Live the year with Barbara Kingsolver and her family on their farm.
I grew up like this. My parents didn't own a farm but they rented a house with a large garden, quite normal at the time in the countryside. We would grow everything, really everything the family need during the year. Except for the potatoes, the garden was not large enough, especially since we hardly ever had rice or pasta. But my uncle was a farmer and he would come by once a year and fill half of our little cellar room with potatoes. The other half would be harvested in a nearby apple orchard. We also had chickens, rabbits (which I still refuse to eat to this day) and even a pig from time to time. Fresh milk would be fetched from the next farmer, the one who also owned our house.
So, I read this book with a laughing and a crying eye. Too many memories of a hard childhood. But also so much that sounded familiar. Not just the planting and harvesting of the veggies, the washing of the preserving jars and then the processing and the cooking. A lot of work. In the end, I was happy I don't have to do that anymore.
What I liked about the book was the togetherness of the family, the will to stick together and live off the land for a whole year. Of course, not everyone would be able to do that. We all have to go out and earn a living, there is not that much time left to grow everything we want to eat. Also, most people don't have the money to have land so large that they can live from the proceeds any longer.
Mind you, a lot of her findings about food you can buy and probably shouldn't, are about the US American market but we all have to find what is good food and what isn't
So, I understand people who didn't like the book because of that. But we can all learn from the author and buy more local food, buy more stuff that is in season and didn't have to be shipped all over the world until we get it.
I also loved her remark to lactose intolerance. I belong to the (large) group of people inflicted with it and often have to hear snide remarks. I should take an excerpt from her book along with me in future:
"This is not an allergy or even, technically, a disorder. Physical anthropologists tell us that age four, when lactose intolerance typically starts, is about when nature intended for our kind to be wholly weaned onto solid food; in other words, a gradual cessation of milk digestions is norma. In all other mammals, the milk-digesting enzyme shuts down soon after weaning. So, when people refer to this as an illness, I'm inclined to point out we L.I's can very well digest the sugar in grown-up human foods like fruits and vegetables, thank, we just can't nurse. From a cow. Okay?"
As a big fan of gatherings by family and friends, I also loved her accounts of those. She obviously has more space than we do but even in our smaller apartments, we often had several dozens of visitors to our parties.
There are also contributions by her husband and her daughter Camille who includes a lot of recipes that you can download here: AnimalVegetableMiracle.
Does Barbara Kingsolver still belong to my favourite authors? But, of course. All her books are great!
Book Description:
"Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life—vowing that, for one year, they'd only buy food raised in their own neighbourhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat."
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