Green Daily

If you read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, you may remember a particular section in which Pollan visits a Virginia farm called Polyface Farms. Pollan basically canonizes the farm's owner, Joel Salatin, as a prophet of organic animal raising. The one problem with that chapter, which illustrated beautifully how amazing organic animal husbandry could be, was that Polyface resolutely refuses to sell to people outside the local area (Pollan tries to get Salatin to Fed-Ex him some meat before he visits, for example, but Salatin refuses).

Well, if you live in Charlottesville, VA, you now have the chance to eat some Polyface pork without driving out to the farm or participating in a buying club. Chipotle restaurants have begun to use Polyface animals in their carnitas, at least on a trial basis. It seems like an odd marriage-a big, national restaurant chain and a very small, very local supplier-but apparently Chipotle's honcho, who has already made sure that all of the rest of Chipotle's pork is raised without antibiotics and only in pasture, is very into the Polyface meat, and is committed to making the partnership happen. Very interesting! I wish I lived in Charlottesville, so I could go check it out.