Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle combines a gripping and often humourous account of her family's year of living on their Virginia farm and eating only local food with serious reflections on conventional eating habits, the endangered status of small farms and the provenance of most North American produce.
Month by month, Kingsolver shares her knowledge of which crops to plant when, how to tend to growing vegetable plots and how to manage both abundance and dearth. Her daughter, Camille, contributes thoughtful essays from a teenaged point of view and adds simple recipes that celebrate seasonal produce. Kingsolver's husband, Steven Hopp, brings a series of scholarly snippets to the book, which discuss such heated issues as GMOs, pesticide use and farm labour.
The book is warm and witty but also thought provoking as it encourages readers to ask fundamental questions about our approach to food: Where does our food come from? How far has it traveled to reach us? How much energy has it used? Kingsolver makes us aware that, every time we eat, we make choices that effect global economics, the environment and our health.
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