Book Review: Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World

I don't use the word prophetic lightly. It is one that is so often misapplied from random kooks to shysters fleecing people to the leader of the mormon church. When it comes to Joel Salatin, I think it fits. He is someone who speaks out against prevailing culture in food and really against the culture that pervades every corner of our culture where no one is responsible for themselves, anything can be fixed by a new regulation and we blithely go around eating chemical compounds called "food" without a thought. I was first exposed to Joel the way a lot of people probably were in his cameo in the documentary Food Inc. Thanks to that movie I purchased one of his books and it was a great read from cover to cover (even though Kindle books don't really have covers)

Joel's book, Folks, This Ain't Normal is a labor of love by a man who is a voice crying out in the wilderness in our perverse culture where people live longer but live worse. As a farmer he chastises the farm industry. As a Christian he chastises fellow believers for our general uncaring attitude toward the environment. No one gets a free pass but none of his criticism is unwarranted and none of it is given in a vacuum.

Folks, This Ain't Normal is chock full of common sense (an uncommon virtue today) sprinkled with pretty savvy writing. Don't let the big glasses, suspenders and "aw shucks" mannerism fool you, Joel is a very bright guy and is not only bright but someone who sees through the garbage peddled to us by those who decide what is healthy for us in the belief that we are too dumb to think for ourselves. The basic message of the book is that as a culture we have completely lost control of our food supply in a historically unthinkable way. We all know people who think that meat magically appears on shrink wrapped foam platters in the store or that milk doesn't actually come from a cow. Joel is simply calling on people to get involved in one of the most basic functions of human life, namely eating. In a country with epidemic levels of diabetes, heart diseases, obesity and all other sorts of food related maladies, shouldn't we start wondering why we are living longer but living sicker? Joel looks at the ridiculous regulations, the growing threat of the armed food police, the efforts to monopolize food production, the historical reality of food production vs the modern industrialization of this most basic need. On and on, each chapter is valuable and engaging. Not one chapter had me yawning or wishing it would just end.

Although he goes to great lengths to encourage those who are just explaining that anything you can do helps, including a series of practical tips to put into place at the end of each chapter, you can feel overwhelmed. How can the average Joe who lives in a quarter of an acre in a suburb with association rules do anything to take control of his diet? I am not sure there is a solution to this but those who feel that way might try rereading the book and focusing on the places where Joel encourages the little steps that combined make a big difference. While I can see where some people might brush this off as pie in the sky utopian thinking, I found it to be absolutely reasonable. We might not all have a family farm large enough to sustain multiple generations but we all can do something to take control of our diet.

There are few books I recommend quite as unreservedly as this one. I am sure a lot of people don't like this message, many who would agree with me on most issues but who, thanks to the unquestioning allegiance to corporatism in what passes for conservatism in America, see a guy like Joel as a rabble-rouser and dangerous. Nevertheless there is a critical need for people to think seriously about issues of liberty and if the government can tell you what you can or cannot eat, there is really no limit to its power. The place I have arrived in my thinking on issues of liberty and freedom mesh quite nicely with the message of Folks, This Ain't Normal and we are already taking some of the steps outlined in this book. Are we even 5% of the way there? Not at all but each day we get closer as we raise our own hogs for meat, chickens for eggs and a cow for milk, as we plant a sizable garden and as we try to eliminate the worst offenders in our diet. We have a long way to go but Folks, This Ain't Normal has been an important wake up call for me and one that a lot of people need to hear. Get this book, read it and prepare to be challenged!

Why I Love Joel Salatin

It is this sort of stuff.

The function that herbivores play, for example, in stimulating biomass accumulation is both powerful and real. Chickens have historically converted kitchen scraps into eggs. Pigs have historically scavenged domestic waste products as varied as whey, offal, forest mast, and spoiled grain. That a large percentage of landfilled material is animal-edible food waste should strike us as criminal. Rather than showering landfill administrators with greenie awards for injecting pipes into the anaerobic swill to collect biogas, we should be cycling all that edible waste through chickens and pigs so that it never goes to the landfill in the first place. 

Instead, we send armies around the world to ensure cheap petroleum to energize chemical fertilizer factories to inject acidulated elemental Nitrogen, Potassium and Phosporus (N, P and K) into tilled soils to grow grain to be harvested, gas-dried, then transported to animal factories. And now that the landfills are filling too fast, we routinely incinerate these wet, edible wastes in energy-intensive systems that run at a net energy loss. It’s insane. Nature’s systems do not generate waste. When will we learn that there is no away? We say we’ll throw it away, but away doesn’t exist. That’s why nature is full of loops and cycles.

Salatin, Joel Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World (p. 32). Kindle Edition

I am reading his book Folks, This Ain't Normal and it is chock full of solid information and common sense without the hysteria or silliness that accompanies a lot of books by people pontificating on ecological issues. I am far more interested in what a farmer has to say than what some pompous dude in Boston who has never been dirty opines about the ecology. Salatin in some ways bridges the gap by not giving into the hype. He is a Christian and a guy who likes meat but he also recognizes that there is something inherently unhealthy and unnatural when people are removed from the food chain. His view is a healthy position between the tinfoil hat wearing, Al Gore wing of the Left and the "pollution is good for you", Rush Limbaugh wing of the Right. Joel is someone who speaks eloquently and convincingly that our lifestyle impacts the environment and not in a good way but that you can still enjoy a nice steak without feeling guilty.

It is strangely perverse that we live in a society where people are living longer but also living worse. Life expectancy has never been longer thanks to medical advances to keep people alive but the general health of Americans is horrible. Asthma and allergies are incredibly widespread. Obesity is a national epidemic. Diabetes has in turn grown more widespread. We are more medicated and vaccinated and sanitized than ever before and I can't think of a way in which we are healthier. Granted people don't die from easily treatable diseases any more but what kind of a life is it? The ubiquitous bottles of hand sanitizer everywhere tell the tale. We are a people terrified of dirt and "germs", something that stems back I believe to our disconnect with the natural cycles of life, a cycle that includes death and dirt and blood. We may think we are so incredibly advanced but in truth we are unhappy and unhealthy in the extreme.

We once were a people that spread across the fruited plains, establishing small farms and homesteads that in turn created small communities. That model has been reversed over the last 50 years as more and more people returned to the urban areas and in turn created the phenomenon of suburbs (and now exurbs). This has turned farmland into acre sized lots for enormous houses that sit empty most of the time as both parents work to make the mortgage payment, sending their children off to day care and public schools (the difference between the two is hard to distinguish at times) until it is time to grab little Johnny and Suzie from school and begin running them to various activities, exhausting everyone in a quest to make sure that kids are "well rounded" enough to go to college so that they can get married at some point and start the cycle all over again. It is simply madness.

I don't consider myself a Luddite nor am I naive enough to think that we will all move back to farms. I like being able to buy foods from the store. The convenience of buying a bag of potatoes at will rather than trying to store them up is great. I don't see my family eating primarily items that we grew ourselves any time soon. I like having computers and my Kindle. I just agree with Joel that there is something essential about having this connection to the land, not just for my wife and I as adults but for our children as well. As farmers age and young people leave the land to go sit in a cubicle somewhere we are in real danger of losing something fundamental to society, namely a connection to our food supply beyond putting pre-packaged foods on the belt at Wal-Mart.

Thus far I have found Folks, This Ain't Normal to be a welcome breath of fresh air and common sense into a conversation that all too often veers off into ridiculous rhetoric and posturing. Expect to see more excerpts and thoughts from this book as I continue reading!