Boston Flora

Tag: Joel Salatin

  • Sunday, December 4 – Tuesday, December 6 – 6th Annual Soil and Nutrition Conference

    The 6th Annual Soil & Nutrition Conference, sponsored by the Bionutrient Food Association, explores how the intersection of farm and human ecosystems holds the key to environmental sustainability, quality food and overall well-being. The conference will take place December 4 – 6 at the Kripalu Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Registration is $225 ($200 for BFA members.) Register online at http://bionutrient.org/soil-and-nutrition-conference

    Bringing together the collective knowledge of the food movement from the perspectives of successful farmers, cutting-edge researchers, enlightening health practitioners, and pioneers of food quality, this conference is a nexus of information and networking for all interested in delving deeper into the connections and importance of soil and nutrition.

    Integrating these diverse viewpoints, this year’s program engages growers and gardeners with principles, practices and innovations for ecologically and financially sound farming, and presents the health-conscious consumer and medical professional valuable skills to effectively advocate and select for quality in their local region and food supply.

    Conference Topics:

    Successful applications of biological (ecological) management, from garden to wholesale scale
    Improving public health through agriculture, education and local capacity building
    Effectively using nutrition to mitigate disease across the landscape
    Regenerating ecological systems to provide environmental stability and weather climate change
    Flavor as a focal point in the food quality conversation
    Implementation and development of techniques for grower success including seed establishment, emergence and in season monitoring solutions
    Growing and marketing your farm business with an eye to quality
    Improving human health through conscientious food production and cultivation of soil health

    The BFA is proud to announce that grass-farmer, author and lecturer Joel Salatin will be the keynote speaker at its 6th Annual Conference. His family’s Polyface Farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley is a multi-generational, pasture-based and “beyond organic” enterprise. At Polyface, Salatin follows the guiding principles of transparency, grass-based agriculture, individuality, valuing community, following nature’s template, and embracing earthworms. Featured in Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Salatin is widely-known throughout the alternative and sustainable farming world for promoting ecologically friendly and economically viable farming strategies and methods. He is the author of numerous works, including: Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War stories from the local food front, Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A farmer’s advice for happier hens, healthier people, and a better world, and The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer.

    With over 30 additional speakers currently scheduled to present at this year’s conference, all widely considered experts in their respective fields, choosing between which sessions to attend will be a wonderful problem to have!

  • Thursday, January 17, 7:00 pm – Folks, This Ain’t Normal

    In association with the exhibition, The Greatest Source of Wealth: Agriculture in Concord, the Farm to Lectern Speakers Series brings nationally-recognized agrarian activists to Concord.

    On Thursday, January 17, 2013, the Concord Museum welcomes Joel Salatin, author and full-time farmer at Polyface, a multi-generational, beyond organic farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. In his talk, Folks, This Ain’t Normal, based on his book by the same title, Salatin gives a whimsical performance filled with history, satire, and prophecy in defense of small farms, local food systems, and the right to opt out of the conventional food paradigm. He relates his dirt-under-the-fingernails experiences with mischievous humor and based firmly on a lifetime spent communing with ecology, economics, and emotion in their full reality, as a farmer. Both sobering and inspiring, his performance empowers people to tackle the seemingly impossibly large tasks that confront our generation.

    Book signing to follow lecture. 7:00 p.m., at the Fenn School, 516 Monument Street in Concord. The speakers series is free, but reservations are requested, 978-369-9763 ext. 216.

  • Saturday, March 10, 11:00 am – 1:45 pm – Meaty Matters, and at 2:30 pm – American Meat

    Join The Museum of Science in the Gordon Current Science & Technology Center prior to the screening of the new documentary film, American Meat, as each of the individual panelists is interviewed in depth on the subject of sustainable meat agriculture and production. Discover the real difference between organic foods and their traditionally grown counterparts when it comes to nutrition, safety, and price. Talk with the experts during the question and answer sessions after each interview. Attend our Small Footprint, Big Flavor dinner and receive discounted Exhibit Halls admission for this program. Panelists include Jonathan D. Kemp, president, FoodEx/Organic Renaissance Food Exchange, New Bedford, MA | Dan Mandich, owner, Westminster Meats, Westminster Station, VT | Danielle Nierenberg, senior researcher and director, Nourishing the Planet Program, Worldwatch Institute | Theo Weening, global meat coordinator, Whole Foods Market | Nick Zigelbaum, livestock manager, Siena Farms, Sudbury, MA.

    At 2:30 pm, Food on Film presents American Meat. This new documentary chronicles America’s grassroots revolution in sustainable meat production. The film, an official selection of Food Day 2011, explains our current industrial meat system and shows the feedlots and confinement operations, not through hidden cameras but through the eyes of the farmers who live and work there. Featuring legendary sustainable farmer Joel Salatin, American Meat frames the debate on whether sustainable meat production could ever meet the needs of the consuming public and showcases the people who could change everything about the way meat reaches the American table.

    A discussion follows the screening about the sustainable meat industry and whether it can meet the needs of the world’s, and New England’s, growing population. Advance registration begins at 9:00 a.m., Saturday, February 25 (Wednesday, February 22 for Museum members) at mos.org/events.

    Admission is free thanks to the generosity of the Lowell Institute. Additional funding provided by the Richard S. Morse Fund.

  • Tuesday, November 10, 6:30pm – 9:00 pm – FRESH

    The Upton 4-H applied for funding from the Upton Cultural Council, a local agency which is itself supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, in order to present a free screening of the movie FRESH on Tuesday, November 10, beginning at 6:30 pm at the Nipmuc Regional High School Auditorium, 90 Pleasant Street, in Upton, Massachusetts.

    FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet.

    Among several main characters, FRESH features urban farmer and activist Will Allen, the recipient of MacArthur’s 2008 Genius Award; sustainable farmer and entrepreneur, Joel Salatin, made famous by Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma; and supermarket owner, David Ball, challenging our Wal-Mart dominated economy.

    Please bring non-perishable items and  grocery store gift cards for donation to local food pantries, as part of the MA 4-H Cares About Community Statewide Annual Food Drive.

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  • Wednesday, September 30, 2:00 – 3:30 pm – Food, Inc.

    Harvard Pilgrim Health Care has teamed up with the Museum of Science to present a free screening of the critically acclaimed film FOOD, INC., by noted documentarian Robert Kenner.  Narrated by experts Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto), and featuring interviews with forward-thinking entrepreneurs such as Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farm and Joel Salatin of Pollyface, Inc,, FOOD, INC. reveals surprising, shocking truths about what we eat, how it is produced, who we become as a nation, and where we go from here.  The screening will be at the Museum of Science’s Cahners Theater, and the doors will open at 1:15 pm.  A panel discussion will follow with Gary Hirshberg, Chairman, President, and CEO of Stonyfield Farm, Jody Adams, James Beard award-winning Chef/Owner of Rialto, and Jessie Banhazl, Owner and Co-Founder of Green City Growers. This discussion will be moderated by Louisa Kasdon, writer and food editor of Stuff Magazine.  Registration is available through the Museum of Science , or you may email David Sittenfeld at forumrsvp@mos.org, or call 617-589-4258.

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