The SHEER ECSTASY of BEING a LUNATIC FARMER

by JOEL SALATIN

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New large softcover book, 316 pages, published in 2010.

Shunned by industrial farmers, vilified by corporate agri-business, and stalked by food police as being a lunatic, farmer-entrepreneur Joel Salatin enjoys the sheer ecstasy of being surrounded by happy, frolicking animals, dancing earthworms and appreciative customers.

His family's farm nestled in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley has achieved iconic status worldwide by featuring prominently in the Grammy-nominated documentary, Food Inc, and the documentary Fresh, as well as the runaway New York Times Bestseller Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. From his own pen, Salatin explains both the rationale for and the satisfaction from a solar-driven, pasture-based, locally-marketed, symbiotic, synergistic, relaionally-oriented farm.

This book describes, with stories and evangelistic fervour, the breadth and depth of the paradigm differences between healing and exploitative food systems. A landscape and food policy epiphany awaits every reader.

The Sheer Ecstasy of Being an Lunatic Farmer is divided into sections:

• Nurture the Earth
• Produce Food and Fibre
• Respect for Life
• Promote Community

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 6 books including Family Friendly Farming, You Can Farm, Holy Cows & Hog Heaven and Everything I Want to Do is Illegal. He spends a hundred days a year lecturing at colleges and to environmental groups. He visited Australia in late May 2010

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The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer by Joel Salatin