Book Review: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

I'm only a hundred pages into this amazing book, but I had to share it now instead of waiting til I finished it.  Barbara Kingsolver is my favorite writer, and I have read her fiction books.  I happened to find the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle on our building's free table and I snatched it up.  It's a memoir of a year in the life of her family during their eat only what food is in season (and preferrable local) project.  Yes, it's somewhat of a cheerleading book on eating local and the slow food movement. But she writes truthfully about her family's struggles and triumphs with the year long commitment they all made.  Kingsolver and her husband Steve have two children, one in third grade and another entering college.  They made this commitment together as a family, not as parents enforcing a rule that must be obeyed.  So their daughters were invested in the process too, even though they had to give up some of their favorite foods, or at least not have access to them all year round. The project is somewhat enlightening to them all, to say the least.

The book offers insight into the factory farms that fill most of our supermarkets with what we Americans generally call meat and produce.  But the information is supplied in such a way that she does not tell you what you should do;  she merely offers the facts and then lets you decide.  She also writes about just how much of an adjustment it was to make the switch to in season food, and how the family celebrates new recipes and enjoys food so much more.  They do have a large garden where they grow their own food, and watch it in anxious anticipation of the harvest that will fill their cooking pots.  They supplement with trips to the farmer's market.  Kingsolver's older daughter contributes essays on her perspective as a young adult to the book. Her younger daughter even starts an organic egg and chicken business so that she can save up to buy a horse. 

And the best part is, there are seasonal menus and recipes in the book and on the website so that you are not lost in a mountain of collard greens and eating corn til it's coming out your ears (no pun intended).  Check it out at www.animalvegetablemiracle.com

Book Review: Greenhorns

Go to www.thegreenhorns.net for info on the film

If you've ever thought about becoming a farmer, love food, or simply wondered what goes into the day to day grind growing of our food, this book will give you a voyeur's peek into the life of the new farmer.  If you weren't already, you will be mighty grateful to farmers everywhere and may even speak your gratitude to the ones at your local farmers' market.  Choosing to be a farmer is a career full of muscle aches, never ending stress, battles against culture's ideas of farmers and food, and very little money. And it seems that many of  today's new farmers are educated environmental activists that have to beg and borrow for a patch of tillable earth, as opposed to the farms of generations past that were handed down through the family.  Hooray for farmers, "new" and "old" and for whatever path lead them to grow the food on my table and yours!  Truly, you are among the heroes that walk (and till) the earth. 

Goatsong book review

If I can't have a farm of my own yet, at least I can live vicariously through others who do. Lately my favorite kind of books to read are the memoirs of farmers who are stumbling through learning how to do what they do. Most have never farmed before and are transplants from some other career found to be unfulfilling. Such is the case of the author of Goatsong. Brad Kessler and his wife move to Vermont and begin their adventure in raising goats. Brad poetically catalogs his days of milking, breeding, cheesemaking, protecting his small herd, and connecting to Mother Earth. He even takes a pilgrimage to France to learn from the cheesemakers of the Pyrenees mountains firsthand. I admit, I am jealous. Thanks Brad, for allowing me to learn from your experiences and to imagine in full color what it will be like to someday do what you do.