Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

A few weeks ago I finally finished Barbara Kingsolver's recent book. I thought it was published recently, then I saw that it was in 2007 - not so much! : )

1. I wish I had read it sooner, it is so good, so interesting.
2. I love Barbara Kingsolver! It surprises me that it took me 4 years to get & read this book (from the library, you know I don't buy books anymore!).
3. It's impressive & inspiring to read about Barbara's family's goal to eat local food for a year.

After moving from Tucson, AZ to their family farm in Virginia, Barbara's family of husband & 2 daughters decided to eat local food for a year & wrote about the experience. Even though the majority of the book is written from Barbara's perspective, I really enjoyed reading the entries her husband & adult daughter contributed.

In addition to personal narratives about growing, harvesting, preparing food for storage, there is also information about food history, big business agriculture practices, environmental & health consequences & Slow Food movement. There are similar notes found in "Food Inc," "No Impact Man" and "The Omnivoure's Dilemma" - all good books with valuable information that more people, especially in the US, need to read & change habits.

It is slightly intimidating to consider how to incorporate the ideas & concepts into our life.
1. We didn't have much success with the garden we planted last spring/summer.
2. It seems extremely time consuming to grow your own food. Almost as time consuming to cook whole foods instead of buying frozen foods & popping them in the microwave!
3. We participate in a CSA program & that's basically the only meat we eat (I eat vegetarian usually when we eat out, Jai usually takes advantage of his chance to eat pork).
4. To supplement the produce we get in bi-weekly CSA box (we share with Bonnie), we purchased fruits & veggies from neighborhood Farmer's Market. Even until late fall/winter we attempted to get locally grown greens & root vegetables from the city's original Farmer's Market, trying NOT to buy lettuce & tomatoes from CA, FL or Mexico.

We cannot change everything overnight!
We're doing the best we can even though it's not perfect 100% of the time.
We try to make changes every day.

Some changes for 2011
1. We plan to grow a garden again & be more committed & diligent about caring for it.
2. We plan to buy more produce at farmer's markets & preserve food to store for winter use.
3. We support small businesses instead of large corporations like Whole Foods, Kroger, Target.

This isn't new information, but I recently read again in a recent edition of Nashville Parent magazine about how little we spend in this country on food compared to other "developed" countries. Most of us have heard how the current generation is likely to have a shorter life span than their parents. Instead of spending our money on healthy food, Americans buy cheap food & spend money on health care costs (issues related to diabetes, heart disease, obesity, etc.). It's dumb!

One quote in the book has stuck with me, it's written by Wendell Berry, an author & farmer from Kentucky. I keep coming back to it as I try to have the best relationship with food. "Eaters must understand that eating takes place in the world, it is inescapably an agricultural act, and that how we eat determines, how the world is used." If we want to eat cheap food filled with preservatives & HF corn syrup, then support CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) & other large corporations. If we want to eat healthy food filled with nutrients & pay the "real" cost for its growth (produced by the hard work of farmers), then support local food production. If it seems too hard, start small. Ultimately we should care what goes in our bodies as well as how the earth is used to grow it.

Read the book. It made me hungry for fresh veggies & springtime, maybe not a good thought as winter persists in being cold & snowy. However, it made me happy thinking about how wonderful the food grown in TN, or wherever you live, really is.