Salad Bar Beef

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by Joel Salatin
368pp

This book, along with Pastured Poultry Profits, lays out the details of what Joel Salatin has learned about successful small scale farming. It will teach you how to make money raising beef on pasture enclosed in paddocks by portable fencing that is moved frequently. It will teach you about what's wrong with grain-fed beef, the benefits of pasture, choosing a breed, laying out and moving paddocks, calving, weaning, processing, common problems, marketing, and more.

Following is the book's introduction, by Allan Nation, editor of Stockman Grass Farmer magazine:

Despite today's low cattle prices, you can make a good profit with a small beef cattle operation. This book will show you how. Joel's Salad Bar Beef prototype as described is a financially better suited prototype for 95 percent of the cow-calf producers in the United States than the sale of commodity calves or yearlings. However, this is not just a "how-to" book. It is also a book of philosophy, feelings, and beliefs. Some may wish that Joel would just stick to the "facts," but for learning to be truly effective it must necessarily be a triad of why, how, and who.

"Why" consists of basic principles, observations, and deeply held beliefs. "How" is the specific proven responses to specific problems, and "who" is your psychological support group or cheerleading squad. Most of us think we can shorten our learning curve by concentrating on the "how" and ignoring the rest. We do so at our own peril.

Real learning, the type of learning that can make you a living, comes primarily from doing it wrong at first, recognizing it didn't work, modifying our actions, and trying again. Without knowing the "why," without having a vision of what a successful prototype should look like and a deeply felt belief that such a prototype is possible, we won't persevere in the face of repeated learning curve "failures."

"Who" is as important as "how" and "why," because none of us likes to fail. Without a group of people rooting for us and urging us on, most of us will quit after the first couple of failures. Interestingly, thanks to his direct marketing program, Joel is able to draw upon the warmth and approval of the people he feeds for his psychological support.

"Who" is also the sharing of information with others who have done, or are attempting to do, what we are doing. Without this necessary networking, we are all doomed ot repeat each other's mistakes. To that end, this book is invaluable.

Joel's Salad Bar Beef program is a proven, profitable prototype that can make an excellent profit from a small cow herd regardless of the commodity price of calves. While you may want to modify some of the production parts to make it mesh with your particular rainfall and climate, the integrity of the "whole," and in particular the direct marketing portion, must be preserved for it to be as profitable for you as it has been for Joel.

Go for it!