Ambassador, Crusader, Rebel and Lunatic Farmer
- Joel Salatin with one of his flock
Joel Salatin is a rebel with a cause, a lobbyist against “food laws and bureaucratic decisions for the food industry that don't make sense.” He is one of the most influential farmers in America. He is an advocate of holistic, natural farming and a crusader of being a steward of the land. This past September, I was traveling with my dear friend Joan Nathan when we learned his farm was only 20 minutes off the interstate we were traveling. My first thought was that I knew what Joel Salatin was all about. The Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society brought him to the Vineyard in 2006 and I sat across from him at dinner and found the conversation to be too focused on Christianity. I read about him in Michael Pollan’s Omnivores Dilemma and have seen him in several films and shows and heard him on the radio. I thought of him as commonplace among foodies. But, I found him anything but trite. Joel was a refreshing commentator and all my past skepticism vanished when we were greeted by him and his big white Great Pyrenees named Michelangelo (guardian of the farm). He told us the best day to visit was Sunday as that was the day he would have time to show us around. We jumped on his four wheeler and I could hardly keep up with his preacher-like passions and rants as we bounced along touring his 500 acre farm.
He throws around the word “travesty” when talking about typical farming practices.
And he is quick to say that there is no cookie-cutter formula for farming. These principles have to be adapted to your neighborhood, to your climate, family and resources. He advocates heritage breeds but begins to defend his raising of chickens and turkeys that are not heritage breeds. He explains the economics of raising animals that people will eat. “I am a capitalist and we have to make it sustainable for us and at the same time raise healthy animals.” Then he says:
“You must ask yourself what makes the turkeys happy and that has to be the driver in farming models. It's a very landscape-therapeutic production model.”
In the next breath he is explaining the “ecological umbilical” and “the only connection most people have to an animal is a pet cat or dog. And that really gives you a very jaundiced view of cycles of life!” And before I can grasp the real meanings: “I must show you the salad bowl” and off we go to the cows and he explains his system of moving the animals daily to new paddocks using high tech electric fencing and lightweight portable shelters. This portable infrastructure, invented only in recent decades, enables large production, for the first time in human history, to be done in a more hygienic, sanitary, animal-friendly, and ecologically-enhancing way than ever before. He states: “It’s very efficient; We let animals do the work. In nature, animals and plants have symbiotic relationships. You don't see mono-cultures and mono-species in nature; everything has an intricate relationship that stimulates health and ecological progress” Chickens follow the cows in egg-mobiles, sanitizing the pastures, scratching through the dung, and converting grasshoppers and crickets into “the best eggs in the world”, he says with factual pride as he hands me a salad bouquet he has just picked and names off each of the types of grasses and clovers and then explains in very explicit detail how the cows eat the grass at the height of its life cycle.
The words “sensually romantic” is used and I feel it as I inhale the fragrances and witness these cows grazing on their daily salad bowl of greens, “the way God planned it”, he finishes.
I return the following Tuesday when the slaughtering of the chickens and turkeys takes place. The bloody work that goes on in slaughterhouses is usually hidden from visitors, but at Polyface Farm in rural Swoope, Va., the processing is performed in the open for all to see. Visitors can interact with the interns and volunteers and here their pride in working at Polyface farm is witnessed. “Turkeys are very mobile and this makes them good foragers. They are bred to walk and don’t get tired.” Joel said turkeys in his area of Virginia were once walked 30 miles to market.
Joel is truly an ambassador – both for Christ and for lunatic farming. I find his spirituality refreshing and practical and if I was 20 years younger, I'd stay and apprentice. I'd join his tribe and live this life of the way "God planned it!' This is what it takes to be a farmer these days. I purchased a t-shirt with “Lunatic Farmer” across the front, for my son at the farm store just before we loaded up the car with our turkeys and bags of ice for the drive back to DC.