I have recently finished Joel Salatin’s book, Everything I want to Do is Illegal. Salatin was made famous by Michael Pollan in Omnivore’s Dilemma as an example of ecological, systems-based farming enterprise. His experiences at Polyface farm, a farm of many faces in Virginia are the basis for this personal account and rant on today’s industrialized, bureaucratic food system.
Mr. Salatin describes himself as a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist so he is bound to offend just about everyone—and he is alright with that. He does not go easy on bureaucrats, the government, the liberals or the conservatives. But, he does speak from his heart and from decades of experience trying to run an ecologically sound family farm while trying to serve his community and build a local food system.
After hearing many of the struggles farmers are facing in Oregon, this book truly resonated. It certainly corroborates farmers' stories, and offers some crafty solutions. And, in the end, it gave at least a glimmer of hope for solutions that are “earth-healing, social-healing and farm-healing.”