Guest Author - Barbara Gibson

Writer, Barbara Kingsolver, has captured many an imagination over the years. Whether she is telling the story of friendship and family in The Bean Trees, or penning remarkable essays for her book Small Wonder, Kingsolver challenges, and on some level, even changes her readers.

Her most recent offering, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, is a love letter to the local food movement. In the narrative novel, Kingsolver recounts the year her family ate only those things grown in their garden or near their Virginia home.

Despite an extremely busy schedule of book tours, lectures and two children (one was a third grader when they began the transition) Kingsolver is enthusiastic about what she sees as an ethical choice. For this family, eating locally is not an inconvenience it is an appropriate answer to the moral and environmental question of food production and transportation.

They learned a lot in that year. For one thing, Kingsolver her husband and two daughters learned that they loved eating locally. They learned that they would not, could not go back to eating in a way that assumes no responsibility for their own care and feeding. Rather than rely on industry they have chosen to rely on their own industriousness.

The family also discovered that eating is not (or probably should not be) about the whims of the palate, but about the bounty of the season. Everyone joins in to prepare fresh, made from scratch meals for the family table. They couldn’t imagine going back to buying or eating food transported from thousands of miles away.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a great book that inspires all of us to be more deliberate about the way we purchase and consume food. For those that want to eat more locally grown foods but don’t have the time or space to garden, don’t forget about your local farmer’s markets or coops. Also search happenings in your neighborhood for Local Food week events, sidewalk markets and slow food events.

Eating locally need not be a chore or a challenge. Learn about the pleasures of fresh, great tasting food that supports the environment as well as local food producers. Like Kingsolver and her family, you might just find that you’re hooked.