Book Review

The Book is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and while the authors politics may not be in kind with most of the views expressed by myself or other preppers, the information and story are very pertinent to a family looking to be able survive solely on what they can raise.

The author starts the book by picking up the family and leaving their comfortable home in Arizona to return to her childhood roots in the mountains of Virginia where they hope to become totally self sufficient and live off what they can raise, slaughter, and put up for the winter. The family has a noble goal to not purchase any types of foodstuffs that can not be grown at home or locally and are not out of season. The planning involves takes you through the seasons of the crops and how intricate your garden has to be to have it producing from May to October. Admittedly the authors reasons for doing this are more rooted in environmental issues that survival ones. However the self sustaining goal is basically the same one and we can learn from her experiment. As the book and seasons move along new issues crop up such as what to do with all the vegetables. As such the author offers new found "old world" recipes and canning methods that provides lots of variety to our standards. The author takes us through all of the seasons all the while offering up failures as well as success to show what works and what doesn't. In the end the experiment is not a complete success, but it's only their first year of trying and the lessons provided are valuable ones. I particularly enjoyed the section on choosing turkeys as the protein source, totally amazing.

All in all the book might throw you into a slow burn every now and then as the Author expands on her view of the world but that doesn't change the information provided from the family's experiment. It's a good read and the accompanying website ( http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/ ) provides expanded sections on recipes and seasonal meal plans that work with your garden.