new book out, worth a look...

FOLKS, THIS AINT NORMAL
By Joel Salatin

We live in abnormal times.  Really abnormal times.  Times when most people think Twinkies,  Cocoa-puffs, and Mountain Dew are safe but raw milk, compost grown tomatoes, and Aunt Matilda's homemade pickles are unsafe.  The average morsel of food travels fifteen hundred miles between point of production and point of consumption.  Indeed, the average T-bone steak sees more of America than the farmer that grew the cow.

Never in the history of civilization has a culture eaten foods it can't pronounce, foods that can't be made in a domestic kitchen, or foods that won't rot.  Living foods mold, rot, and decompose.  How long can an M&M remain on your counter without altering its appearance?  

Until extremely recent days, people had to think about energy, whether it was providing for draft animals for transportation and power, or accumulating firewood to keep the stove burning in the winter.  

We are the first culture to abdicate domestic culinary arts in favor of microwavable boxes of processed, stabilized, extruded, reconstituted, dye-colored, amalgamated, irradiated, nutrient-compromised, transgenic modified, prostituted pseudo-food.  Modern America now has the highest rate in history of chronic, debilitating diseases, and leads the world in unhealthiness.  

We're the first culture to invent supermarkets and to universally equate children's chores with abuse.  We're the first culture to confine animals in factories, use pharmaceuticals on our food, and break the soil-building carbon cycle on a massive scale.  


Never one to allow victimhood excuses, Salatin ends each chapter with a bulleted list of "things you can do."  This broad book addresses issues as varied as food police, soil development, Disneyfication of the culture, and scientific findings proving pasture-based livestock is far more nutrient dense than factory-farmed counterparts.  It will warm your soul.


The book is available here in Kindle and hardcover.