Chain Reading

I really enjoyed Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. For those of you who haven't read the book, it's a memoir-ish book about Kingsolver and her family's year of living strictly on food they'd grown in their own garden or, when it was something they couldn't produce themselve, bought locally.

I really liked that Kingsolver's book was not just a memoir, but also had pertinent information that might sway someone to decide to try eating locally or growing their own food. The informational boxes by her husband and the short essays and recipes from her daughter were some of my favorite parts of the book.

I also enjoyed her defense of farmers. I've been a newspaper reporter in two small towns, both filled with farmland, which gave me a lot of opportunities to meet and interview farmers. I grew to really admire their way of life and their ability to keep at it despite the numerous factors standing in their way. To someone who has never been on a farm, nor talked to farmers, Kingsolver's descriptions may seem a little too poetic, but if you've ever been there you'd know that she's pretty dead on. She mentions this in the book too, after going on vacation to meet with some of her Amish friends, one of her city friends teases her about how she described the farm as if there were no worries just because the farmers had time to commune with nature.

In the book there were also some parts that really stressed me out (the chapters about squash and tomatoes covering every surface of the house while they desperately tried to store and consume them). I currently have five tomatoe plants to take care of and have already been giving dozens of them away (luckily I don't live in a rural place where everyone else is trying to do the same). I don't know how I would cope with 50 tomato plants' worth of tomatoes to deal with. This and learning to butcher animals would probably be the most difficult things for me if I decided to try living for a year off of food I produced myself. I think it would finally be the thing to push me into vegetarianism for real.

Also, I loved Kingsolver constantly bringing up her issues with California produce. Kingsolver lives in Virginia and refuses to buy California produce because of how far it would have had to have been trucked in order to reach her supermarket. To her it's upsetting that people think they can have produce all year round by trucking it in from far and wide. And I agree wholeheartedly. However, it's easy for me to agree because I happen to be one of the lucky thousands to live IN California. That means I get fresh local produce, and a wide variety of it too, almost year round. Reading this book made me realize just how lucky I am to have that.