Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Recap

I finally finished the Kingsolver book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It was quite good. A little bit tedious at times, more than a little preachy at times, but definitely worth my time.

This family of four moved to Southwest, VA and pledged to eat nothing but food they could grow themselves or buy from local farmers. Their goal was to a) see if it could be done and b) be greener. (See, we burn a lot of gas transporting strawberries from Florida to Minnesota in January.)

They quickly determined there are some things you just can't grow and produce yourself, at least not on a small farm in Virginia. Coffee. Olive Oil. Most spices. So for the things that they couldn't live without and couldn't grow, they made allowances, but thoroughly researched who they bought from (how far did it travel? did it come from a country practicing fair trade? etc.) before agreeing to purchase anything.

Otherwise, they grew it or raised it before they ate it. And did a fair job of canning and storing to get them through the winter. It was a pretty impressive undertaking.

I learned quite a bit that I didn't know - the whole local food movement was new to me (they call themselves locavores), but now I see evidence of it everywhere. I learned not to trust labels until you thoroughly research what things like "organic" and "free range" can include - for example, "free range" chickens can live in a building no where near big enough for the lot of them, as long as they can go outside in a small pin once a day for about an hour (sounds like a maximum security prison). I learned that seventy percent of the commercial farms in this country grow corn or soybean, which means we have to find uses for all that corn and soybean (read: corn syrup and fillers) to keep the farmers going. I learned that cheese is not hard to make at home - all you need is the equipment (unless you just happen to have bacteria lying around.)

I would be interested to read some opposing arguments on this topic (as I said, she was a bit preachy at times) but I enjoyed the book. Am I planning to start raising turkeys in my back yard? Not likely, but I have been inspired to at least consider the idea of a small garden. Herbs maybe. If not to be greener, just because locally grown food tastes so much better. And it's good to dig in the dirt.

So check it out if you're interested. And if you're interested but you just don't want to read the book, you can visit animalvegetablemiracle.com for information on local food sources (farmer's markets, commercial farms that sell direct to consumers, etc) and some interesting recipes.