I don't normally pick up non-fiction books but I'd spotted this book being promoted in the library under the 'green' or 'eco' section and as I really enjoy Barbara Kingsolver's writing I thought that I would give it a go. This is a book that follows Kingsolver's family's foray into growing their own food (not just vegetables) and trying to source the majority of the rest of their food from organic sources within a 100 mile radius of their home. The book takes you through the year, describing the different seasonal vegetables and the work that entails to go into producing them. What is really nice about the book is that her daughter and husband also write (husband factual snippets, daughter menu ideas and recipes).
What I found compelling about this book is that she goes into the food production that goes on in order to satisfy the huge appetites and surplus requirements of supermarkets. It's not just the food miles that are shocking, but the creation and breeding of gm crops, the creation of grasses that no longer produce seed, forcing farmers to continually buy seed from multinational giants year after year rather than saving and planting a proportion of their crop, food bred so that it will last the possible weeks of transportation rather than food produced for flavour. It is shocking. These examples are all from the States, but I assume that the case is not so different here. However in a Brexit scenario talk is of importing more food from the States and it is worrying. Shortly before reading this book I had just signed up to an organic veg box. Reading this book has made me more determined to try and get more organic and locally produced food into our diet. I don't have acres of land in order to produce our own food, but there is a part of me that would love to try and produce some of our own food. In our previous garden we grew courgettes and tomatoes one summer and they certainly tasted wonderful. As do our organic veg and apples, there really is no comparison! The taste of the tomatoes that we get is just divine!
Anyway, this was a very interesting book. It had the potential of being preachy, but I didn't find it that way at all. It was more of a diary with facts but really inspirational and thought provoking. I'd definitely recommend it, in fact I already have!
