Family Friendly Farming: A Multi-Generational Home-Based Business Testament [Paperback]

Joel Salatin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2001

Saving the landscape, rebuilding entrepreneurial rural families, and protecting nutritious food are the themes of this timeless treatise-hence the word "testament." Delving into the soul of the Salatin family's nationally acclaimed Polyface Farm, author Joel Salatin offers Family Friendly Farming as the key to dealing with resource issues, food policy, and social fabric.
With humor and personal stories, he opens his family and farm convictions for all to see, share, and enjoy. Written from his unabashed "Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist" perspective, his ideas are guaranteed to encourage and challenge virtually every "ism" in the culture. It will captivate anyone passionate about healing the land, healing families, and healing the food supply.
For several decades young people have been leaving the family farm. The ones left behind are now responsible for society's greatest resources: clean land and clean food. Anyone dedicated to preserving these resources will find in these pages a nongovernmental, self-empowerment approach to environmentalism and food safety.
The heart of this book is aimed toward parents tired of their Dilbert cubicle at the end of the expressway who want to reconnect with their children through a pastoral lifestyle. It's written for anyone who yearns to grow old working with and being adored by value-sharing grandchildren and honored by passionate, productive adult children. Family Friendly Farming can make any family business more viable and any family more functional.
The ten-chapter section on how to get the kids to love the farm is an invaluable addition to any collection of child-rearing manuals. Salatin moves from the family team-building section into a practical discussion on how to increase income per acre and create new, white-collar salaries without buying more land, equipment, or buildings. He deals with the unique and thorny issues surrounding any family business by using his own multi-generational family farm experience as his base for insight and wisdom.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Called "the high priest of the pasture" by The New York Times, Joel Salatin likes to refer to himself as a "Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic farmer." He lives with his family on Polyface Farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
Salatin has developed a system of pasture rotation that produces nutrient-rich grass and maximizes the composting of animal waste. Each species on the farm is dependent on another. The cows, for example, eat the nutrient rich grass in Pasture A and then are moved to Pasture B. The chickens then move to Pasture A where they pick through the cow pies eating bugs and grinding the waste into the ground where it revitalizes the grass for the cows.
Salatin's innovative system has gained attention from around the country and he travels in the winter giving lectures and demonstrations. Salatin is the author of a number of books including Holy Cows and Hog Heaven, $alad Bar Beef, You Can Farm, Pastured Poultry Profit$, and Family Friendly Farming, all available from Chelsea Green.

Product Details

• Paperback: 350 pages
• Publisher: Polyface; 1st edition (September 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0963810936
• ISBN-13: 978-0963810939
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #197,349 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

About Joel
Joel F. Salatin (born 1957) is an American farmer, lecturer, and author whose books include You Can Farm and Salad Bar Beef.

Salatin raises livestock using holistic methods of animal husbandry, free of potentially harmful chemicals, on his Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. Meat from the farm is sold by direct-marketing to
consumers and restaurants.

In high school, Salatin began his own business selling rabbits, eggs, butter and chicken from his family farm at the Staunton Curb Market. He then attended Bob Jones University where he majored in English and was a student leader. He graduated in 1979. Salatin married his childhood sweetheart in 1980 and became a feature writer at the Staunton,
Virginia newspaper, The News Leader, where he had worked earlier typing obituaries and police reports.

Tired of "having his stories spiked," he decided to try farming full-time after first getting involved in a walnut-buying station run by two high school boys. Salatin's grandfather had been an avid gardener and beekeeper and a follower of J. I. Rodale, the founder of regenerative organic gardening. Salatin's father worked as an accountant and his mother taught high school physical education. Salatin's parents had bought the land that became Polyface after losing a farm in Venezuela to political turmoil. They had raised cattle using organic methods, but could not make a living at farming alone.

Salatin, a self-described "Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist-lunatic-Farmer" produces high-quality "beyond organic" meats, which are raised using environmentally responsible, ecologically beneficial, sustainable agriculture. Jo Robinson, the author of Pasture Perfect: The Far-Reaching Benefits of Choosing Meat, Eggs and Dairy Products From Grass-Fed Animals (2004) said of Salatin, "He's not going back to the old model. There's nothing in county extension or old-fashioned ag science that really informs him. He is just looking totally afresh at how to maximize production in an integrated system on a holistic farm. He's just totally innovative."

Salatin considers his farming a ministry, and he condemns the negative impact on his livelihood and lifestyle of what he considers an increasingly regulatory approach taken by the agencies of the United States government toward farming. Salatin now spends a hundred days a year lecturing at colleges and to environmental groups.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why your kids will want to farm, too!, June 17, 2003

By 

John Langlois (Estillfork, AL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Family Friendly Farming: A Multi-Generational Home-Based Business Testament (Paperback)

Joel Salatin has achieved a great deal of prominence in developing his model of sustainable agriculture. His creativity in recognizing and integrating the holistic aspects of how nature prefers to work in raising poultry and cattle comes through in this work that applies the same principles to farm families. His analysis of the dehumanizing aspects of modern agribusiness and how it exploits both the farmer and his family manages to avoid the bitterness that so often accompanies helplessness. That's because rather than remain helpless, he advocates that the farmer change the nature of his business and the relationship he has with his clientele. Through the re-establishment of local agrarian cultures Salatin hopes we find models that renew the life that farming has often promised, but struggled to deliver.

For the Wendell Berry devotees, this is a practical way to live the agrarian life.

It is well written, only occasionally preachy, and well worth the money. This is not a "how to" book. Try his books "Salad Bar Beef", "Pastured Poultry Profits" and "You Can Farm" for the nuts and bolts of what he has accomplished. The guy is exceptional.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is what I think farming should be., April 15, 2003

By 

Dallas Koenig (Bon Accord, Alberta , Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Family Friendly Farming: A Multi-Generational Home-Based Business Testament (Paperback)

This is the first book which I received from a group of my fellow employees when they found out I was venturing into buying a farm that my family and I could run. What an Eye opener!! I could hardly put the book down-- and my wife also flew through it. The downside of the book is it's visual stimulation, the busy rhetoric that Joel sometimes uses and the lack of details that are offered for construction methods,( how to get started from scratch etc.. But , don't let these small points dissuade you from ordering this book... it's wonderful, imaginative and very "catchy"... I look forward to more reading and following through on the ideas presented by Joel and his wonderful sounding family.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspired my family to change and follow our dreams, October 29, 2003

By 

J. Goodhue "Bookworm" (Poor Benzie County, Michigan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Family Friendly Farming: A Multi-Generational Home-Based Business Testament (Paperback)

Family Friendly Farming is about the recentering of your family on the important parts like your children. Every agrarian should read this book, kids or no kids. Do you want your hard work today to be carried on , or subdivided into housing?
This book was inspiring to my husband and I. After reading Pastured Poultry, we purchased all of them, as well as other small farm books and have completely changed our lives. We moved to a state with less restricitve, and more farmer friendly laws, and are working towards getting a small farm for ourselves and our kids. Joel offers alternatives to passing on the farm in Trusts, etc. Let yourself be inspired to dream!