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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Posted at 2:44 PM on March 18, 2008 by Autumn Long

I've been down all weekend with a fever and other flu-like symptoms, so not much eating of any kind has been happening here lately (although what I have been nibbling - toast with elderberry jelly; yogurt and granola - is pleasingly homemade). Luckily, a friend with excellent timing loaned me Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the novelist's nonfiction account of her family's year of local eating on their Virginia farmstead.

When you're as sick as I have been these past few days, it's difficult to imagine ever feeling well again. In a parallel vein, at this stage in late winter it's difficult to imagine spring ever really arriving, with all the rain, snow, and mud that's currently occupying the four corners of my local world. Frankly, I'd become a bit downhearted about the whole local-foods experiment. It's frustrating to spend so much time preoccupied with thoughts about food.

Kingsolver's book came at just the right time, her dry wit and keen insights reminding me of all the important reasons why I am committed to living this way. The seeds I started a couple of weeks ago are sprouting now, and today I feel well enough to transplant the largest of them into bigger containers. The first upsizing of the season! Soon there will be greens.