Hello everyone,
I hope this note finds you
well. We've got snow happening outside. I don't think we're in for a lot, but it'll clean things up nicely.
As I was trying to find my
desk the other day (under all the paper!) I was rewarded with the Dec./January
issue of Mother Earth News, which has a particularly good article by one of its
regular contributors, Joel Salatin.
Salatin describes himself as a "renegade" farmer. Salatin, whose Polyface farm is in the Shendoah Valley in Virginia, is "renegade" in the best possible way:
someone who rejects conventional ways of doing things.
His article, A 'New-Fashioned' Food System That Helps and
Heals, points out that we need to rethink a lot of ideas about farming. For him "old"-fashioned farming is monoculture, GMO, petroleum input
agriculture. The most up to date farmers
are finding ways to use efficient, simple, and energy-saving technologies -
many of them right up to the minute as far as the techie crowd goes - to farm
well, produce safe healthy food, and give back land that is better than they found it.
He assures us - and
particularly any young person thinking of getting into farming - that farming
is not going "back" to the land.
It is going forward to
regenerate land.
He tells us that the language
used to get out the message of good farming "has
to be big enough, innovative enough, sacred enough to capture the hearts of all
types of people".
I reall like his combination
of practicality and spirit.
He tells us we have to "upgrade the language of
stewardship".
We can get out the message
that farming and food are integrated; not segregated in their own aspects or from
neighbourhoods and society.
We can emphasize that farming
and food production are not systems that conquer; they can be thoughtful and
practical actions that "caress" the land, that work with and learn
from natural processes. And overall,
they are healing and not harming.
Salatin's full article is
worth reading. His own words are more inspiring than my summary! The link to his MEN article is below. And his website is sure worth a look too, and
has audio and video interviews and segments.
His moveable poultry pens are fascinating to me! And he's written several books, some of which
might be in your library.
I hope you are delighted by
something you find in his work.
Very best regards!
Why's Woman
Author and "renegade
farmer" Joel Salatin calls for food producers to tell a better story of a
"new-fashioned" food system that rejects the industrial agriculture
paradigm while embracing technology.
By Joel Salatin, Mother Earth
News, December 2014/January 2015
Polyface Farms: http://www.polyfacefarms.com/
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