Back to the Land

In the Shenandoah Valley of western Virginia, Polyface Farm is a beacon. Joel Salatin, the proprietor, has created a farm so vital, the land itself seems to breathe. Unlike much modern agriculture, which relies heavily on capital, electricity, and infrastructure, Polyface Farm relies primarily on people.

Polyface Farm has beckoned me since 2006, when Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma came out, and I, like so many others, fell in awe with Joel Salatin and his farm.

I was a professor at one of the country’s most liberal colleges then, and when I assigned Pollan’s book to my students, they too fell for the promises therein: that we can and we must remember what we have been, what the Earth is, what we are all capable of, and grow our food and communities with attention to ancient and actually sustainable ways.

Back then, Salatin reports, about 80% of the visitors to Polyface Farm were on the left, politically—tree huggers and granola-eating hippies, back to the land types who, if push came to shove, were hoping that the government would solve their problems. These were people who reviled corporations, but trusted the government.

Now, the ratio has flipped: about 80% of the visitors to Polyface Farm are on the right—homesteaders and homeschoolers and hunters, back to the land types who are more likely to push the government away than invite its help.

In fact, there is much in common between the two groups: a hunger to return to the land, our roots, our home. A desire to connect with self, community, and all of humanity. The differences emerge when we start talking about who, ultimately, should be in charge of our fate. Am I responsible for my choices, and must I deal with the consequences, no matter what? Or ought there be a safety net, protecting me from some consequences—and if so, how many?

When does a safety net become a security blanket, infantilizing in its comfort, preventing adulthood and self-worth from ever blooming?

My father grew up on a family farm in northeastern Iowa, back when family farms were still common there. He was born in 1938, the third of four children. They had pigs, which he admired, and chickens, which he did not. They grew corn. They had a kitchen garden and a nice barn and a gleaming silo and even, after a while, indoor plumbing. Running to the outhouse ...