Want to Know More? Books of Note - Part 2 - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
There are 4 books that popped into my path as I was conceiving of what Terrapeutics might be and I want to tell you about them—what they say and how they informed my thinking. Here is the 2nd of the lot.
 | Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life By Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver I devoured this book, pun intended. The whole notion that someone (with husband and 2 kids) would pick up stakes in Tucson and move to a farm in southern Appalachia completely intrigued me. Add to that their goal of spending a year attempting to consume food from only local sources, including their own farm. Page after delicious page made me realize what an undertaking this is because of our incredibly industrialized food production system. Could I go a year without bananas? I started reading this on the plane to San Diego where I would have a week’s vacation with family. It felt like one of the shortest plane rides ever! As spectacular as SD was, I found myself glad to have alone time to read and finished this literary treat within a few days. |
This family’s year was definitely an example of the old Yankee saying, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” in action. And what a steep learning curve they took on!
Their commitment was 24/7, where animals needed constant care, where the plantings and harvestings often had small windows, and where the weather was both enemy and friend. I was completely drawn into the descriptions of their daily decisions, trials, failures, and triumphs.
What I especially liked was the sense of community that developed around them during the year. I realized that you may be self-sufficient by growing your own food, but you definitely share: your knowledge, your hands, your harvest!
Two quotes jumped out at me:
“By pushing the market with our buying habits, we continually shape our buying choices and the nature of farming.”
“Eating preprocessed or fast food can look like salvation in the short run, until we start losing what real mealtimes give to a family: civility, economy, and health.”
Do you know where most of your food comes from?
Check out www.slowfood.com to find out how you can get involved in efforts to refocus ourselves on nurturing and using what is locally grown.
And particularly as it applies to children: “Food education in schools tends to exclude the important factor of nourishment linking man and food – the principle of pleasure: pleasure derived from the use of the senses, but also the pleasure of discovery, the pleasure of manipulating raw materials to create dishes, the pleasure of playing and the pleasure of company that around the table becomes conviviality.
Slow Food works to bring this pleasure to children while educating them to recognize quality food through the use of the five senses. Taste education in the early years of life contributes to the creation of a child’s sensory memory while defining tastes and habits and becoming more aware of their food choices. The younger years are furthermore the best time to guide them to taste and evaluate different types of foods and their relationship with the resources needed to produce, distribute and consume them.”
Posted by The Terrapeutics Team at 5/30/2009 1:51 PM 
Categories: Books
Tags: Kingsolver industrialized food production www.slowfood.com
Categories: Books
Tags: Kingsolver industrialized food production www.slowfood.com
We would like to thank everyone for coming to our Monthly book sale, and we look forward to next month and hope to see some of you again.
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Just before you go to bed, use your back stretches. Stretch and then immediately get into bed. By stretching your muscles and then sleeping, you are allowing your muscles to remain relaxed. They will stay that way easier when you sleep and therefore will improve in their flexibility. Remember, flexibility is the key to long term back pain relief.
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We have several cats in our neighborhood which tend to wander into our yard. I love cats so I DO NOT want to harm these animals in any way. I just want them out of our flowerbeds and away from the house. I have tried planting hot pepper plants (which seems to have some minor success as a deterrent) but I need some more ideas. It would also be nice if these deterrents could work for other common pests such as rabbits as well. What are some good solutions to keep pests away without causing any harm to them?
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Interesting read, thanks for helping keep me busy at work
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Thanks heaps to the author!
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