Written by Julie and Charles Mayfield, authors of the cookbooks,
Paleo Comfort Foods and Quick & Easy Paleo Comfort Foods
 A Sanctuary of Sustainable Goodness! |
Good day to everyone out there in Paleoland. We are still knocking the cow poop off our boots from one amazing weekend in Virginia. There are so many things to talk about and emotions around our food, our health and our nation it’s quite hard to summarize it with one blog post. It has taken me several days to process everything. There may be some follow-up blog posts related to our time at the Celebration! At Polyface. So many important topics to share and discuss!
If I had to reduce this—our entire Polyface experience—down to just three parts, they would look like this:
PART 1: Our right as free people to gain access to fresh local food is in severe jeopardy. The food laws and subsequent enforcement of those laws in this country have been manufactured to protect enormous and powerful companies that care more about the bottom line than providing nutritious food to consumers.
Robb Wolf made a fantastic point in his opening remarks to a predominantly ‘farmer’ audience (Robb’s usual crowds tend to lean more toward the strength and conditioning/CrossFit scene). Here’s my paraphrasing of what he said:
-
I live in this paleo scene. We aren’t usually particularly keen on the consumption of dairy or grains for the most part. Having said that, the first time I hear a story about a consumer’s choice to eat these things being jeopardized…I’m all in to fight against the powers that be refusing to give us freedom to choose.
In other words, we’re dealing with a bigger issue here. I think the Paleo-sphere can all agree that most grains aren’t doing our bodies any favors. That doesn’t and shouldn’t mean that people shouldn’t have the right to choose what they eat. The government (Federal or Local) should be doing everything it can to defend our right as Americans to seek out and eat fresh, local, raw, pastured (the list could go on and on) food. I can’t think of a more synergistic ‘match made in heaven’ than the Paleo community joining hands with the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund so that we can do everything in our power to protect local farmers from the onslaught of regulations and red tape that big agriculture continues to create.
Hearing Laura Bledsoe and the Quail Hollow Farm incident brought tears to our eyes. If you haven’t heard this story, then go and watch this video. Watch Kristin Canty’s film, Farmageddon. Get mad, then take some action.
 Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms holding the Mayfields’ newest book [Photo: PaleoComfortFoods.com] |
Let’s all do our part NOW. It’s $50 per year to join the FTCLDF as a consumer. That seems like a small price to pay to protect our right to healthy food.
PART 2: Pasture-raised farming CAN feed America. Some folks way smarter than me have crunched the numbers and it appears that not only can we feed our beloved country with more nutritious meat, but we can also potentially sequester enough carbon out of the air to return the planet to pre-industrial age air quality. This begs the question, what has been more damaging to our air: the rise of industrial air? or the continued deforestation and lack of green grass on our beloved earth?
Amazing work by folks like The Savory Institute are illustrating precisely how we can make the world healthier. When you combine their work with the environmentally healing and restorative work of folks like Polyface Farms, you have a formula for AWESOME!
 We might not have won the BaconPalooza contest, but these sure do look good, don’t they? [Photo credit: Molly M. Peterson] |
PART 3: Get your butts in the kitchen! Joel Salatin commented that he boiled the major issues down to two big things. The first, and I was thrilled to hear him say it, was folks have GOT to get back in their kitchen. We have somehow gotten so far removed from basic kitchen skills and a comfort with food preparation it scares me to death. This singular focus is the main point I try to get across to the military families I coach. We have outsourced our food in every sense of the word. Folks these days don’t cook, grow or hunt/forage for their own stuff. This movement we are behind seems to promote all those things and I agree with Joel. It starts by getting in the kitchen, working with real ingredients and supporting your local farmers to keep money in your community and help us be less reliant on others to feed ourselves.
His second point was to join the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund. We have, and think you should too!
Republished here by permission with minor changes, this was originally posted as “Polyface Wrap Up & Inspiration” on September 17, 2013, at PaleoComfortFoods.com