I’d be thrilled to have him as a neighbor. And to have the luxury of interning on his farm. I can’t let the little ways in which I’m different from the gal/guy next door keep me from working with them to create the Next World. Viva – Sager
When you go to the supermarket to buy food, do you ask the person selling you the food what their religion or political views are? How about your own local farmers?
I’ve been giving my neighbors some of my extra produce from my 1st year garden. No one’s asked me what my religion or political views or whatever are. It’s not an issue, don’t make it out to be one. Joel can be me neighbor anyday.
Scribe, welcome to CM.
I see that you are a bit new here, so I wanted to take an opportunity to aquaint you with some of the important premisis of this site.
Everything in your post is a logical fallacy, specifically an Ad Hominem. That type of post will not get you very far here.
If you have a critique of something the man said in his interview, that is certainly fair game. But we try to separtate beliefs from facts here, and Joel’s (or your) beliefs, especially about religion, goes against the grain of the site, as well as the posting guidelines.
What I would like to hear is why what Joel says about farming is wrong, inadequate, misleading, or a poor perfomer in your mind. That’s really the subject here, not his personal belief set apart from farming. It is very easy to tear down, much harder to build. We still choose to build around here. Fair enough?
R
Oh goody. lets talk about religion. I am always happiest when chewing the fat about something no-one knows anything about. The greater the uncertainty the greater the passion. (It’s a Left brain thing)
.................. Joel Salatin is a fundamentalist Christian creationist, a very far right wing Libertarian, and an antiabortionist who does not believe government should be involved in education or a host of other services. Too whacky for me!I counter with
"However you imagine me, that is how I will appear to you." The Bagadavida. (Ancient hindu manuscript)Old nick exists as a meme and confuses everyone. He argues "Evolution proves God does not exist," He comes up with all sorts of wacky arguments. I feel like Mr wack-a-mole. The ancient Vikings never had the luxury of having an anti-abortionist stance. Every time an infant was born a calculation had to be made as to wether there were enough rescources for another adult. If not, fat was placed in the infants mouth and it was left out in the snow. Defective infants were given short shift. Hence the conquest of the world by the descendants of the Norsemen. Eugenics works. We can afford the luxury of anti-abortionism, now.
Hmmmm, not sure I want to chew any fat on your island. It might be fatal.
has a sterling reputation in the local sustainable ag crowd. To get off religion and back to farming, i would like to comment on his techniques which we should remind ourselves don’t happen either overnight or without effort. Our farm,500acresofit, was largely farmed to death,not to the extent the Salatins’ place was but still quite dead as obvious soil life didn’t exist. It has taken years to get fertility back, but is has really come around. Point is that the bug out farmette may not be sustainable or sufficiently fertile to meet expectations for years.
Sorry i’m a poor typist,robie
Robbie, I couldn’t agree more. I’m very jealous of the lush vegetation in the pic above. When I first bought my farm, I thought it would be no problem to knock down a few trees and plant a garden. When I got done, I had more rock than dirt. Luckily I am surrounded by folks who will let me take the used horse feed for free, and after 3 years of working it, have good soil. I would have had better luck if I started the garden in the valley, but that would be too far away from the house.
When we first started, we had a soil test done. The good ole’ farmer who helped us understand the results said "any worm that wants to slither across that meadow better pack a lunch or he 'aint gonna make it." It’s taken a lot of sweat and diesel to have happy, fat little worms. To go the natural route, not importing huge qtys of manure, it would take over a decade to get it right. Point is, whoever is planning on going down this road, better get started pretty soon!
What Robie says is a reality I’ve been struggling with for at least 4 years on my ‘micro homestead’. Its not easy to grow, harvest, prepare and store food in quantity.
Too many people who have a ‘preppers’ mindset buy stuff, instead of build callouses and knowledge through experience.
A can full of heirloom seeds sitting on your pantry shelf might make you feel better about the future, but chances are they won’t provide the quantity of calories when you need them.
Your personal food growing systems, whether they be fields of amber grain, movable pens of broiler chickens, a coop full of laying hens, or long rows of brocoli and beans have to be hard won by experience over time. Your location, soil condition, microclimate, etc etc etc all impact what you can grow in quantity. Anyone can force a tomato to grow (I’m at Latitude 48 North, which is a bit cold for 'maters, peppers and eggplant without expensive hoop houses or other ‘stuff’), but can we afford to force enough 'maters to grow to stock a pantry shelf with 10,000 calories? More?
So, if growing your own is something that’s on your radar, and you think you’ll need to rely on those calories someday, you MUST grow food NOW.
We grow about 70% of our own poultry, and about 70% of our own taters, onions, garlic, shallots. These store well. THe weakest link to growing more, and storing it appropriately, is labor.
As a back up plan to growing your own food, consider ‘sprouting seeds’. It seems like a waste to me to eat a sprouted seed, but for now, you can buy in bulk, and with a couple mason jars, cheesecloth and water, have a gauranteed source of fresh nutrition. Walton Feed in Idaho sells a variety of sprouting seeds in bulk. I’m happier to have a deep larder of sprouting seeds than I am garden seeds, just based on RIGHT NOW nutrition.
Now our goal is to produce fresh food year 'round up here. So more expensive hoop houses must be built, and protected from deep snows, high winds, and perhaps some day, hungry visitors.
If you want to rely on home grown food, start now. Many seed companies are now offering guidance and seed selections especially for late summer/fall plantings.
I was aware of Salatin’s religious views, and I don’t particularly share some of them, but it doesn’t mean that I’m not going to listen to the truths he speaks. His books and various interviews have been very useful and inspirational to me. I was noticing in the interview that there were several questions he could have answered from a religious perspective if he were pushing an agenda, but he mostly kept it secular. Just another reason to admire the man.
(we live in a mennonite community, and i attended EMU, it was EMC in the '70’s,however am not mennonite) it would be inconsistent to proselatize(sp) The Mennonites i know well "spread the gospel" thru good deeds and loving their neighbor. "on this hangs all the law and the prophets."robie
Some people would rather starve ? I doubt it . … but whatever … Joel has great many years of experience and wisdom behind his ways . This thread raises my awareness of building my own trusted community . It is very much work raising your own food and filling your shelves . I doubt there are even many here able to do it without buying outside food . MANY farmers do not raise Milo anymore so I believe chicken feed will go higher yet . The Corn went through a dry spell and did not head out so it was all cut for silage . YUP ,YUP, YUP Grain will go high . Good Luck ALL. !
FM
Note to self … make sure you do not let sneaky little Bantam Rooster in the hen house … hatchlings are … hard to butcher tiny chickens that like to fight .
if i could type i’ld tell you how long one must pressure cook a game rooster to make’im tender. if it can crow its tough. We don’t raise milo, but will be milling sorghum(pressing is more accurate)for sorghum syrup. the grain is great chicken amendments(they forage for their greatest part)fine ground flour(better than corn meal) and lastly saved for next years crop.wish you were here,robie
I wish I were there for sorghum making !!! are you doing it with Horse power ?? . What all do you use it on ? My husband like a little in his coffee . There is a gal a couple hours down the road that does it and I just need to get over there and watch it done … she usually does not get over this way until Oct. When we have a harvest dance .
I never thought of grinding it for flour !! I am so going to do it !!! We do pop milo like popped corn tho .
OLD BIRDS !!! I told the 13 year old boy if he brought me home an old tom turkey he was going to eat every bite himself . NO PRIZE BEARDS … LOL The hunting licence are high and the flocks are huge … so many that the big cats will surely be through here soon enough enough . and talk about foraging … my chickens got into the garden and pecked at every tomato low enough to reach last week. Thank goodness the tomatoes are climbing high enough that there are plenty to share .
This is way off topic but you will get it… I just missed a sale on a horse drawn hearse It was in great shape and so beautiful ! Our Black Morgan would have been so pretty hitched up to it Anyway I have looked into green burial and we are going to just do it here on the place . Since we own three sides around the old county cemetary up on the hay field and there are no laws against it in 44 states … Kansas being one . I will just have them dig a hole on the outside of the fence . Anyway all we have to do is the old fashioned way … Get the body in the ground in 24 hours . My mom said roll her body in a blanket and throw it in the hole . I may even wrap my dad in a horse blanket and tie him to his horses saddle for one last ride . That is if we can find the old guy … he keeps getting on his horse and taking off without telling us which way he is headed .
OK back to harvesting … the beans are looking awesome … The wheat was good ,the milo good , It just got too hot for the corn . The grain bins are full . Now if it will cool down some we will haul in some logs to cut for winter . It is going to be bad … very many heavy foggy days , the walnuts are loaded and other signs of long cold winter . Also the elderberries are everywhere so I will not be surprised to hear of a whopper of a virus this winter . So much for the old wives signs …
FM
Hope you can follow my thoughts … random they are but that is just me
Sorghum is malted first to help process the indigestable carbs. Then it is roasted and ground to make Maltabella porridge. Even then it has a low glycemic index.
I heard that they are trying to breed a more digestable variant. You can research the internet to see if they succeeded.
"Nothing succeeds like a budgie without a beak."
We use a prviously horsedrawn chattanooga No.12 mill. It is now PTO powered 18/1 gear reduction to slowher. It can be used ‘bout anywhere sugar/honey would be used. Most interesting and now a favorite is to cure hams/baCON in course crush black pepper and sorghum syrup. Our 1/2acre of sorghum will occasionaly produce 40 galloons of syrup. It can be quite a party. My father and his brotheres once got drunk while cookin’ cane and when poured and cooled they had 200 quart jars of hard rock molasses candy. Granma had more to say about the evils of strong drink.Shellin’ corn,planting barley,then pressing and evaporating sorghum syrup. If any folk are interested and in the area send me a PM and i’ll let you in on the party, i mean work.
robie,husband,father,farmer,optometrist
here are some links to any who would like to know more about sorghum syrup, its history and current roles:
http://nssppa.org/ http://www.syrupmakers.com/
I live near Joel and have a very high regard for him. He has always been willing to share his knowledge with the locals here and appear for speaking engagements for free. I have seen first hand what he has done with his place and use some of his techniques on our farm. Joel now moves 400+ head of cattle around to several other farms (they truck them) to simulate the intensive grazing that took place here in the Shenandoah Valley hundreds of years ago. They bring the chicken tractors in behind them to refertlize and feed on fly larve in the cow manure. I n the winter the cattle are fed hay in the barn and corn is sprinkeled in with the manure which the cattle stomp into the floor. In the spring the cattle are turned back to pasture and he brings the pigs in to root up the kernels of corn and turn the hay and manure into compost this goes out on the fields as a very high grade of finished compost to give the grasses a boost. and the cycle starts again. No chemical fertilizer, all processes working together the way nature has for millions of years. If you want to see Joel in action he is in a new documentary called American Meat, check it out it is worthwhile.
c
Why does everybody buy into the nonsense of peak oil? According to the last report I saw there is 2041 years of unrecovered, untouched recoverable oil in the Bakken formation in this country. Why can’r we just get the environmentalists out of the way? Think Sheriff Joe’s tent city for instance.
Ron
[quote=hbaronaz]Why does everybody buy into the nonsense of peak oil? According to the last report I saw there is 2041 years of unrecovered, untouched recoverable oil in the Bakken formation in this country. Why can’r we just get the environmentalists out of the way? Think Sheriff Joe’s tent city for instance.
Ron
[/quote]
I don’t know if you’re a troll or just badly uninformed, but either way take the crash course. Then try again.
Doug
Super interview, really like the diversity of guests and topics, keep it up.Has anyone read any of Joel’s books and would they be of interest to the serious backyard farmer as well as commercial operators?
I’m especially interested in learning how to butcher chickens efficiently.
I rotate my chickens around to different parts of the garden as part of the cycle after harvest and before planting, and the soil seems to really benifit, no tilling required. Whatever veggies I don’t eat they do, producing eggs and compost in return, and they keep the grass mowed down too! Meanwhile, I see folks around me spending all their time mowing the lawn, bagging grass (which I gladly take), then driving to the grocery store to pay money for lesser quality food then I get with 100’ of my house. Yes its a lot of time and hard physical work to produce your own food; my arms are beat up from diggin up 200 lb of potatoes yesterday!; but it’s more than offset by the rewards.
There are some great youtube videos on processing by Salatin as well as others. On processing, I think the videos will help more than any of his books.