Trekking through the rain to hear a crazy man talk

Last night L and I went to Pt. Reyes Station in Marin to hear Virginia sustainable farmer Joel Salatin speak. Joel Salatin is a self-proclaimed “Christian, libertarian, environmentalist, capitalist.” This makes him only 1.5 labels away from being my complete and total soul mate (can you guess which ones?)…that is, if he would only allow women to apprentice in addition to men. If he wasn’t a farmer he’d be a Southern Preacher – but as it stands he is one of the last living outspoken farmers. This is a shame since our country was built on the philosophies of outspoken farmers, therefore I cherish him. People call him crazy, but that’s because he’s passionate, adamant, unwavering – and knows he’s right. But I am getting ahead of myself.

I’d heard about the talk from an email list I am on for Marin Sun Farms, which is a cattle and chicken farm on Pt. Reyes National Seashore. After reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which I loved, I got into thinking more about where my food comes from, and doing my best to buy the best: Marin Sun Farms was a farm whose food I felt truly at ease both buying and eating (and whose cattle and chicken care is modeled after Salatin’s methods). The food tastes better, and is more satisfying not just to my gut, but to my mind. I know where the food came from and how it lived its life, and the peace of mind I get from that absolutely has a positive impact on my digestion.

Think of it this way: if you eat McDonald’s and are freaked about the fact that your meat was on a feedlot in a pile of its own excrement for weeks before being slaughtered, skinned, and chopped apart quite possibly while still alive, your anxiety might actually keep you from digesting that food well. Funny, the more I eat the good food, the less and less I crave things like McDonald’s.

(Note: It was Pollan’s book that also helped me make the leap to getting my now gone farm job at Deer Hill. Incidentally, today was my last day and the dog’s seemed to know this so peed on everything I was about to use: the bucket, the hay. They’d never done that before. It was disgusting. I felt sad.)

Anyway, I had to pay in advance; there was a tasting component to the talk and I think Marin Sun Farms needed to guarantee the heads for the caterers. Well, it turns out we had one of the worst storms of the winter yet last night. But because the tickets were $50 bucks, I made the treacherous drive. No way I was forfeiting that dough (as opposed to this doughy substance that no one can identify…but I digress). I will tell you though, that drive was easily the worst since I drove in snow in my younger days. I could barely see, the wipers were squeaking on high, high beams were useless because the extra light just reflected off the rain and glared in my eyes, the roads were pitch black because the power went out, we we’re fogging up, and constantly needed to be on alert for flooded roads and rock and mud slides. We encountered two each of the last in that list.

But ladies and gentlemen, travails aside, it was SO COMPLETELY WORTH IT. First of all the “tasting” was more like a feast. The chefs were from Stanford University catering and dining. Stanford is a customer of Marin Sun, meaning, all the meat you eat as a student at Stanford is sustainable, local (within 100 miles) and grass fed. Must be nice, I said to L, remembering my rotten Lackman Food Services iceburg lettuce and cheese slice on a bagel with Quik days at Adelphi University.

The tasting consisted of: mini cheddar burgers on a rosemary focaccia bun with meat from Marin Sun and cheese from Cowgirl Creamery; two crostini selections, one with deviled eggs, bacon and chives and the other with stinging nettles and blue cheese; beet salad with candied walnuts and blue cheese; chard and onions made the old fashioned, Southern way; fruit chutney with pork; pulled pork sandwich; and the pies de resistance a ramekin filled with mashed potatoes and the moistest, flakiest, tenderest roasted beef I have ever, ever eaten. L had two of these.

Soon, the power went out, but the staff of the Pt. Reyes Community Center, which is called Dance Palace, was prepared: they had tea lights for the bathrooms and hallways, and a generator for the kitchen and powerpoint presentation. While they readied these technical things, they brought out dishes of the most delicious creme brulee ever. I had two of these.

Then, Joel made his presentation. He is highly opinionated, evangelical, loud, and domineering – which is exactly the way you want your farmer to be. He is funny, fresh, insightful, and totally fun to listen to. He believes so strongly in what he does you can feel comforted knowing no amount of money from any company or corporation could ever get him to change his ways. This is not to say he is not open to new methodologies. It is only to say he has a standard: a moral, ethical, natural standard. If it doesn’t fit within that standard, then it isn’t welcome at Polyface Inc.

My favorite part about this is, of course, his standard, or basic principles, as he calls them. He believes that God (Higher Power, Creator, whatever you want, really) made it right the first time and it doesn’t need improvement. In reference to cows that means: let them eat grass. In reference to chickens that means: let them follow the cows around and eat the bugs that grow out of the poop. In reference to pigs that means: let them snarf around for fermented things in the compost and aerate it so it can be laid on the grass and the whole cycle can start again.

In that right, Salatin considers himself more a choreographer than a farmer: do the minimal thing you need to do in order to close out the cycle, and keep the animals expressing their true nature: let cows be cows, chickens be chickens, and pigs be pigs. More contented animals, animals that have been able to express their true natures, make better food. It’s true.

I want to highlight just a few ingenious, common sense techniques he uses on the farm – which is truly sustainable: there is no broken point in the cycle. Every cycle is fully closed. What this means is the farm is running in a truly sustainable way: the input is equal to the output. Or in Salatin’s case, the input is way lower that the output. Since he uses all the poop, the only actual “output” is the finished beef, poultry, pork and eggs. There’s balance on his farm’s 500+ acres.

First of all: dirt is bad. If you want to farm and don’t know what you are doing, all you have to know is: dirt is bad. If your pasture has dirt patches, or there are dirt trails somewhere due to cattle trod – then something is wrong and it is time to try new things.

Secondly: Salatin moves his cows almost daily onto fresh pasture. Sometimes he runs them through the chute and squeeze before he moves them to the fresh pasture so that the cows don’t associate pain and suffering with the chute and squeeze come slaughter day. This means: no fearful release of hormones, no tightness or tensing of the joints and muscles – e.g.: more delicious, more humanely produced meat.

Third: in the winter he houses his rabbits, pigs and chickens all together under a portable, enclosed greenhouse. What this does is create diversity in the shed: many types of poop, and many types of movement through that poop: chickens scratch, pigs snarf, rabbits forage. Basically what this creates, mixed with a carbon based material that you throw on top every once in a while (wood chips, or hay) is a lovely compost. When spring comes, this is where he plants his vegetables. He keeps it portable so he can move it each year.

Finally: in the winter he feeds his cows hay from his field he has baled during the year. He feeds them in a long barn, and the cows poop in a generalized area. Normally, we try to avoid this (critical masses of poop), but because the cows need to eat the hay in this barn due to winter conditions, we let them poop, cover it with wood chips or carbon based materials, and throw whole corn kernels into the mix. This keeps the poop moist, but not wet, so that it can foster the growth of useful bugs, and won’t leach into the watershed. Wet poop in mudpiles is what contaminates water supplies.

By the end of the winter, the cows have produced more than three or four feet of poop! And when it is time to go back out to pasture, they let the pigs into the poop pile. Remember, the corn kernels are in there, so the pigs snarf the pile until every kernel is unearthed. They have a keen sense of smell, and love fermented corn (by now, that corn is good and fermented, having been in the moist pile). This aerates the poop pile and makes it a prime fertilizer for the pastures.

For the holidays this year, Chops got me Salatin’s book You Can Farm which I look forward to reading so I can begin to understand even more about Salatin’s methods and philosophies. He said once someone asked him “Do you think you could feed the world this way?” His response was “We can’t do it any other.” Amen.

Tags: grass fed beef, joel salatin, marin sun farms, polyface farm, sustainable farming, you can farm