The Farmstead Community

I know Joel Salatin personally and have eaten food grown on his farm. My respect for him and the way he does things runs deep. You may not think something like this is of concern to near-death experiencers and those like them, but it is. Soil, food, animals, water – all of these are of immense interest to experiencers of transformational states. Without good soil, water, food, we have nothing to build from. Our experiences teach us how valuable the earthplane is and how we are responsible for taking care of it. Some experiencers return unable to even step on an ant, they are so in awe of life and the many levels of being. I am a member of VICFA Voice, because I stand with farmers who understand deep ecology and the way of the sacred. Check around and see if there is a group like this in your state. If there is, join it, or help this one. Do what you can to support people who truly love nature and farming. If we help them, they can support us with the wonder of good nutrition and fabulous food! Thank you, PMH Atwater

http://www.vicfa.org/newsletter/2010-FebVICFAVoice.pdf

The Farmstead Community

By Joel Salatin

What defines the allure of Historic Williamsburg? Is it the costumes, the drum and fife corps, the buildings? All of those things add to it, of course, but I think most people are drawn to the imbedded farmstead crafts and industry.

The defining characteristic about Williamsburg, which differs from modern America, is the proximity to residences of what was, in that day, fairly heavy industry. They didn’t have the commercial district, the retail outlet district, the farming district, and the residential district. If you visit the George Wythe House, after going through the house you enter the backyard. There, busy at their work, are candle makers, spinners, a blacksmith, a barrel maker, and a woodworker.

If you study the on farm industry at Monticello, it’s the same thing. I recently finished a fascinating book about Pharsalia, a plantation south of Charlottesville that cured hams and had an on-site hospital for the slaves. These farmsteads bustled with the industry of the day. At Mt. Vernon, George Washington owned a mill, dock, and had numerous income streams, from whiskey to shad fishing.

All of these activities are appropriate for farms. Butchering, tanning, all food preservation from canning to curing, welding, energy generation, brewing, woodworking, spinning and clothes making—the list is endless. But today, this kind of activity is considered incompatible with farming. Oh, you can do it for yourself as a hobby, but don’t dare sell any of it! I call all this social and economic apartheid. And, lest anyone think this is a product of big business and conservatives, the radical environmentalists are just as bad. They want to lock up large tracts of land called wilderness. They kicked farmsteads off the Blue Ridge Mountains and took land and farms for a national park, dislocating people who had lived there for a long time. Today, we parse this apartheid down even to residential square footage. If you can afford a 1,500 square foot house, you can live in this section. But, if you can only afford a 1,000 square foot house, you have to live over in that section. Talk about becoming insular.

In 1915 some 1,500 auto manufacturers existed. Many of them were glorified backyard mechanics, tinkering and working in their own home shops, long before zoning regulations. This creativity worked out the kinks and slowly birthed the automobile. Today, this same kind of creativity has birthed the e-boom from home offices and computer consoles. The e-breakthroughs largely have come from individual, independent minds, not from big corporate efforts.

Two areas need this kind of home-based creativity to be unleashed today: food and energy. We hear about inner city food deserts. Nothing would solve that problem faster than vacant lot mini-farms and in-home food preservation and processing. Re-imbedding the entire food chain in a farm and village setting would exponentially increase creativity and innovation in food. The way to solve problems is not to centralize the innovation, but to spread it out and let more people participate in the solutions.

Rarely does the answer come from one source. The more brains, eyes, ears, and hands participate, the better the solution and the quicker it will occur. A lady in Texas told me recently that she’d been turned in to the zoning board for growing a tomato plant in her flower garden. Her residential area prohibits farming…and growing a tomato is farming. Is this crazy or what?

The same is true for energy. The best thing we could do for energy is to dismantle the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) so that anyone who wanted a still could have one. We should have a blanket exemption for windmill towers up to a certain height. The paperwork and bureaucratic permitting process to produce your own energy is not only inappropriate, it actually stifles innovation.

I wish I had a nickel for every time some jackleg mechanic has told me about a little carburetor gizmo that will increase fuel efficiency by 20 percent. I’m not mechanical enough to figure out how to install these things. I’d be happy to pay someone to install these things and they’d be happy to do it. But if they do, then they have a business, and if they are working out of their residence, that’s prohibited.

If we’re ever going to bring creativity to the table, we have to quit this economic and vocational apartheid nonsense. Instead of restricting access to local commerce, we need to encourage local commerce. Taken from the February VICFA Voice. You can join the Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association at: http://www.vicfa.org/.

For more about Joel Salatin, read this blog post.

Sustainable Agriculture

Joel Salatin (photo/Polyface Farms)

As most of you know, I am keenly interested in farms, food, and seeds, and the state of our soil today. Near-death experiencers, and those like them, come back more sensitive to food and drink than before and are acutely affected by nutritional content, chemicals, odors, and the vibrational content of what is consumed. This is no small matter. That’s why, whenever something special comes across my desk, I pass it on through my blog. This article about Joel Salatin is one of those “specials.” I know Joel. I have heard him speak numerous times and have toured his farm. This man and what he has done is the future of farms in America and across the globe. If we stick with present methods of “industrial” farming and continue to go the way of Monsanto and other corporate giants, we will condemn ourselves as a species to poor health, increased obesity, and the side-effects of estrogen-laden sprays and products (which is linked to the feminization of nature). I am grateful that someone like Joel Salatin finally receive a major award, and that people everywhere are beginning to wake up to his message and take note.

Blessings to all, PMH


Joel Salatin receives Heinz Award for innovation
in sustainable agriculture
September 14, 9:28 PM SF Sustainable Food Examiner Jeri Lynn Chandler
http://www.examiner.com/x-7030-SF-Sustainable-Food-Examiner~y2009m9d14-Joel-Salatin-receives-Heinz-Award-for-innovation-in-sustainable-agriculture


Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms in Swoope, Virginia, is being honored with a $100,000 Heinz Award for creating alternative, environmentally friendly farming techniques and helping to propel a movement towards local, sustainable agriculture that has been replicated by family farms around the country.


According to the Heinz selection committee, Salatin was chosen because he has "developed a new paradigm for sustainable agriculture by successfully challenging the commercial production of chickens and beef by food industry giants of the 1970s. His pioneering agricultural practices inextricably and beautifully interweave a food system with the land and have been embraced by farmers throughout the country."


Salatin also drew the attention of the Heinz committee because he "has successfully challenged the traditional commercial production of chicken and beef that has been the mainstay of food industry giants since the 1970s. Instead, his pioneering vision inextricably and beautifully interweaves a food system with the land, creating new agricultural practices that are being embraced by thousands of farmers throughout America."


On his 550 rolling acres of Virginia hills in the Central Shenandoah Valley, Salatin raises beef, sheep, chickens, pigs, rabbits and turkeys in a complex rotation based on the symbiotic relationships of these animals to one another and to the grass that is the basis of the farm's food chain.


Polyface Farm nets more than $150,000 annually, which, Salatin maintains, is proof that sustainable farming is a viable way to keep family farms together while producing healthy food in harmony with the environment. Salatin's infectious and inspiring enthusiasm for the benefits of his alternative methods has gotten him featured in Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma as well as articles in Smithsonian, National Geographic and Gourmet magazines. He was also in the 2009 documentary Food Inc.


In announcing the award, Teresa Heinz, chairman of the Heinz Family Foundation said, "Joel Salatin is more than the 'high priest of the pasture;' he's a brilliant farmer. He is brilliant because he keeps it simple. It starts with the grass and a divine rotation of cows, chickens, sheep and other farm animals taking their turn to graze. They work in unison the way, I believe, Mother Nature intended. The big corporate farms can no longer tell us that pollution will always come with farming. Mr. Salatin's work shows us that is not true because on his lands, farming is no longer part of the problem; it is part of the solution to a better environment. For this wonderful work, it is an honor to present him with this award."


Traditionally the Heinz Awards are made each year in five categories: arts and humanities; environment; the human condition; public policy; technology, economy and employment. This year, to mark the 15th anniversary of the awards and to honor John Heinz's devotion to environmental issues, all ten awards have been made in the environmental achievement category.

For more information about this year's Heinz Awards: visit www.heinzeawards.net.
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