Animal Vegetable Miracle

What an amazing story. Barbara Kingsolver and her family resolved to live one year eating foods that are only organically locally sourced. If they didn't grow it themselves, it had to come from less than a 100 mile radius of their Appalachian farm. The book is the result of the lessons they learned, personal stories and recipes of a way of living, and eating, that has almost disappeared from our collective consciousness.
The book is separated by month and is written as a combination of memoir and research. Kingsolver details what her family is eating, what is currently in season, etc. Her eldest daughter also includes journal entries and recipes based on what she and her family like to eat. Steven Hoppe adds hard data from studies and research that shows the impact of large scale farming on American diets and lifestyles.
Kingsolver is a writer, and she imbues her own personal story with such wit and poise that it's impossible but be swept along with their journey.

"This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to
school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air."

By the time you reach August, with its crazy harvest of never ending tomatoes and zucchinis, it's hard to imagine that for the most part, we as a society have completely lost touch with the cycle of life - most of us have no idea that the reason you can tomatoes in August is that by October, they are gone until the following spring. Or at least, they should be. The impact of year round availability of fruits and vegetables has caused such a huge phase shift in how we as a country and a society see food that the ripple effects of such a shift are astounding. We eat food that is tasteless, smell-less, picked before its prime, packaged and sprayed and processed so that it can make its long journey from god knows where to our local grocer.
Kingsolver's resolution is for her family to know what they eat intimately, and that can only come from eating locally.