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The experiment starts now

Posted at 4:38 PM on January 15, 2008 by Cher Stuewe-Portnoff

Looking back, I see now that this all began a year ago in a St. Louis book store -- and how it slipped in, undetected by my radar for avoiding commitments.

I was browsing the children’s shelves for gifts. Our 19 grandchildren each have a birthday, every year. They remember who gets what from whom, and compare notes. Books offer the balance of equity and personal touch that keeps me out of trouble. On my way out that day, I spotted an unfamiliar Barbara Kingsolver title. I don’t recall opening the cover, but somehow the book ended up at the cash register with me. It was a busy month; Greg and I were preparing for a move. The Kingsolver was packed unread along with the birthday books, and then forgotten. A few months later, unpacking in Oklahoma, it resurfaced.

Barbara Kingsolver is high on my top-10-authors list, but I think what hooked me were those heritage beans on the dust jacket. I no longer remember what they’re called, but someone gave me a handful of those same beans more than three decades ago. They moved from house to house with me through years when I had no garden. I still have them. I'm sure I’ll plant them next spring.

"Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life" is an old-fashioned blog -- the kind printed on paper between two covers. You can read it on a moving treadmill or in bed, and then get together with a few friends to talk about it, sampling pink wine and homemade apple pie. It turns out that Kingsolver's family was living the dream. They'd moved across the US, west to east, urban to rural, to live in a family-owned farmhouse. They'd planted an ambitious garden and committed to living for a year on locally produced food. Halfway into the book, I was ready to try this again. We had come close before, in the 1980s, in Washington State (the food part – no one in my family has ever offered us a farm).

Here and now in Oklahoma, however, we were struggling. I’d found few sources of ANY kind of locally grown or non-corporate organic food for the two of us. I also needed to feed my daughter Mista’s family a few nights every week. Mista, now grown, and each of her children had somehow become deeply attached to white bread. Super Target, Walmart, and a couple of smaller chains were the only grocery stores. Within a 20-mile radius, the only fresh local produce I found last month was a pricey butternut squash and organic turnips – lots of turnips.

We already had our hands full without complicating things further. My experiment would have to wait for next summer, if and when we returned to Missouri – plenty of local resources, maybe a place to garden, a captive audience of two motivated people (ourselves) and friends who’ll eat anything served in a good cause. Exactly one day after I came to this conclusion, the Splendid Table’s survey showed up. Shortly afterward, I heard about the general call to join this year-long project. At the time, responding seemed so right, so in-the-moment, an impulse unconnected with anything in real time.

And that's how it happened. The experiment starts now. Right here in Oklahoma. My daughter is very supportive. She knows she’s safe. A parent herself now, she no longer has to eat everything I put on her plate.