Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: a Year of Food Life ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: a Year of Food Life

by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver 

Follow Barbara Kingsolver and her family as they make the move from water starved Arizona to lush Southwest Virginia.  How does one pack a year of living and learning new things into just 370 pages?  In the case of Barbara Kingsolver, the answer is with humor and grace. 

The family starts their locavore year with morel hunting and asparagus harvesting.  Join the family for Barbara’s 50^th birthday party, a huge celebration planned around local foods.  There are trips to Vermont, over the border into Canada and across the ocean to Italy.  There’s also the joy of removing lactose from milk by making cheese at home, the sustainability of organic farming methods which build up the soil instead of eroding it and a crash course in what it takes to market organic produce.  Learn about the trials and tribulations of raising heritage turkeys without very much information available, the “harvesting” of poultry and turkey sex.   Add in canning safety and know-how, as well as recipes.

Both Barbara and her husband have biology degrees and are concerned citizens of the world so the book is packed with verifiable information as well as their personal experiences.   There are warnings, including what CAFO’s (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) are costing our environment and health, but solutions are offered too.  The author contends that our food has become industrialized to the point where it is minimally nutritious and we need to take that process natural again.  She makes the case for heirloom and open pollinated vegetable seeds versus the hybrid and genetically modified seeds which are only good for one season and may even have animal or bacterial genes spliced into the plant chromosomes. 

The author contends that where our food comes from and what’s in it is something everyone should know about, care about and can do something about, whether it is growing some veggies in pots on your windowsill, in a back (or front) yard plot or simply buying seasonally from a farmer’s market.  We can vote with our dollars by buying local and organic products in big supermarkets too.  The contention the author makes is that buying locally whenever possible and growing some of our own food, can make a tremendous impact on the environment through reducing our use of fossil fuels in moving foods to market. 

An inspirational and informative read.