Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: An Appalachian Family Affair

Review by Rawlins McKinney October 4, 2007 Issue

After living half her life in Arizona, Barbara Kingsolver moved with her husband and two daughters back to her roots in Southern Appalachia. She had many conventional reasons for the move to the Virginia farm her husband had owned for 20 years. Her Kingsolver ancestors had lived in the same county and she had grown up in Kentucky, only a few hours away. She felt that after 25 years in the desert, she “had been called home”.

But there was an even more important reason for making the move. The family wanted to live in a place that could feed them. And feed them it did. Not only did it provide nourishment, it also provided the inspiration for Animal, Vegetable, Miracle a most unusual book.

Just as life on the farm was a family project, the writing of the book itself was also a family affair. The result is a multifaceted tome. Kingsolver, an award winning writer of fiction, poetry, and essays, brings to the book humor, wisdom, poetic descriptions and, most importantly, clear explanations of topics that could be boring to those of us who have no interest in growing or raising food. Her husband, Steven L. Hopp, is a professor of environmental studies at Emory and Henry College. His sidebars are imbedded nuggets of information and opinion ranging from the mistreatment of Mother Earth’s resources to how to find a farmers market. Kingsolver’s daughter Camille, a student at Duke University, contributes recipes, nutritional information and anecdotes about growing up in the Kingsolver/Hopp household. Even the younger daughter, Lily, a third grader and a budding egg entrepreneur, contributes her hands as a model for the front jacket photo — proudly holding some colorful heirloom Christmas lima beans.

Emphasis should be on the “Miracle” of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. The family of four makes a pact to live for a year eating only food they raise on the farm or that can be purchased locally. How many people would be willing to “step off the nonsustainable food grid” for a year? No more bananas or off season strawberries, tomatoes and other products supplied by “that petroleum hungry behemoth.” They take the plunge but for practical reasons they do have to hedge on a few items. The two food groups they needed in quantity were grains and olive oils. They mitigate the grain exception by buying them in the least-processed, easiest-to-transport form such as bulk flour and North American rice. This ensures those food dollars would go to farmers instead of processors and transporters.

They agree to let each family member pick one luxury item outside the local pact, provided it is purchased through a channel most beneficial to the grower and the land. Steven chose coffee. Camille’s indulgence was dried fruit and Lily’s was hot chocolate. Barbara chose non-local spices, rationalizing that they would be used in small quantities and would not “register for much on the world’s gas-guzzling meter.” All of these exceptions could be purchased through fair trade organizations throughout the world. And so this adventurous tale, spun in Kingsolver’s conversational style, begins.

Kingsolver’s narrative ranges from the esoteric to the comedic. She contrasts the genetically engineered seeds that now almost monopolize the world’s seed supply with the heirloom seeds passed down through the years by small farmers. She takes the reader to an organic farm and we learn how the paper trail required for organic certification may impede rather than help the grower. There is practical advice about making cheese and what to do with bumper crops of tomatoes and zucchini. The section on chicken and turkey sex is hilarious but clearly explains what most of us do not know: how birds “do it.” As the year cycles through the “Hungry Month” of February, we worry along with Kingsolver whether or not the family is going to run out of food.

Hopp addresses the worry that purchasing local vegetables will hurt farmers in developing countries. Another sidebar relates the Pandora’s Box that was opened when the largest biotech seed producer in the world, Monsanto, Inc., sued a quiet middle-aged farmer, claiming the Canola plants on the farm contained genes that belonged to Monsanto. Some of his advice is simple. When a grocery store cashier asks if you found everything you were looking for, say “Not really, I was looking for local produce.” And how can you impress your wife, using a machine? Get a bread maker and learn how to use it.

Each chapter closes with comments by Camille and some unusual but usually very simple recipes. How about “Holiday Corn Pudding a Nine-Year-Old Can Make.” To celebrate the Day of the Dead try “Frida Kahlo’s Pan de Muerto.” The hardest part of this recipe is shaping the tiny cakes “like skull and dancing whirligig bones.”

There is no doubt that if everyone were able to live like the Kingsolver/Hopp family a lot of the world’s problems would be addressed: global warming, health problems, petroleum dependency. But what about those who don’t have farms or even a small plot of land? And access to local produce is limited in many areas. Kingsolver advises us not to ridicule the small gesture; it all adds up. Just do what you can. Hopp’s final sidebar tells us that eco-gastronomy isn’t a minimum-distance food-buying contest. We should do our best to embrace the three basic components of responsible eating: “… favor food grown in an environmentally responsible way, delivered with minimal petroleum use, in a manner that doesn’t exploit the farmers.”

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, 370 Pages, HarperCollins. Available at bookstores, libraries and online booksellers.

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