Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

If there’s one book you read this year, make sure it’s this one.

It took me a month of Sun­days to fin­ish on account of the detailed con­tent, (and read­ing another book in between) but wow, was it worth it! I came away inspired, informed and far more aware of the adage, ‘you are what you eat’.

Amer­i­can author, Bar­bara King­solver, best known for her fic­tion titles, The Poi­son­wood Bible and The Bean Trees – (two of 12 pub­lished works), tells the story of her family’s year-long sojourn – their chal­lenge to only eat food pro­duced on their 100-year-old farm or sourced from the area.

 In her words, “this is the story…of how our fam­ily was changed by our first year of delib­er­ately eat­ing food pro­duced from the same place we worked, went to school, loved our neigh­bours, drank the water, and breathed the air.”

It gives fas­ci­nat­ing, and some­times shock­ing insight into the Amer­i­can food indus­try often monop­o­lised by huge cor­po­rates. While her hus­band, Steven, an envi­ron­men­tal stud­ies expert inter­jects her story with infor­ma­tive the­ory, facts and fig­ures, her daugh­ter, Camille offers insight from a student’s per­spec­tive – pro­vid­ing fam­ily favourite recipes at the end of her chap­ters. I tried the zuc­chini choc chip cook­ies which looked some­what sus­pi­cious with their green bits but were sur­pris­ingly well received.

What does come across in the book, is that liv­ing off the land is not all romance – it takes per­se­ver­ance and pure hard work. A boun­ti­ful crop has to first be planted – and then har­vested. Excess pro­duce has to be frozen, bot­tled or roasted, roost­ers have to be culled and turkeys killed for Thanks­giv­ing … not for the faint hearted.

There are some charm­ing life lessons learnt along the way, for exam­ple the adorable sound­ing Lilly’s foray into the egg busi­ness – work­ing out profit, expen­di­ture and losses — how to mar­ket her prod­uct and reap the rewards.

There is tri­umph when Barbara’s care­fully raised Heir­loom Bour­bon Red turkeys learn the art of pro­cre­ation and how to sit on eggs. Shock­ing to learn that bat­tery raised turkeys are unable to pro­cre­ate and have to be arti­fi­cially insem­i­nated so fat and list­less do they become.

With her art­ful prose, clever humour and abil­ity to tell a really good story, Bar­bara cap­tures her reader from the start. While we can’t all live on a 100-year-old farm, we can still make informed choices. I came away inspired to grow a veg­gie or two, sup­port local farm­ers’ mar­kets, check labels and know what’s sea­sonal before fork­ing out money for Cal­i­forn­ian oranges in January.

Ani­mal, Veg­etable, Mir­a­cle is pub­lished by HarperCollins