by Suemedha Sood, Photography Courtesy of VisitStaunton.com This winter, Michael Reeps got the chance to bring an idea to life: creating an online farmers market to connect Staunton farmers with town residents. The Staunton Creative Community Fund gave Reeps a grant to kickstart his website, Staunton Fresh. It’s not surprising: this is a town [...]
By Joel Salatin / Photo by Molly McDonald Peterson “What are you doing here?” the neighbor demanded, elbowing her way through the cluster of Polyface customers surrounding our delivery vehicle. “You can’t do this!” she remonstrated, into the face of her dumbfounded neighbor who was in the middle of filling her cooler with pastured chickens [...]
By Adrienne Wichard-Edds, photography by Molly McDonald Peterson / Chick photos & Cover photographed at Buc~A~Buc Farm Nine years ago, after the birth of my first son meant that I was responsible for the nutrition of another life form, I began educating myself on the reasons to eat organic, local, and grass-fed. “You better not mess this [...]
by Joel Salatin “You’re food Nazis,” wrote the irate customer in her e-mail to our farm. The accusation stung, but more than that, it exposed a gross ignorance about local foods. The e-mail outburst followed a dialogue about product availability. She wanted bacon and had been denied three deliveries in a row. In her mind, [...]
by: Joel Salatin photography by: Molly McDonald Peterson I was in Australia a couple of weeks ago doing regenerative food systems seminars and a fellow raised his hand with a question: “I’m a farm consultant working for the government. What do I tell my clients that have 30,000 acres of wheat?” It’s the same mentality [...]
By Joel Salatin One of the biggest arguments against a local food system is seasonality. Here in the Mid-Atlantic region, it’s hard to grow strawberries and tomatoes in January. That people would disparage local food because something can’t be grown all year shows just how disconnected we’ve become from our ecological umbilical. Ours is the [...]
by Joel Salatin Is local food just a fuzzy fad, or can it actually feed the world? At a recent Augusta County Chamber of Commerce-sponsored agri-tourism panel discussion, Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) Secretary Matt Lohr reiterated the current agri-business axiom that farms like my family’s Polyface Farm cannot feed the world. [...]
By Joel Salatin, Photo by Molly McDonald Peterson After spending several days with Bath County animal control officers dealing with allegations of animal abuse, I think it’s time to address the result of increasing societal ignorance about livestock. More and more, we farmers find ourselves explaining unbelievably elementary principles to people who cast anthropomorphism onto [...]
by Joel Salatin, Photos by Molly McDonald Peterson Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms proposes an alternative to the Shenandoah Valley’s poultry industry in this exclusive excerpt from his new book. Before industrialism, farms were localized and seasonal. The ebb and flow of production and activity followed a pattern dictated by local economies, weather, and availability [...]
Start-up businesses are capitalizing on the local food trend. But when those businesses fail, farmers don’t get paid. By Joel Salatin Big food companies employ lawyers and other means to make sure wholesalers and retailers pay for what they buy. Because they can spread the cost of that legal leverage over millions of unit [...]
Sign up to receive newsletters & back issues. Learn more | Login
