Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2007) is a non-fiction book by Barbara Kingsolver detailing her family's attempt to eat only locally grown food for an entire year.

The book revolves around the concept of improving the family's diet by eating only foods that her family was able to grow themselves or obtain locally (save for grains and olive oil). Kingsolver, along with her husband and daughters, start a farm in Virginia where they grow and can different varieties of tomatoes, learn about rooster husbandry, make cheese, and adjust to eating foods only when they are locally in season. The book contrasts this with the ecological costs of growing food in factory farms, transporting it thousands of miles, and adding chemical preservatives so it will not spoil.

An excerpt was published in the May/June 2007 issue of Mother Jones magazine, and is available online. There are also audio files of a May 16, 2007 discussion between Kingsolver and her husband at an hour-long presentation at a bookstore in Corte Madera, California.