A mentor introduced the speaker to grass-fed beef farming, which led him to Joel Salatin's books on pasture-based agriculture. Salatin became a kind of intellectual uncle, offering the practical guidance the speaker wished he had for small-scale farming and food production.
A mentor told me about this great opportunity in grass-fed beef. You know, you buy the steer in the spring, raise it through the growing season, and harvest it in the fall. How to do it from day to day, he turned me on to this book called Salad Bar Beef by Joel Salatin. It goes beyond just the, the how-to, and it goes more into like a lifestyle, an experience, a passion. I end up picking up Joel Salatin's Pastured Poultry Profits and Joel Salatin's You Can Farm and just anything Joel Salatin. He became my hero. He was transforming our lives through the practical how-to, but he was becoming a mentor. Like, you're my long-lost uncle. Like, in fact, when I would read the books, I would think, you know, there's some gaps here, like specifically individually that I would just love to ask him. You know, it's like I used to wish that he would be my uncle, or that somebody— like, I wish I had a food-growing uncle that I could ask these things to.
If I had to start my Homestead all over again, it could only pick one animal… 
