Has anyone read "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle"?

[georgialee]

I'm about halfway through the book and I love it! It motivates me to try to find more local foods or make it myself... enough with all the processed crap. Has the book inspired you to do anything differently? Has anyone challenged themselves to eat locally for a year like the author did?

 

[hen-thusiast]

I read the book last summer and it got me thinking about chickens. Then we happened to buy a house with a chicken coop and volia, now I'm a chicken addict.

 

[PotterWatch]

I'm reading it right now actually. I head about it some time ago but never picked it up. This tuesday, a fellow homeschool Mom brought it to playgroup to give to me since she said that she thought of me when she was reading it. I'm not too far into it yet but already am inspired to try and buy more locally. Luckily, I was able to start a garden this year so I am well on my way to supplying at least some of our own food between the garden, fruit trees, meat chickens, and eggs. Now I just need to find milk and grain suppliers locally that I can trade with in some way.

 

[georgialee]

I have no clue where to even look for grain. I wanted to start milling my own flour and start making our own breads, etc. We have a local large dairy - Mayfield - which is in every grocery store so I could just buy that (to the tune of $4/gallon). I may just try raw milk...

 

[PotterWatch]

I would love to have a raw milk supply again. We had goats up until about a month ago. I miss the milk terribly!

 

[Sunny Side Up]

I read it and it inspired me to be more aware of the origins of my food, to try and stick with fresh produce when it is in season & from a local source. I'm not anywhere close to 100% local, but on my way to maybe 50%.

My eggs and chicken meat couldn't get any more local unless I started keeping them inside the house.

The book also inspired envy in me for a college-aged daughter who liked to cook from scratch and for a husband who busies himself making home-made gourmet breads for us.

 

[lalaland]

I love her books. Try High Tide in Tuscon - a collection of her essays. I used to work for a food co-op, so already was trying my best to eat locally (so easy to find lettuce from across the country, sometimes such an effort to find it here) and have been eating seasonally for a couple of years.

I really really like eating seasonally - for one thing, you get such really good produce - tomatoes being the classic example - but the other thing is that it turns food into a celebration. Asparagus in the spring - not when it is in the grocery store, but when it is in your garden or at the farmers market - turns it into something to indulge in.

Right now, I am just getting local strawberries - yum!!!

There are some things I can't give up, though: bananas, coffee, lemons, spices. oh yeah, chocolate too.

I liked that in the book, she is pretty reasonable - will eat whatever her hostess is serving for example.

 

[FrizzleFreak]

I LOVED THAT BOOK!
We are well on our way to 100% local. IT's easy here in oregon, because we are within 50 miles of just about everything short of tropical fruit. We can even have seafood!
We could be doing more though. We only have 4 beds in our garden, but these produce:
potatoes, artichoke, asparagus, 4 varieties of beans, sugar peas, potatoes, spinach, 4 varieties of lettuce, broccoli, strawberries, strawberry spinach, cilantro, pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, carrots, various herbs....I think that's it. We have a large amount of each of these, if we had less then I didn't mention it.
Also, we have chickens, meat sheep, and dairy goats, which help A LOT. I think that just about everybody could eat local, at least 50% if not more. There's another amazing book called Square Foot gardening, it's essentially how to get the most out of every square foot of viable soil.

 

[astylishgirl]

Who wrote it? What is it about? It sounds interesting.

 

[JennsPeeps]

Read "Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan next. It's another very good book.

AMV inspired me to get chickens. Now I have 10!