It’s been over a week since Joel Salatin spoke at Ellwood Thomson’s Local Market, yet the message of his lecture and the focus of his new book, Folks This Ain’t Normal, still feels palpable today.

You may be familiar with Salatin’s previous works: You Can Farm and Salad Bar Beef. You might be familiar with mentions of Salatin in the popular book, Omnivore’s Dilemma. And you may have seen his Americana mug in the film Food Inc. Whether you’re familiar with his food sustainability fame or not, he represents a unique voice in the farm-to-table conversation.

Salatin is the owner of Polyface Farms. His family’s farm is best known for their unconventional agricultural methods. Pastured-poultry, grass-fed beef, and the natural method of rotation farming make Salatin’s agricultural efforts remarkable. With a goal of “emotionally, economically, and environmentally enhancing agriculture,” Salatin has deeply embedded himself, and his farm, in an effort to change the way we interact with and communicate about food.

In the new spick and span Community Room of Ellwood’s, Salatin took the floor to promote his new book. Yet the talk that proceeded was more of an education in sustainability and practicality than an attempt at promotion.

Salatin fears a culture that is comfortably disconnected from the food they eat. He fears a culture that cannot see the dramatic shift we’ve made from backyard farmers (he notes that in 1946 approximately 50 percent of produce was grown in home gardens) to a people who view soil stained hands as an inconvenience.

As he meandered through a history of American agriculture in his excited southern drawl, Salatin painted a very clear picture. Sixty or seventy years ago the food and waste stream was incredibly visible. You grew a lot of your own vegetables, got your meats from traceable sources, and the waste of these products was often consumed naturally. Animals, omnivores specifically, played a big role in disposing of our waste. Those chickens you saw in the back yard of Andy Griffith’s house, for example, weren’t there for the aesthetic. These animals consumed our food waste, and mainly because the task of moving elsewhere, were laborious. What Saladin made clear was that this system was pure practicality. With a cutting humor and a farmer’s precision, Salatin drew his audience into compelling story after story.

Salatin’s primary point, and the main focus of the talk, was clear: there are many cases in which we happily say good riddance to a foregone era. Segregation, daily back breaking work, the lack of internet, and homophobia, just to name a few. There are, however, features of our past that are worth keeping around: face-to-face human interaction, hand written letters, dinner at home, and of course knowing where that dinner came from. For Salatin, this is not about an outlandish, back-to-the-earth rally call, but rather a balanced engagement with what we put into our bodies.

Salatin’s work offers us an invitation to be educated. His demeanor offers us an opportunity to relax. And his stories help us to reflect.