cost of keeping them, equaling free food, so much the better. I am instead obsessed with farming, and then only with humane, sustainable farming. Chickens are only one link of a chain. Every animal on my farm has a practical purpose, a reason for being here (okay, the ducks are here because they make my pond look pretty, but they are the only exception).
I don't get the showing thing. I don't get chickens as pets, or chickens as pretty things, or the breeding thing trying to get this or that color or shape into a bird. I don't get crying over a dead bird. But that is just me. I understand everybody has to have a hobby, and that there is nothing wrong with any of that. We all have things that touch us in different ways for different reasons. All these aspects of chicken keeping are fine. They just aren't me.
However, never once have I mocked anyone who does any of those things. Not once.
If you want to know what Joel Salatin is about, don't ask me and don't guess. He is very easy to understand, and is very honest about what he is about. Just
read his book .
And with that I bid you adieu. Y'all have fun.
