Miracle of inspiration in ‘Animal, Vegetable…’

Inspiration from the United States comes in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Trudy Park reviews this book.

WHEN I returned from the Slow Food Congress in Mexico in November 2007, I was inspired by the many wonderful things that Slow Food members are doing around the world, including the USA. At the same time I was also troubled by the gargantuan task that Slow Food USA has before it to turn around the appalling industrialisation of food production, processing and distribution that applies there.

A large part of my concern is that Australia has followed a similar path, and is still headed in the direction of the industrial model, even when we can observe the disastrous consequences on health and the environment of doing so. Therefore, it is with great pleasure that I am now reading a book I was given for Christmas by Barbara Kingsolver called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

On the surface it could just be the story of her family’s year producing and eating almost exclusively, their own food, on a small hobby farm in South Carolina, but it is in fact a great deal more than that. Barbara is a novelist and biologist, and writes with a light and entertaining style, with interpolations by her husband, an environmental academic, and older daughter, making it very informative as well. There are extensive contact and resource lists at the end, including Slow Food, of course, and Barbara’s family naturally has its own website.

While the practicalities of what Barbara and her family and neighbours are not available to all of us, and of course her land and climate are not to be found anywhere in WA, we can all be inspired to support good, clean and fair producers by buying directly from them at producer markets, and to grow our own to the degree that we can.