Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Journal #3

After finishing Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I feel like I can identify at least one relationship between humans and nature. Based on the extreme skiing movie and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I see nature as the closest thing humans can reach to beauty. As the book’s title suggests, nature is “a miracle.” In the extreme skiing movie, the mountain-men skied on uncharted mountains because the slopes were natural and hadn’t been groomed or explored by man yet. The skiers claimed they were closest to nature when they skied the natural slopes. In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the local, home-grown food was completely natural, and had not been processed or altered by humans yet. Additionally, in my eyes, when Kingsolver described watching plants and chickens grow over the year seemed like a natural miracle.

Overall, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was a good book; I was definitely interested and intrigued the whole time. I’m someone who likes to read health magazines and food magazines, so the topic was interesting… but as I stated in my previous journals, the Kingsolver family’s experiment was a little too all-natural for me. I can appreciate wanting to become closer to nature and experience natural miracles. However, I feel like you can experience this only occasionally and still be happy. The older daughter, Camille, provided a good example. When she went away to college, she was forced to quit the local-food project, but she still attempted to eat locally when she could. Additionally, when the entire Kingsolver family slowly decreased the size of their garden, I believe they truly met the perfect balance. They were still able to experience the miracle of nature, but not become so absorbed in the miracle that they quit seeing it as a miracle. Had the skiers alternated between skiing on man-groomed slopes and natural slopes, they could have experienced the miracle of nature and spared their lives.

After reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I can see myself perhaps growing my own tomatoes or shopping at a local market (like the one that’s in the Bank of America parking lot on Wednesdays). I appreciate the locally grown experiment enough to try it out. However, I don’t ever see myself completely devoting my entire life to the cause like the Kingsolver family did. 

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Journal 2

The second third of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle focuses greatly on the personal benefits of eating locally. Heirloom foods (like tomatoes) simply taste better. Cooking at home, rather than eating out, provides valuable time for families to spend together. Additionally, gardening, as Kissinger believes, is a hobby in itself, not just a lifestyle. It gives her time to relax, time that others would spend watching television. And, taking food from seed to the table is satisfying – knowing that they creating their own food provided Kissinger’s family a sense of achievement.

I initially saw this local food thing as simply a trend. The farmer’s markets that are popping up weekly seem to be people’s way of acting like they care for the environment. And when I first started reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I thought Kissinger was simply following the trend.  To me, the “trend” of local food is horrible. If you don’t plan on devoting your all to the cause, then you aren’t effectively fighting for the cause. If you buy local vegetables, but buy packaged cookies, then you aren’t fighting for the cause. The eggs used in those cookies were probably from caged chickens, the flour was probably bleached, and the sugar was probably shipped from Brazil. When Kissinger showed signs of hesitation toward first starting the experiment (it took her family a few months once they had moved to quit shopping at the grocery store), I thought she was simply following the trend. But as I’ve read further and further, it’s become clear that Kissinger actually cares for the environment, and actually enjoys what eating locally does for her – she’s definitely not doing it to follow the trend.

I still stand by my belief that I could never go with the local food trend. It definitely is starting to make more and more sense to me – the entire book is like a giant argument essay to convince me to eat locally. But, as I said previously, I think you either have to go all the way or don’t go at all. If I started eating locally, I’d feel guilty eating store-bought foods. Also, I think one of the most satisfying things about the local food trend is growing foods yourself. I have no desire to garden, so I don’t think eating locally would be as satisfying for me as it is for Kissinger.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Journal 1

While reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I’m initially inspired to improve my eating lifestyle. All the benefits of eating locally Kingsolver provides are extremely appealing: reducing use of nonrenewable energy sources, savoring foods rather than having access to all kinds of food, all the time, and, of course, not consuming dozens of chemicals that allow us to eat any kind of food we want whenever we want it (even when it’s unnatural to have it). Additionally, the emotional benefits of eating the fruits of your own labor seem nice; it must be extremely self-empowering. However, this eating lifestyle she provides is also extremely unrealistic. First off, we don’t all live in areas that are easy to grow in. Kingsolver herself started off in Tucson, where it would certainly be difficult to grow your own food or access locally grown food; if she tried her experiment there, her diet would probably consist of dirt (literally). Additionally, how many of us have the time to grow our own foods? My dad, for a couple summers, spent hours babying his precious tomato plants; when the squirrels got to them later in the season, he would give up. The time it required to get what few tomatoes he could eventually wasn’t worth it, and he gave up growing his own tomatoes. Finally, if we all gave up our lives and devoted ourselves to farming (as Kingsolver suggests) how would all of our other businesses be maintained? How would our technology improve, how would we get from point A to point B, how would our government function? She’s probably going to eventually argue that we don’t need all that stuff… but that’s a little bit too primitive and granola for me. I do see the benefits of shopping locally and supporting your town’s market, but giving up all processed and exported foods, all of the sudden, would be too challenging for me. I think I could mentally do it, I have no problem with self control, but the effort to only obtain food locally would be too time consuming to commit to.