Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
by Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp
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Book Summary Information
Author: Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. HoppEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-05-01
ISBN: 0060852550
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Harper
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- Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Book Reviews of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Book Review: A love story about food, land, and our earth.
Summary: 5 Stars
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
By Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver
"Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" was given to me by some friends early last June, just as our garden was starting to flower. I was a little hesitant to give it a read since some of Barbara Kingsolver's other writings had failed to inspire. However, I had just finished another very compelling book about the state of food in America: Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma". I was interested to see what Ms. Kingsolver had to add to the discussion. According to the jacket of the book, she and her family were willing to commit to a year of eating only locally grown food, and in these days of peak oil and economic uncertainty, I was intrigued to find out how such an experiment would work out. So, in between weeding the garlic and picking string beans, I dove in to "A Year of Food Life".
The day's work done, it was with great pleasure that I would sit down on quiet and peaceful summer evenings to connect with the Kingsolver's as they explored what life is like when you are committed to being part of your local food-o-sphere. It definitely requires a huge shift in attitude if you, like me, have grown up expecting to be able to eat anything you want, anytime you want it. The Kingsolver's not only had to change their expectations about food availability, they actually had to change their address! They had lived for many years in Tucson, AZ, a place that, as it says in the book, "might as well be a space station" in terms of human sustenance. Every morsel of food comes from far away, and every drop of water comes from a nonrenewable and quickly disappearing source. So, after years of planning and discussion, they packed their bags and headed to the old family homestead in southern Appalachia, where, in the immortal words of Sam Kinison, "the food is". Water falls from the sky, green things grow, and people are not so far removed in time from the era when all food was both local and organic. Ah yes, I said to myself, it sounds an awful lot like New England, and the more I learned about the Kingsolver's story, the more convinced I became that we New Englander's could learn to live locally (again), too.
The book chronicles the family's experiment in local food; from the move to their new home, the first spring day when they broke free from the industrial food web, and the days and weeks of planting, weeding, harvesting, and storing the bounty of their land and their neighbor's land. They planned to eat only what was available within a 100 mile radius, with a few small exceptions. Before you say, "Hey, I can't live without bananas!", know that each family member was able to choose a special food item that might break the 100 mile rule. Barbara's partner Steven, a man after my own heart, chose coffee. As I imagined how I might survive on a local only diet, I have to admit that Ethiopian coffee, Costa Rican chocolate, and French wine would all be very hard to part with. Tropical fruits would be sorely missed as well. Should I leave everything behind and move to Costa Rica where the food grows all year, the coffee is respectable, and I could indulge in chocolate guilt-free? I have to admit, it is a question that still haunts me, but if the experience of the Kingsolver's is any guide, then our unique spot on the planet can provide everything we need and more. And, I don't have to worry about bullet ants and eyelash vipers.
In between learning about how her daughter started an egg and chicken business, and how long a row of potatoes they dug, one of the most important points that Barbara Kingsolver makes in this book is that the current system of agriculture and food distribution in this country is not only incredibly wasteful, but completely unsustainable. It is rather frightening to learn that americans consume about 400 gallons of oil a year per person for agriculture. Most of that is used in transporting food: each food item in a typical meal has traveled 1500 miles! Facts such as these are interspersed throughout the book in informative sidebars, many of which offer positive steps to take in the direction of a sustainable future. For instance, one of Steven's sidebars notes that "if every US citizen ate just one meal a week composed of locally and organically raised meat and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels oil every week." Impressive, but according to the US Government's Energy Information Agency, we profligate denizens of north america use almost 21 million barrels of oil each day. Worldwide thirst for oil: over 83 million barrels a day. Amount of oil needed to put fresh kale on my dinner plate almost every night for the past 4 months? Unknown, but miniscule, since I only had to use electrically pumped water to water the garden occasionally. Of course, I can do much better with some of my other food and lifestyle choices, and this book has inspired me to do so. For example, I learned how to can grape jam made from the concord grapes that grow along the edge of our property, and my freezer is full of tomato sauce from our garden. I've also become obsessed with fermented foods, and at our learning center we are studying chemistry in part from the perspective of safe food storage.
OK, you say, you know all that, so why should you read this book? Because, in my opinion, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" is truly a pleasure to read. Plenty of hard facts for the analytic side of the brain, wonderful imagery and mouth-watering descriptions of fresh food for the right side of the brain, and woven throughout a romantic love story between the people and the earth that provides so bountifully. I think that's what kept me coming back for more, because as the book described each micro-season of the year (such as the day the asparagus is ready), I was gaining more and more appreciation for the garden in my backyard and the community of people in this area who are striving to bring about a more sustainable food life for all of us. This is a very inspiring story, and has gained an esteemed position on the short list of books that has made a huge impact on how I live my life.
Summary of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.
"As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain.
"Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel. . . ."
Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.
"This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air."
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