Where do you go for a farm-fresh dinner the night after supping with Michael Pollan? Hold on, let's back up a bit..... where do you go for dinner the week after dining with the White House chef?
The dreamy, 200-acre pastoral Institute of Noetic Sciences, snuggled into hidden folds of undulating green hillsides on the very edge of rural West Petaluma, that's where.
Of course, that would be the first place that comes to mind (literally), right? Wrong. Who, outside of the country's cutting-edge researchers into meditation, compassion, precognition and interconnectedness would have a clue? Though pushing the boundaries of what and how we know what is true about ourselves and about the nature of consciousness has, by inside accounts, led to all sorts of high-brow development of new scientific methods and insights into how we can cultivate our highest potentials.
Reassuringly, "It's not spoon bending," said Executive Director, Cathy Coleman of the sprawling, non-profit retreat center established in 1971 by Apollo 14 astronaut and sixth man on the moon, Dr. Edgar Mitchell.
And I have to admit, I did rather dig the 're-think' t-shirt sported by one of the center's cheery, welcoming staff members after my intrepid companion for the evening, Lisa and myself had legged it up a serious slope from the parking lot down below. Hybrid shuttles offered a less energetic alternative route to enlightenment, at least in the realm of learning more of autonomic, sustainable agriculture from the main man of American farming future, one amazing, enthralling, entertaining, ultimately right-on Mr Joel Salatin, of Virginia's pasture-based, way-beyond organic, multi-generational Polyface Farms.
Thanks to the indisputable passion and persuasion of Petaluma's Tara Firma Farm matriarch, the unstoppable Tara Smith, Salatin was persuaded to make a North Bay pit-stop to his Bay Area tour of influence amongst what he himself described as 'new food communities' or 'early adapters' following what was initially considered a 'lunatic fringe'.
In fact, this sheer reputation for lunacy amongst the country's major industrial farming community has propelled Salatin and his local market farm in Virginia's historic Shenandoah Valley to the forefront of promising new public thinking towards healing the nation's agricultural land. Farms from coast to coast that have been ravaged by decades of chemical degradation.
According to Salatin, an impressive, persuasive speaker on the politics of land, food, family and culture, the 'ragged edge of innovation' as seen with the e-boom has forced an insulated society to completely loose the plot on the negative environmental, social and health consequences of having turned our backs on nature.
On the subject of our obsession with germs: "Lining up for H1N1 flu shots," said Salatin,"then allowing our kids to consume high fructose corn syrup from vending machines."
"We live in a bacterial bath," said Salatin. "Annihilation of the bad bugs is impossible. Our immune systems are our amy. The only place that should be completely sanitized is surgery"
Polyface and Tara Firma farms practice grass-based farming (frequent moving of pasture-raised poultry and farm animals to fresh 'salad bars'),adhering to local food sheds, bio-regions (eating fresh food from within a 100 mile radius), home cooking, composting, maintaining an open farm for people to peruse at their pleasure.
The kind of farming that immigrants to this country embraced prior to the turn of the 20th Century. "Don't eat anything you wouldn't have been able to have eaten prior to 1900," said Salatin, allowing for the beloved American hot dog as a special concession, seeings as it was introduced in the 1860s in Brooklyn, NY!
Speaking of sound bites - articulate, logical, intuitive encouragement for the gradual acceptance of this old-fashioned form of farming tends to freak out the chemical-dependent enemy. In order to befriend the skeptical, Salatin encouraged his captivated Petaluma audience to teach their neighbors by example in embracing the poetry of a community-based sustainable farm and simply stocking the modern pantry with its produce.
On a larger scale, the state of America's school food fiasco was a significant talking point amongst a crowd keen to see an impact of Michelle Obama's First Lady's White House Teaching Garden on popular culture. According to Salatin's source in the White House kitchen the powers that be in corporate U.S. agriculture are steaming as to the effects of 'turning the country back to the 1930s'.
Considering the fact that over $170 billion in Federal bailout money has been sucked into the coffers of a country in crisis, it's incredible to think that for some $7 billion a year, every single student in the United States could be fed a heritage-raised, artisan lunch every single school day.
Encouraging backyard gardening to revive our relationship with the 'miraculous, mystical wonder of regeneration and regrowth', Salatin had his audience in standing applause for promoting the return of splinters and scratches and dirty fingernails. "Get the kids away from the idiot box," he said. Love, relationships, social skills and character should be learned in the home. A place that should no longer be considered a mere pit-stop between more important activities.
Sad to think that this could be considered such a revolutionary train of thought. Yet, Jello puddings, TV dinners, Doritos: "this stuff ain't normal," according to Salatin, who is inclined to yell it from the middle of Madison Square Gardens. "If you can't recreate it in your own kitchen, it's not a real food," he said. "Ever tried whipping up a batch of high fructose corn syrup at your stove?"
Food for thought a plenty followed the evening's delicious farm to fork dinner of sauteed spring greens, beets, sweet potatoes, pasture-raised chicken and pork, locally-baked rustic bread with rosemary compound butter and Meloni Courtway's exceptionally tasty triangles of Sonoma County Meyer lemon cake for dessert.
Petaluma's latest release of Ridgeway Estate's cool climate Pinot Noir paired so delightfully well with the chicken and pork that even the vegetarians in the crowd just had to have a tipple, not surprisingly wiping out the locavore's pick in record time.
Following hot on the steamy-manure clad heels of Salatin penned: "Everything I want to do is Illegal', 'You Can Farm', 'Salad Beef Bar', 'Pasture Poultry Profits', 'Holy Cows and Hog Heaven' and 'Family Friendly Farming' (for real, I mean, how does he find the time?) next up in glossy print really is: 'The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer'.
Feeling the love? Sign up for some tasty, old-fashioned, chemical-free farm-raised produce from the nice, friendly grower getting his hands in the dirt that's closest to your home. Or grow your own.
The thing I love so much about this county is just how easy it is to find farmers and food that is pure OR to get your own project going.
Check out this link for local raw milk: http://sono-ma.blogspot.com/2010/01/exploring-benefits-of-family-cow-and.html
and this one for raising your own chickens: http://www.examiner.com/x-34058-Sonoma-County-Parenting-Examiner~y2010m2d20-Join-in-the-backyard-barnyard-movement-by-raising-chickens-for-fresh-eggs-garden-help-and-more
Posted by: Holly White-Wolfe | Saturday, February 20, 2026 at 01:29 PM