Joel Salatin, 64, calls himself a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer. With a room full of debate trophies from high school and college days, 15 published books, and a thriving multi-generational family farm, he draws on a lifetime of food, farming, and fantasy to entertain and inspire audiences around the world. He’s as comfortable moving cows in a pasture as addressing CEOs in a Wall Street business conference. He co-owns, together with his family, Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia.
Featured in the New York Times bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma and award-winning documentary Food Inc., the farm services more than 5,000 families, 50 restaurants, 10 retail outlets, and a farmers’ market with salad bar beef, pigaerator pork, pastured poultry, and forestry products. When he’s not on the road speaking, he’s at home on the farm—keeping the calluses on his hands and dirt under his fingernails, mentoring young people, inspiring visitors, and promoting local, regenerative food and farming systems. Salatin writes “Confessions of a Steward,” a monthly column for Plain Values magazine; “Homestead Abundance,” a column for Homestead Living magazine; and three columns a month for the e-magazine Manward. He also co-hosts a podcast titled “Beyond Labels” with co-author of that book, Dr. Sina McCullough. A frequent guest on radio programs and podcasts targeting preppers, homesteaders, and foodies, Salatin’s practical, can-do solutions and passionate soliloquies for sustainability offer everyone food for thought and plans for action.
Gathering Life Lessons from Your Farmyard Backyard
The allure of farm self-reliance pulls at the heart of many homeschoolers. We can all participate, integrate, liberate, and collaborate to heal the landscape–no matter how much land we actually have. Using principles refined over half a century of family farming, Salatin’s inspiring roadmap to farm entry can empower the most difficult circumstance. Attendees will leave with a new understanding and an action list from this hard-hitting but good-humored presentation.
Gathering Entrepreneurial Opportunities
Many parents feel stuck in their employment routine, but yearn for something more entrepreneurial and self-directed for their children. Unsticking the next generation from this “working for the man” paradigm can unleash new opportunities for mission and personal passion. Discovering, designing, and developing age-appropriate businesses offers a family ministry angle too often missing in our outside-agenda-driven lives. Using his own childhood, children, grandchildren, and apprentices as a template, Salatin’s workshop provides life changing tools.
