I've just finished reading this book a few days ago and found it informative, encouraging, and inspiring. I'd say it's a great read even if you have no interest in farming or in business endeavors. It falls, in many ways, into whatever catagory you might place a book like "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People."
I'm going to copy the editorial review from Amazon here for you, along with information about the author as well. Lastly, I give you the author's family farm website.
From Amazon, Book Description:
Saving the landscape, rebuilding entrepreneurial rural families, and protecting nutritious food are the themes of this timeless treatise-hence the word "testament." Delving into the soul of the Salatin family's nationally acclaimed Polyface Farm, author Joel Salatin offers Family Friendly Farming as the key to dealing with resource issues, food policy, and social fabric.With humor and personal stories, he opens his family and farm convictions for all to see, share, and enjoy. Written from his unabashed "Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist" perspective, his ideas are guaranteed to encourage and challenge virtually every "ism" in the culture. It will captivate anyone passionate about healing the land, healing families, and healing the food supply.For several decades young people have been leaving the family farm. The ones left behind are now responsible for society's greatest resources: clean land and clean food. Anyone dedicated to
preserving these resources will find in these pages a nongovernmental, self-empowerment approach to environmentalism and food safety.The heart of this book is aimed toward parents tired of their Dilbert cubicle at the end of the expressway who want to reconnect with their children through a pastoral lifestyle. It's written for anyone who yearns to grow old working with and being adored by value-sharing grandchildren and honored by passionate, productive
adult children. Family Friendly Farming can make any family business more viable and any family more functional.The ten-chapter section on how to get the kids to love the farm is an invaluable addition to any collection of child-rearing manuals. Salatin moves from the family team-building section into a practical discussion on how to increase income per acre and create new, white-collar salaries without buying more land, equipment, or buildings. He deals with the unique and thorny issues surrounding any family business by using his own multi-generational family farm experience as his base for insight and wisdom.
Author Info:
Called "the high priest of the pasture" by The New York Times, Joel Salatin likes to refer to himself as a "Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic farmer." He lives with his family on Polyface Farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.Salatin has developed a system of pasture rotation that produces nutrient-rich grass and maximizes the composting of animal waste. Each species on the farm is dependent on another. The cows, for example, eat the nutrient rich grass in Pasture A and then are moved to Pasture B. The chickens then move to Pasture A where they pick through the cow pies eating bugs and grinding the waste into the ground where it revitalizes the grass for the cows.Salatin's innovative system has gained attention from around the country and he travels in the winter giving lectures and demonstrations. Salatin is the author of a number
of books including Holy Cows and Hog Heaven, $alad Bar Beef, You Can Farm, Pastured Poultry Profit$, and Family Friendly Farming, all available from Chelsea Green.
Biography:
About JoelJoel F. Salatin (born 1957) is an American farmer, lecturer, and author whose books include You Can Farm and Salad Bar Beef.Salatin raises livestock using holistic methods of animal husbandry, free of potentially harmful chemicals, on his Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. Meat from the farm is sold by direct-marketing to consumers and restaurants.In high school, Salatin began his own business selling rabbits, eggs, butter and chicken from his family farm at the Staunton Curb Market. He then attended Bob Jones
University where he majored in English and was a student leader. He graduated in 1979. Salatin married his childhood sweetheart in 1980 and became a feature writer at the Staunton, Virginia newspaper, The News Leader, where he had worked earlier typing obituaries and police reports.Tired of "having his stories spiked," he decided to try farming full-time after first getting
involved in a walnut-buying station run by two high school boys. Salatin's grandfather had been an avid gardener and beekeeper and a follower of J. I. Rodale, the founder of regenerative organic gardening. Salatin's father worked as an accountant and his mother taught high school physical education. Salatin's parents had bought the land that became Polyface after losing a farm in Venezuela to political turmoil. They had raised cattle using organic methods,
but could not make a living at farming alone.Salatin, a self-described "Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist-lunatic-Farmer" produces high-quality "beyond organic" meats, which are raised using environmentally responsible, ecologically beneficial, sustainable agriculture. Jo Robinson, the author of Pasture Perfect: The Far-Reaching Benefits of Choosing Meat, Eggs and Dairy Products From Grass-Fed Animals (2004) said of Salatin, "He's not going
back to the old model. There's nothing in county extension or old-fashioned ag science that really informs him. He is just looking totally afresh at how to maximize production in an integrated system on a holistic farm. He's just totally innovative."Salatin considers his farming a ministry, and he condemns the negative impact on his livelihood and lifestyle of what he considers an increasingly regulatory approach taken by the agencies of the United States government toward farming. Salatin now spends a hundred days a year lecturing at colleges and to environmental groups.
ME AGAIN: Well, you might be feeling like you don't need to read the book now, having made it through all that. But anyhow, here's his website:
www.polyfacefarms.com
For Christmas, I recieved two DVDs put together by Joel; one being an overview of the different things going on at his farm and how they are accomplished. The other DVD is a recording of one of his lectures. I have watched these DVDs and passed them on. I have the book I've just reviewed, and another book called "You Can Farm" by the same author. I decided to read "Family Friendly Farming" first because it is more about the "whys" instead of the "hows." Although I'm more than eager to hear all the hows, I felt like understanding the "whys" and getting a feel for who Joel is will help me understand more about the "hows" he will present in other books, as well as increasing the likelihood that I can be creative within the same vein. Knowing the whys, to me, is more like teaching a man to fish for himself.
