October 11, 2011 – 11:26 am
So here we have it. Folks, this ain’t normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World. At last, after 7 self-published books on everything from ground-breaking poultry systems to inter-generational farming strategies, Joel Salatin has finally written a book aimed fair and square at the mainstream.
A self-professed Christian Libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer, Joel Salatin is one of a kind. His family enterprise, PolyFace Farms in the Shenandoah Valley of Virgina, USA, is a unique example of profitable family ‘beyond organic’ farming. But that’s not what this book is about. Read More »
August 31, 2011 – 6:00 am
Following on from the cracking workshop we ran with Joel Salatin in Jamberoo earlier this month, here’s the links and resources we devised as post-workshop notes for everyone who came along.
There’s so much goodness in Polyface Farm’s regenerative agriculture techniques! And heaps that can be applied usefully, at a range of scales to create resilient local food economies. I tried to catch as much of the essential stuff in these notes as I could, but this world is wider than a list. Still, there’s lots of inspiration below… Read More »
What do you get when you cram 200 people into a room with Joel Salatin to talk about awesome small-farming techniques that heal the land and create livelihoods at the same time? You get the shivers, that’s what! Or i did, anyway.
Last Tuesday we hosted a workshop with Joel on the south coast of NSW, and it was a big bag of fun… Read More »
P.A.Yeomans was a visionary farmer who could read the Australian landscape in a way unheard of, before or since. He designed water into landscape and drought-proofed farms, designed a sub-soil Keyline Plow, and generally left a massive legacy of knowledge and implemented design.
In 1975, a conceptual artist decided the Art Gallery of NSW should do a massive exhibition on Yeomans and his Keyline Design concepts, as they were much more pertinent to the future of Australia than the ‘Land Art’ of the time, which specialized in digging large holes for no discernible reason. Read More »
This week I received all our yearly seed catalogs, and, as usual, started planning feverishly. How many is too many weird and wonderful heirloom watermelon varieties? And then I paused. Wait a minute, we’re aiming for community scale in our vegetable production this year. This shifts the goalposts entirely.
I’m now realizing that, for our organic market garden adventure, we will no longer be focusing on the craziest colored tomatoes. At least for this first year, while we learn the ropes, we will be going for yield and nutritional density as top priority. Pragmatic organic, here we come. Read More »
A week or so ago Nick had the opportunity to hang out with Allan Savory, the founder of Holistic Management, way out west at Brewarrina. He was in the car and off before I could say ‘biological accelerators’.
7 hours of driving into the great flatness of the Aussie outback later, Nick and his mate Trev were in the middle of a crowd of farmers from all over the country. They’d all gathered to hear what this venerated pioneer of regenerative agriculture had to say. It sounds like it was an inspiring trip. Read More »
Where should I buy land? Where’s a good area? What should I be looking for in a landscape?
This question is something that Nick gets asked a lot when he’s teaching and consulting, so we thought we’d ask Joel Salatin’s opinion while he was at our farm last Summer. Apparently we’re all in agreement with the answer: go where you will be happy with the company, regardless of the landscape. Because growing topsoil is the easy bit. Read More »
Last summer, when Joel Salatin was at our farm, we asked him a question or two. The first one was: what’s your advice for young-uns who want to farm but don’t want to get into debt?
You see, at Milkwood Farm we’re very committed to positive balances. Positive natural balances, and positive (if only slightly) bank balances. In short, we want to figure out how to do mortgage-free regenerative farming, bit by bit, as our means allow. Can it be done? We hope so. Read More »
