#418 Polyface Farm

If you've watched the film Food, Inc. or read Michael Pollans' book The Omnivore's Dilemma, you know about Joel Salatin and his Polyface Farms.  On Friday, I tagged along on a field trip to Polyface Farms with 60 University of Virginia students curious to see what all the fuss was about. 

Just an hour's drive from Charlottesville in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, we were greeted by Mr. Salatin.  His guided tour took us through a HoopHouse cohabited by chickens, rabbits, and pigs, the winter parking lot for EggMobiles, the 2009 Millenium Feathernet, the hay barn where we walked on the cows' diaper, the turkey RoostMobile, more pigs, and finally the heated sales-building-turned-lecture-hall.

The University of Virginia media relations staff wrote about our visit.  Check the excellent photo accompanying the article.

What did I learn from our visit?  A mixture of fact and opinion.  Fact: Only an hour's drive from Charlottesville, Polyface Farm is 1000 feet higher in elevation than Charlottesville and in the same horticultural growing zone as South Dakota. Opinion: Too many folks are behaving like victims asking the government to protect them and their food supply rather than taking the initiative to investigate and make their own smart local choices.

You vote at least three times every day for the kind of food you want to be produced.

Yours in wanting to make better food choices,
Kelly