kingsolver bok

I think I’ve fallen in love. I was recently given a copy of the hardback edition of Animal Vegetable Miracle and loved it from the word go. The quiet illustrations are beautiful; the prose is beautiful, the pictures painted throughout are beautiful; (I have yet to try the recipes). Most of all is the integrity of Kingsolver’s central message, that we can and surely we must, embrace local food and fall in love with it. The possibilities for relocalising agriculture are truly beautiful and point us firmly in the direction of a saner world.Barbara Kingsolver carries her readers through a year of local eating, skirting the dark realities of modern US industrial agribusiness and out into the glorious sunshine of the miracle that is life and its perfect natural abundance.The contrast is stark against the big food business model. Stephen Hopp’s brief essays throughout the book, along with Kingsolver's salutary tales woven through the main text, spell out in macro and micro scales its horrific implications. Our divorce from our seeds; from our soil; from the fruit, vegetables and animals we eat every day of our lives, has never been greater. The industry we have blithely entrusted to provide us with cheap food is causing untold damage to even our very capacity to feed ourselves and our families. Ecologically, the globalisation of our food supply is one of the many strands of climate change, perhaps the single biggest threat to our survival as a species today.Yet our reconnection with our food is not only possible – it is potentially enlivening, joyful and bountiful. The re-enchantment with life and what sustains it daily is palpable throughout the book and comes as a form of sustenance in just the reading. By eating what is in season Kingsolver and her family discover a magnificent sense of appreciation for that first harvest of the season over and over again as the year turns and each new fruit and each new vegetable comes into its own.If you want to save you sanity in these changing and challenging times, buy yourself a copy now and take a chapter or half chapter as daily medicine. If you want to save the whole world, buy a copy for all your friends and family as well.Féidhlim Harty is director of FH Wetland Systems and a VOICE member.