Summary:
Joe Salatin's farm basically runs itself. He does as little as possible to interfere with the natural aspects of his farm. He only gives hid farm what it can take. Not too many animals on the farm so there's no destruction, not too many vehicles so there's no pollution. He also keeps forest life around the farm to keep animals shaded and cool in the summer, absorb water, and to keep predators out. He uses all natural defenses for his animals and farm. All of this protection leads to a lot of food being produced every year.
"Gems"-
"I asked Joel how much food Polyface produces in a season, and he rattled off these figures:
30,000 eggs
12,00 broilers
800 stewing hens
50 beeves (representing 25,00 pounds of beef)
250 hogs (50,00 pounds of pork)
800 turkeys
500 rabbits." Page 222
"The woods represented a whole order of complexity I didn't take into account. I realized that Joel didn't look at this land the same way I did" Page 224
Thoughts:
Anybody that thinks that this method of farming isn't efficient like standard farming is clearly wrong. This 100 acre farm produces a lot of food each year. Exceptional numbers for a farm of that size. When people in the corn industry want to talk about efficiency being priority, look at this farm. Enough said.
How will our depletion of forests and woods affect our farming techniques?
Michael Pollan, Omnivore's Dilemma, Chapter 12-
Summary:
Alternative farmer, Joel Salatin shares a problem with any other farmer, alternative or not. He has to slaughter his animals. He isn't allowed to slaughter cows or pigs on his farm due to USDA regulations, but he can slaughter chickens. So he takes advantage, slaughtering all his chickens on his farm. Joel believes that this way he is expanding his world view, and preserving the natural cycle that he has built. By killing his own chickens, Joel is making sure that the chickens weren't processed, and that the guts aren't turned into "protein feed" for farm animals. While Joel enjoys this process of slaughtering, I did not. But I understand how it is better to slaughter in the way that Joel does. He wishes that the strict regulations for slaughtering and processing were lifted so he could slaughter all of his animals himself.
"Gems"-
"Joel is convinced that "clean food" could compete with supermarket food if the government would exempt farmers from the thickest of regulations that prohibit the processing and selling of meat from the farm." Page 236
"'We do not allow the government to dictate what religion you can observe, so why should we allow them to dictate what food we buy?" Page 236
Thoughts:
- I found the slaughtering process to be pretty cool. I would like to see it myself, or even try to slaughter a chicken. I definitely find Joel Salatin's set-up and process to be better then a large-scale slaughtering house. It seems cleaner, and it's ultimately better for the farm.
-I agree with Joel's Salatin's views on the USDA regulations, they're aimed at the big farms and feedlots. There is nothing wrong with his methods, and the food can end up safer and cleaner.
-What changes would we see in the market if farmers could slaughter and process animals from their farms?
Michael Pollan, Omnivore's Dilemma, Chapter 13-
Summary:
All of the food that Polyface farm produces isn't shipped across the country like from an industrial farm. It is sold only to local consumers. Due to regulations on food processing, and the low industrial prices, the food from Polyface costs about a dollar more a pound compared to industrial food products. But if you look at the quality, there isn't any medicine, pollution, or food-borne illness in Joel's food. That's where the extra dollar comes from. In the long run, buying from Joel's farm could save complications, in some cases money, and it's better to know where the food is coming from.
"Gems"- "'Why do you have to have a New York City? What good is it?' If there was a dark side to Joel's vision of the postindustrial food chain, I realized, it was the deep antipathy to cities that has so often shadowed rural populism in this country.'" Page 245
Thoughts:
-I like the fact Joel isn't shipping products across the country. It really fits into his ideals. He is also recognized as a real person, unlike someone like George Naylor, who can't even be linked back to his food. It's a good way to distribute food, by keeping it local.
-I don't think that the food from Polyface should cost more then the food that was industrial grown, it should cost less if anything. Joel's system makes so much more sense, as it protects the earth, and keeps everything natural.
Michael Pollan, Omnivore's Dilemma, Chapter 14-
Summary:
At the end of my week on Polyface, I cooked a dinner for my friends, Joel and his family. I used food only from the farm. For the meal I slow roasted two chickens, cooked corn, made a salad, and used the farms eggs to create a soufflé. The meal was very good, and was at a higher nutritional value, as it lacked the corn-fed animals, pesticides, antibiotic treatments, not to mention the added omega-3 and vitamin E that the chickens gained from eating the grass.
"Gems"- "When chickens get to live like chickens, they'll taste like chickens, too." Page 270
"As long as one egg looks pretty much like another, all the chickens look like chickens, and beef beef, the substitution of quantity for quality will go unnoticed by most consumers." Page 269
Thoughts-
-This seemed like a nice little meal. It made me appreciate what a home-cooked meal means. For them, their food comes from their home. Like Michael Pollan, I might have been hesitant to want to cook and eat the animals from the farm, considering how connected he was to them, how he saw the process in which they had died. But then you think, "a mans gotta eat."
- I enjoyed how in-depth he went about the preparation of the food. It makes me want to duplicate his meal.
Michael Pollan, Omnivore's Dilemma, Chapter 15-
Summary:
After exploring two very different food chains, I am going to go a different route, and make my own meal out of all foraged foods, relying only on the wild for food. Though, with a task simple enough, I'm not prepared for it yet. Growing up on the agricultural food chain, and without exposure to the wild, this leaves me uncomfortable. But with the help of a hunter education course, I will achieve my goal. I believe this process will give me a new outlook on life.
"Gems"- "Otherwise it's hard to explain why humans would have ever traded such a healthy and comparativly pleasant way of life for backbreaking, monotonous work of agrculture." Page 279
"Anthropologists estimate that typical hunter-gatherers worked at feeding themselves no more then seventeen hours a week, and were far more robust and long-lived then agriculturists."
Thoughts-
-Even though I have spent every summer of my life in the woods, around wild plants, and around wild animals, I could not imagine trying to gather those plants and hunt those animals for food. That may be because I spend the other ten or so months in New York City, but I feel almost the same way as Michael does.
- If we never switched over to agriculture, how different would our society be today?
Michael Pollan, Omnivore's Dilemma, Chapter 16-
Summary:
Humans come equipped with a brain much larger then their stomach, and that allows us to recognize a varied selection of tastes and foods. Because of this we get that very familiar and repetitive question, "What should I eat?" We are influenced by our culture, the cost, the health benefits, and most importantly the taste. Americans wonder how other cultures stay healthy, as Americans may be some of the most unhealthy eaters. It all comes down to how people handle the omnivore's dilemma.
"Gems"- "There is a short and direct path from the omnivore's dilemma to the astounding number of ethical rules from which people have sought to regulate eating for as long as they have been living in groups" Page 298
"Being an omnivore occupying a niche in nature is both a boon and a challenge, a source of tremendous power as well as anxiety." Page 295
Thoughts-
-You never really think about how much variety we have to eat, and how much that effects the way we eat. But as we are allowed to go out to eat in our school, by second period you start thinking about how much money you have for lunch, and where your going to eat. But to be healthy we should be thinking less about the cost and more about nutrition.
-Would life be easier if we didn't have so much food to choose from?
Summary:
Alternative farmer, Joel Salatin shares a problem with any other farmer, alternative or not. He has to slaughter his animals. He isn't allowed to slaughter cows or pigs on his farm due to USDA regulations, but he can slaughter chickens. So he takes advantage, slaughtering all his chickens on his farm. Joel believes that this way he is expanding his world view, and preserving the natural cycle that he has built. By killing his own chickens, Joel is making sure that the chickens weren't processed, and that the guts aren't turned into "protein feed" for farm animals. While Joel enjoys this process of slaughtering, I did not. But I understand how it is better to slaughter in the way that Joel does. He wishes that the strict regulations for slaughtering and processing were lifted so he could slaughter all of his animals himself.
"Gems"-
"Joel is convinced that "clean food" could compete with supermarket food if the government would exempt farmers from the thickest of regulations that prohibit the processing and selling of meat from the farm." Page 236
"'We do not allow the government to dictate what religion you can observe, so why should we allow them to dictate what food we buy?" Page 236
Thoughts:
- I found the slaughtering process to be pretty cool. I would like to see it myself, or even try to slaughter a chicken. I definitely find Joel Salatin's set-up and process to be better then a large-scale slaughtering house. It seems cleaner, and it's ultimately better for the farm.
-I agree with Joel's Salatin's views on the USDA regulations, they're aimed at the big farms and feedlots. There is nothing wrong with his methods, and the food can end up safer and cleaner.
-What changes would we see in the market if farmers could slaughter and process animals from their farms?
Michael Pollan, Omnivore's Dilemma, Chapter 13-
Summary:
All of the food that Polyface farm produces isn't shipped across the country like from an industrial farm. It is sold only to local consumers. Due to regulations on food processing, and the low industrial prices, the food from Polyface costs about a dollar more a pound compared to industrial food products. But if you look at the quality, there isn't any medicine, pollution, or food-borne illness in Joel's food. That's where the extra dollar comes from. In the long run, buying from Joel's farm could save complications, in some cases money, and it's better to know where the food is coming from.
"Gems"- "'Why do you have to have a New York City? What good is it?' If there was a dark side to Joel's vision of the postindustrial food chain, I realized, it was the deep antipathy to cities that has so often shadowed rural populism in this country.'" Page 245
Thoughts:
-I like the fact Joel isn't shipping products across the country. It really fits into his ideals. He is also recognized as a real person, unlike someone like George Naylor, who can't even be linked back to his food. It's a good way to distribute food, by keeping it local.
-I don't think that the food from Polyface should cost more then the food that was industrial grown, it should cost less if anything. Joel's system makes so much more sense, as it protects the earth, and keeps everything natural.
Michael Pollan, Omnivore's Dilemma, Chapter 14-
Summary:
At the end of my week on Polyface, I cooked a dinner for my friends, Joel and his family. I used food only from the farm. For the meal I slow roasted two chickens, cooked corn, made a salad, and used the farms eggs to create a soufflé. The meal was very good, and was at a higher nutritional value, as it lacked the corn-fed animals, pesticides, antibiotic treatments, not to mention the added omega-3 and vitamin E that the chickens gained from eating the grass.
"Gems"- "When chickens get to live like chickens, they'll taste like chickens, too." Page 270
"As long as one egg looks pretty much like another, all the chickens look like chickens, and beef beef, the substitution of quantity for quality will go unnoticed by most consumers." Page 269
Thoughts-
-This seemed like a nice little meal. It made me appreciate what a home-cooked meal means. For them, their food comes from their home. Like Michael Pollan, I might have been hesitant to want to cook and eat the animals from the farm, considering how connected he was to them, how he saw the process in which they had died. But then you think, "a mans gotta eat."
- I enjoyed how in-depth he went about the preparation of the food. It makes me want to duplicate his meal.
Michael Pollan, Omnivore's Dilemma, Chapter 15-
Summary:
After exploring two very different food chains, I am going to go a different route, and make my own meal out of all foraged foods, relying only on the wild for food. Though, with a task simple enough, I'm not prepared for it yet. Growing up on the agricultural food chain, and without exposure to the wild, this leaves me uncomfortable. But with the help of a hunter education course, I will achieve my goal. I believe this process will give me a new outlook on life.
"Gems"- "Otherwise it's hard to explain why humans would have ever traded such a healthy and comparativly pleasant way of life for backbreaking, monotonous work of agrculture." Page 279
"Anthropologists estimate that typical hunter-gatherers worked at feeding themselves no more then seventeen hours a week, and were far more robust and long-lived then agriculturists."
Thoughts-
-Even though I have spent every summer of my life in the woods, around wild plants, and around wild animals, I could not imagine trying to gather those plants and hunt those animals for food. That may be because I spend the other ten or so months in New York City, but I feel almost the same way as Michael does.
- If we never switched over to agriculture, how different would our society be today?
Michael Pollan, Omnivore's Dilemma, Chapter 16-
Summary:
Humans come equipped with a brain much larger then their stomach, and that allows us to recognize a varied selection of tastes and foods. Because of this we get that very familiar and repetitive question, "What should I eat?" We are influenced by our culture, the cost, the health benefits, and most importantly the taste. Americans wonder how other cultures stay healthy, as Americans may be some of the most unhealthy eaters. It all comes down to how people handle the omnivore's dilemma.
"Gems"- "There is a short and direct path from the omnivore's dilemma to the astounding number of ethical rules from which people have sought to regulate eating for as long as they have been living in groups" Page 298
"Being an omnivore occupying a niche in nature is both a boon and a challenge, a source of tremendous power as well as anxiety." Page 295
Thoughts-
-You never really think about how much variety we have to eat, and how much that effects the way we eat. But as we are allowed to go out to eat in our school, by second period you start thinking about how much money you have for lunch, and where your going to eat. But to be healthy we should be thinking less about the cost and more about nutrition.
-Would life be easier if we didn't have so much food to choose from?
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