Barbara Kingsolver has been one of my mother’s favorite authors for as long as I can remember. I have always kept my eyes peeled for any new books she may be putting out because I know they would make a great gift for Mom. Early last year, I happened upon her newest book called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. She is known for her novels, but this is more of a “year in the life” type nonfiction book chronicling her family’s attempts at eating locally and living sustainably for an entire year. Their first step was to move from the desert of Tucson, Arizona to a farm they’d maintained as a summer residence in the lush green farm country of Virginia. A good first step, as I know from experience that there’s not much that grows in the desert!
This book was just wonderful, I enjoyed it from start to finish. There was so much interesting and practical information inside, from how to start plants for your garden indoors in late winter, to a step by step guide to making cheese at home (apparently it is very easy!), to seasonal menus and recipe guides, to resources for heirloom seeds, to short informational essays by her husband and college age daughter. There’s information on growing your own alfalfa and bean sprouts in a jar on your windowsill. They grow so many exciting varieties of vegetables, fruit and flowers. They raise chickens and turkeys. They support other farmers in their community and learn from Amish friends. I laughed out loud more than once (turkey sex, anyone?) and found it just so inspiring. The one glaring omission was pest control…I am 99% sure that their garden is totally organic, yet she doesn’t really mention the gross bugs the flock to gardens! I got so excited about potatoes, they grew several different varieties in the book, and I asked my dad why he never grew potatoes in his garden and he said it was because potatoes are very buggy plants and that potato bugs are gross! I imagine she didn’t do it intentionally, but the thought crossed my mind that maybe she wanted to inspire people so much, that perhaps she glazed over the nitty gritty grossness that bugs bring to an organic garden. Or maybe they’ve just figured out how to manage pests in an organic manner, but she definitely didn’t share the details!
A big part of this experience for them was that they had to learn to live without, something most Americans (myself included) have long since forgotten was even an option. I think they each got one special item that they could continue to buy, for example her husband chose coffee, but it was fair trade/shade grown of course. And there were a couple staples that they stocked up on such as olive oil, but they really did it, they ate things that either they grew, or was grown/produced within an hour of them for an entire year. She talks a lot about how disconnected we have all come from the sources of our food and what produce is in season at what time of year. This really hit home for me, as I tend to eat whatever produce I like all year round just because it is available in the stores! Well, maybe I don’t eat berries in the winter, but that’s just because they’re too expensive, not because I am consciously avoiding that which is not in season and therefore has likely been trucked in from thousands of miles away utilizing precious fossil fuels and adding carbon emissions to our atmosphere.
My parents have had a garden since before I was born. My dad designed and built a greenhouse that is attached to our house when I was really young so that even in the harsh New England winters, we could still have fresh greens and cherry tomatoes and so he could get a jumpstart on his sprouts for the garden. To me, garden fresh produce was the always the norm and the canned, salty, gray green beans and peas served in the school cafeterias made me gag. At this point though, I can’t say that I truly remember the taste of a tomato fresh out of the garden, still warm from the sun. My dad swears that garden fresh celery actually tastes like something, instead of just water and crunch. So I am lucky to be more familiar than most with these concepts and yet I still feel so far away from it all.
It doesn’t help that I live in the desert and could not do all that much at this point since there’s not a whole lot grown locally. I have always felt lucky that we live so close to California, but honestly I felt lucky because in my mind it resulted in cheaper produce, not the fact that it was probably much fresher having traveled a shorter distance or the fact that the overall environmental impact was lower since the truck emissions were lower for the same reason. It’s a bit overwhelming to think how far away from it all we’ve gotten as a society not to mention how much it would take us to relearn how to appreciate and make this stuff a priority again, to re-establish that connection between that which nourishes and sustains us and our responsibility to tread lightly as human beings…to “live simply so that others may simply live” ~ Mahatma Ghandi
So you can probably tell just how inspired I was by this book. I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone, particularly those who don’t know where to start when it comes to some of this stuff and those who maybe have a tomato plant or two, but feel too overwhelmed to try much more. There’s a lot of work involved, but the payoff is just so enormous. There’s a lot to know about this and a lot to learn and this is a great place to start. I’ll finish with saying that your motivations don’t have to be to save the planet to learn more about sustainable living. They can be as simple as wanting to save a few bucks, and in this economy, I imagine we all do. A packet of tomato seeds costs a dollar or two and one plant may produce dozens of tomatoes during its lifespan. (Unless of course, it is my dad’s 13 year old cherry tomato plant in the greenhouse in which case it probably produced thousands). I hope you’ll consider picking up this book, you won’t be sorry.
They also started a website, which can be found here.
Next up for me, in terms of food books at least: The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.
No comments:
Post a Comment