Over the past few years, some of my favorite and most inspiring non-fiction books have been focused on farming and sustainability: The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, Gaining Ground by Forrest Pritchard, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. So it’s no surprise that Joel Salatin’s Folks This Ain’t Normal was on my To-Read List.
If you’ve read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, you may recognize Joel Salatin’s name from Pollan’s visit to Salatin’s farm Polyface in Virginia. Salatin’s family has been farming in the Shenandoah Valley since 1961, and raise beef cattle, chickens, pigs, rabbits, and more. Salatin is quite honestly the face of local food in the United States, and his farm is world-renowned for its model of natural, sustainable practices.
That being said, Salatin is kind of a curmudgeon. He has a very strong opinion about things like big business, the USDA, and the role of government, and he isn’t afraid to tell you all about it in this book. While I found myself agreeing with a lot of his basic premises, some of it was a little bit too radical for me (no, I don’t want to live in the side of a hill with a hoop house as a roof and air dry all of my clothes). However, I really liked that he addressed some of the “haters” who think that eating local and organic is too expensive and that because they live in a city they aren’t able to have a garden or eat locally.
My favorite part of each chapter was when Salatin offered practical tips that anyone can apply. Of course, I found myself thinking that I could apply them a bit more easily than some of my counterparts given that I’m lucky enough to live on a farm and related to someone who farms animals for a living. Either way, here are my biggest takeaways from those chapters.
Some things you can do to support local agriculture are…
- Go to the Farmer’s Market. Obviously the Market on the Square on Saturday mornings in Madison is of course amazing, but don’t forget about smaller markets like the Monona Market on Sunday mornings and the Fitchburg Market on Thursday afternoons.
- Eat local, grass-fed animals. Of course I’m going to recommend to you the delicious Highland beef and pork at Highland Spring Farm! If you're out of state, choose a farmer that practices sustainable grazing and feeds their animals what they should be eating!
- Support restaurants that use local foods. So many Madison restaurants are awesome at this, including: The Old-Fashioned, Charlie’s on Main, Lilliana’s, Graze, Graft, and Harvest.
- Start a garden. Lots of vegetables, including tomatoes, are super easy to grow in a pot on your porch or in an actual garden if you have room. We personally grow tomatoes, peppers, celery, and carrots in our garden.
- Join a CSA. CSAs, or Community Supported Agriculture, are a great way to support local farmers and get some seriously delicious food. Matt and I tried a CSA for the first time last year, and although sometimes it was a challenge to eat all the vegetables before they spoiled, it was also a really fun experiment to get new foods we had never cooked- bok choy, kohlrabi, acorn squash- and try to do something with it.
Many of those items Matt and I already do, but my wheels are still spinning with the knowledge that I can do more. More changes we plan to make are:
- Buy chickens! We just ordered 5 chickens from mypetchicken.com (yes, that’s a real website!) which will be arriving next week!!! Chickens are great for eating extra kitchen scraps and we are obviously looking forward to some delicious eggs from our own backyard.
- Find new ways to eat local. We just found a local mill in Lone Oak, WI that uses local Wisconsin wheat farmers to ground their flour. Another item to add to our local pantry! Thinking ahead, we could also find bread and butter that are more local than we already buy. We have found that while the Willy Street Co-Op is one of the best places to buy local, the Hy-Vee also flags local foods and Wisconsin producers, so we usually look for those.
- Plan new ways to can and preserve food. We did a pretty good job last winter of freezing our garden peppers and sweet corn, making strawberry jam and canning some delicious pasta sauce and salsa. This summer we have plans to try to freeze rhubarb, and can other fruits like apples or applesauce. We could also get better at storing root vegetables like carrots, onions, and potatoes.
Joel Salatin’s voice may not be your style, and I might recommend reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle before this book. However, it was still a great reminder for me to continue to eat local, support small business, and do what’s best not only for my health but for the animals, soil, air, and earth.
