Joel Salatin Farm Quotations

We believe that the farm should be building 'forgiveness' into the ecosystem. What does that mean? That a more forgiving ecosystem is one that can better handle drought, flood, disease, pestilence.

The linear, single species idea of farming is an assault on ecological function. Something's going to break down in that system - anything from soil structure, in economics... but where to start is with true ecological function.

From my earliest memories, I loved the farm. My grandfather was a charter subscriber to Rodale's Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine and had a huge, well kept garden with an octagonal chicken house in the corner.

An orchard can grow pastured poultry underneath. A beef cattle or sheep farm can run pastured poultry behind the herbivores, like the egret on the rhino's nose.

The farmers are older; they are under financial stress to produce more margins, yet they keep getting less.

Oh, my goodness, when we came to the farm in 1961, I mean, it wouldn't even support one salary.

Frankly, any city person who doesn't think I deserve a white-collar salary as a farmer doesn't deserve my special food.

Too often, parents whose children express an interest in farming squelch it because they envision dirt, dust, poverty, and hermit living. But great stories come out of great farming.

The bigger issue here is, to me, that when we can't access our neighbors with food, then farming just dries up. The fact is that all these hurdles that prohibit local food commerce keep what would be millions of dollars circulating in the rural local economy are therefore denied to the local economy. So farmers go out of business and sell to developers.

Know you food, know your farmers, and know your kitchen.

All of these farms all over this county used to supply Staunton with home-cured bacon and ham. That was the backbone of the rural economy 50 years ago, and nobody got sick.