SALAD BAR BEEF

by JOEL SALATIN

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New large softcover book, 384 pages, first published in 1995, with an addendum for 2007 reprinting of the book.

Salad Bar Beef is a 'how-to' book that explains the why, how, and who of small-scale, organic livestock management. The Salatin family speaks from three generations of practical experience; at Polyface Farm they have created a successful prototype for profitable small-herd management that has withstood the tests of time, fluctuating demand for beef, and price variation.

While trying to find a phrase to describe this ultimately land-healing and nutrition-escalating production model, Joel realized that he was offering the cows a salad bar.  He coined the phrase to describe the farm's beef, and thereby stimulate questions from potential customers.  Eventually he incorporated the phrase into the title of this book whick describes herd effect, mobbing, moving, field design, water systems, manure monitoring, soil fertility, and even pigaerating.  A fundamentally fresh way to look at the symbiosis between farmer, field, and cow, Salad Bar Beef is now a classic in the pasture-based livestock movement. 

About the author

Joel F. Salatin (born 1957) is an American farmer, lecturer, and author. He 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.

After graduating from college, Salatin married his childhood sweetheart in 1980 and became a feature writer at the Staunton, Virginia newspaper. He then decided to try farming full-time. His grandfather had been an avid gardener, beekeeper and a follower of J. I. Rodale, the founder of regenerative organic gardening. His 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.His father worked as an accountant and his mother taught high school physical education.

Salatin describes himself as a "Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist farmer". He produces high-quality "beyond organic" meats, which are raised using environmentally responsible, ecologically beneficial, sustainable methods. His philosophy of farming emphasizes healthy grass on which animals can thrive in a symbiotic cycle of chemical-free feeding. Cows are moved from one pasture to another rather than being centrally corn fed. Then chickens in portable coops are moved in behind them, where they dig through the cow dung to eat protein-rich fly larvae while further fertilizing the field with their droppings.

Joel is the author of 7 books including Family Friendly Farming, You Can Farm, Holy Cows & Hog Heaven, Everything I Want to Do is Illegal and his latest, The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer. He spends a hundred days a year lecturing at colleges and to environmental groups. He visited Australia in 2010

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Salad Bar Beef by Joel Salatin