Somehow Pollan has made a book about industrial food into a page-turner. I don’t know what he does, but I can’t stop reading this book. I want to know every detail of the week he stayed at Polyface, from the rotational grazing to the slaughter of the chickens. I even want to know how Salatin manages to make compost out of chicken guts (which is fascinating, by the way). One thing that really stands out to me is the fact that Polyface can survive during the winter months. I would think that this kind of a system would call for a constant grazing rotation every day of the year to be profitable, let alone functional. But somehow winter works right in there too and the cows’ stalls don’t even have to mucked out at all. Maybe it’s because farming like this seems like a reincarnation of the past or the realization of what I imagined farming to be like as a child. The near perfection of this farming system is another thing that totally throws me off. It seems too good to be true. The idea that a way of life exists where people do not destroy or damage their surroundings but actually foster life is something I did not think possible unless we reverted back to log cabins or tents or what have you. I realize that this method is not a remedy to the giant problem of the industrial food industry but the fact that it exists at all is remarkable to me. Obviously there are some major difficulties involved with the system, such as its delicacy (if you mess one thing up, you mess everything up); but, despite that, it gives me a little hope that maybe someday the food system won’t be quite so messed up.
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