Joel Salatin Polyface Farming Masterclass

On Saturday I attended a day long course all about Pastured Beef and Pork presented by Joel Salatin who is is internationally respected for his farm's innovative, integrated animal systems.  And what a great day it was.

Joel Salatin is a world-leading example of how a small family farm can become an extremely diverse and profitable Local Food producer, and how the benefits of Local Food Systems can create resilience, stability and abundance for both local farmers and the wider community.  You can visit his farm Polyface here.

During the day we learnt about:

• Polyface's 'Salad Bar Beef' systems, which improve the land while producing great 'beyond organic' beef
• Polyface's pigearator systems, using pigs as compost turners over winter
• Polyface's forested pig systems, and how they are regenerating the landscape while producing great pork
• Polyface's innovative direct marketing and buying club systems for getting the above products to market.

It was a big day with over 200 attendees but Joel was a generous and entertaining host.  Hubby was working so it was just me who attended and I am so glad I did.  I learnt a lot and it will really help when it comes to planning our new property in New Zealand.

Joel presenting on Saturday

In the mean time we have decided to implement at least one idea here on the farm straight away which I will expand on in another post as I want to tell the whole story.

The day was supported by a number of groups including Food Connect.  They had set up a number of displays at the venue.  Food Connect are all about connecting the farmers with the customers and are currently available in both Brisbane and Sydney.  It is really worth checking out the service they offer if you live in one of these cities.

I met some great people on the day and would really have liked to have attended the other 2 days but I had work commitments   The day really re-energized me in my beliefs about the importance of knowing where my food is sourced, how it is produced and buying locally.  So you can probably expect a bit of that to flow into my posts in the near future.