Joel Salatin is a third generation alternative farmer in the Shenandoah Valley who attracted national attention after being featured in Michael Pollan’s book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.”

The second day of the 15th Annual Water Conservation and Xeriscape Conference in Albuquerque was not only enlightening, uplifting and educational–it was a lot of fun.

The day started off with two keynote presentations, one by Dr. Robert Glennon, the Morris K. Udall Professor of Law and Public Policy at the University of Arizona and the other by Will Swope, the Vice President and General Manager of Corporate Sustainability at Intel. I plan to recap their talks, and others from the conference in future blogs, but tonight I wanted to write about Joel Salatin’s presentation and “A Sustainable Farmer’s Point of View.”

Joel calls himself a “grass farmer” on his family’s farm called Polyface or the Farm of Many Faces. He’s also an engaging  speaker and author of several books with titles like “You Can Farm,” “Family Friendly Farming,” and “Everything I want to do is illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front.”