Page 27 - Winter2010

the country after giving a talk at the University screen. When your car crashes on that video
of British Columbia in Canada. When I showed game, you wait ten seconds and you get a new
the INS officer my passport he asked what I had car. When your guy is attacking the bad guy and
been doing, and I told him I had given a speech gets killed, you wait ten seconds and the game
at the UBC. Then he asked in a nonchalant way, gives you a new guy.
“What do you do?” Life isn’t that way. Kids need to realize that
“I’m a farmer,” I said. He pulled up smartly the world is bigger than just what they have in
and gave me a dirty look. I thought he was going their fingertips with this fantasy play thing. They
to lock me up. need to know that when frost or drought happens
“Don’t you be funny with me, man,” he said. and the plant dies, you don’t wait ten seconds and
“But I am a farmer,” I said. get a new plant. When the rabbit dies because
He put that passport down and he looked you didn’t feed it, it doesn’t just resurrect the
at me with the most sarcastic look. “Now since next day. It’s real pain, it is real life and death,
when do farmers go around making speeches?” it’s not just gamesmanship.
I felt like asking him whether he had ever Gardening and farming prepare our young
heard of Thomas Jefferson or George Wash- people for life with humility and awe rather than
ington. The stereotypical redneck hillbilly hubris. We can bring that to them, that’s what
D-student, they’re the only ones who can be in we’re supposed to be about. That is the politics
charge of our food supply. But we are going to of food.
have a much better food supply when we take And now, may all your carrots grow long and
our best and brightest and put them in charge of straight, may your vibrancy draw your friends
our food supply. and family into your fold, may your kombucha
So you farmers, get prepared, man. Read taste really good, may your children glow with
eclectically, go to speech class, join Toastmas- round faces and broad arches, may the wind
ters. When we go to town and stand toe to toe be always at your back, the rain fall softly on
with the people who believe the things that I have your garden, your children rise up and call you
just laid out for you, we have to be erudite, we blessed, and may we give our culture a political
have to be articulate, and we have to have the agenda that is righteous, sacred and true, leaving
self confidence to articulate our tsunami. We the world better than we found it.
need engaged and articulate farmers, thousands
more of them. Joel Salatin, BA is a fulltime farmer in Virginia’s
Shenandoah Valley. A third generation alterna-
MAY YOUR CHILDREN tive farmer, he returned to the farm fulltime in
LEARN GARDENING 1982 and continued refining and adding to his
These are the twelve most common attitudes parents’ ideas. The family’s farm, Polyface Inc.
that I encounter in my travels. If we’re going to (“The Farm of Many Faces”) has been featured
have a good food system, we’ll need to articu- in Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic,
late our arguments with confidence. We’ll need Gourmet, and countless other radio, television
to show that anthropomorphism is a devolution and print media. Profiled on the “Lives of the
to disconnectedness; we’ll need to defend the 21st Century” series with Peter Jennings on ABC
herbivorous biomass regeneration method of soil World News, his after-broadcast chat room field-
building. We’ll need to be involved, we’ll need to ed more hits than any other segment to date. It
read Wise Traditions, we’ll need to go to confer- achieved iconic status as the grass farm featured
ences, and we’ll need to know our farmers. in the New York Times bestseller Omnivores Di-
And we’ll also need to get our kids involved lemma by food writer guru Michael Pollan, and
in gardening, because it’s so valuable for children the Grammy-nominated documentary, “Food
to play in the dirt, get some splinters and calluses, Inc.” Salatin is the author of six books, his latest
and get their immune systems encouraged. We’ve entitled The Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer.
got children growing up today doing nothing but
exercising their thumbs in front of that video

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