Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

by Barbara Kingsolver

  On Saturday the weather was still cold and windy. I pulled my seed potatoes out of storage to check on them. Not a pretty picture: sick to death of the paper bags in which they'd been stored since last fall, they were sending long, white, exploratory sprouts into the darkness of the bottom drawer of the refrigerator.

  We decided for their sakes that the wind had dried the ground enough for us to till the potato patch with the tractor. A few weeks ago we'd tried that too early, and the too-wet ground behind the tractor rolled over in long curls of thick, unworkable clay clods. Today the soil was still a bit too clumpy to be called perfect, but "perfect" is not the currency of farming. I followed behind the tiller breaking up clods with a hefty Italian grape hoe, the single piece of equipment I rely on most for physical fitness and sometimes therapy. We hoed out three deep rows, each about seventy feet long, in which to drop our seed potatoes. If that seems like a lot for one family, it's not. We do give some away, and save some for next year's seed, but mostly we eat them: new potatoes all summer, fingerlings in the fall, big indigo blues and Yukon Gold bakers all winter. In my view, homeland security derives from having enough potatoes.

  On the same long day we dropped peas into furrows, seeded carrots, and set out more of the broccoli we'd planted in succession since mid-March. My baby onion plants (two hundred of them) were ready, so I tucked the string-bean-sized seedlings into rows along the cold, damp edge of the upper field: Stockton Reds, Yellow Sweets, Torpedos, and a small, flat Italian favorite called "Borretana cipollini." I was anticipating our family's needs, knowing I would not be purchasing vegetables from the grocery store next winter. Two onions per week seemed reasonable.

  Onion plants can take a light frost, so they don't have to wait until the full safety of late spring. Their extreme sensitivity is to day length: "short day" onions like Vidalias, planted in autumn in the deep South, are triggered to fatten into bulbs when day length reaches about ten hours, in May or so. By contrast, "long day" onions are planted in spring in the north, as early as the ground thaws so they'll have enough growth under their belts to make decent-sized bulbs when triggered to do so by the fifteen-hour days of a northern-latitude high summer. If you didn't realize onion farmers had to be this scientific about what varieties they plant, that's just the start. They're also required by law to live within a seventeen-county area centered on Vidalia, Georgia, in order to sell you a Vidalia onion, or in the Walla-Walla, Washington, region to print "Walla Walla Sweets" on the bag. French wine growers are not the only farmers who can market the subtleties of soil and climate, the things that translate into the regionally specific flavor they call terroir. The flavor of an onion, like that of a wine grape, is influenced by climate, soil chemistry, even soil microbes. It's surely true of other vegetables, or would be, if we knew enough of our own local flavors to recognize them.

  The earliest plantings are onions, potatoes, peas, and the cole crops (broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts are all the same genus and species). All these do well in cool weather and don't mind a few weeks of frost, or even snow on their heads. Broccoli buds will start to pop up above their leaves in the last cool days of May. In the same weather, snap peas twine up their trellises lightning fast and set their pods. Along with rosy new potatoes and green onions pulled early from bed, these will be the first garden proceeds, with asparagus, cold-hardy spinach, and other salad greens. The garden-bereft don't have to live without these pleasures. In most of the country, farmers' markets get going in April or early May. Especially in the Northeast, market gardeners are also savvy about stretching the season with cold frames, so these treasures can fill their stalls very early, in limited quantities that will go to the early risers.

  If you picture the imaginary vegetannual, you'll see these are the earliest tendrils of annual growth--leaves, shoots, and buds--filled out with early production coaxed from overwintered roots. Grocery-store-habituated shoppers may only have eyes for the Fourth-of-July-fireworks kind of garden bounty: big, blowsy tomatoes, eggplants, and summer squash. But many weeks before that big bang, subtle pleasures begin pushing up through the chill, come and gone again if you weren't ready. I'd offer the same advice I include in my directions for finding our little town: Don't blink. You'll miss us.

  * * *

  Getting It While You Can

  BY CAMILLE

  When our family first started our local food project, I was daunted. How ironic, I thought: while most parents are harping on their kids to eat more fruits and veggies, my sister and I are being told to give up the juicy pleasure of a fresh peach or pear all winter. I tried to picture how I would get through the months when there are no apples, no plums, and the strawberries of spring seem light-years away. This may sound dramatic, but fruit is my favorite food.

  I was forced to get creative. The first step, shopping, is actually easier. When you peruse the farmers' market for fresh produce, the options are clear. You don't miss what's not there, either, like Skittles placed at a third-grader's eye level in the checkout. No wailing kids or annoying tabloids (omigod...is Brangelina really over?!). Just wonderful, fresh things to eat. As the seasons change, different fruits and vegetables come and go, so as a shopper you learn a get-it-while-you-can mentality.

  The first strawberries showed up at our farmers' market in late spring, on a day when I'd stopped in alone on my way home from a morning class. When I saw giant boxes of strawberries piled on the tailgate of a farmer's truck, I didn't waste ten seconds asking myself the questions I would mull over in a conventional grocery: "Hmm, do I really want berries today? Are these overpriced? Are they going to mold the minute I get them home?" I power-walked past other meandering shoppers and bought a bucket load. I drove home daydreaming about the creations I could cook up with my loot.

  The key to consuming enough produce and reaping maximum nutritional benefits is planning meals around whatever you have. This presents opportunities to get inventive in the kitchen and try new things, like stuffed zucchini. How many spinach dishes can you have in one week without getting sick of it? When working with fresh ingredients, the answer is, a lot! The variety comes automatically, as you eat loads of leafy greens in April, but find them petering out soon, with broccoli becoming the dark green vegetable of choice. You won't have time to get too tired of any one food, and your nutrient needs will be met. There's no need to measure out every tedious one-quarter cup of raisins and half cup of chopped peppers.

  Two things that are impossible to get tired of are asparagus and morels, because neither one stays around long enough. If you have them on the same day in April, you'll forget all about peaches and can make this dish from Local Flavors, by Deborah Madison.

  ASPARAGUS AND MOREL BREAD PUDDING

  3 cups milk

  1 cup chopped spring onions with green shoots

  Add onions to milk in saucepan and bring to a boil; remove from heat and set aside to steep.

  1 loaf stale or toasted multigrain bread, broken into crouton-sized crumbs

  Pour milk over crumbs and allow bread to soak.

  1 pound asparagus

  Chop into 1/2-inch pieces and simmer in boiling water until bright green.

  2 tablespoons butter 1 pound morels (or other wild mushrooms)

  Salt and pepper to taste

  Melt butter in skillet, cook mushrooms until tender, add salt and pepper, and set aside.

  4 eggs

  1/3 cup chopped parsley

  3 tablespoons oregano

  3 cups grated Swiss cheese

  Break eggs and beat until smooth, add herbs and plenty of salt and pepper, add bread crumbs with remaining milk, asparagus, mushrooms with their juices, and ? of the cheese. Mix thoroughly and pour into a greased 8 by 12-inch baking dish; sprinkle remaining cheese on top and bake at 350deg for about 45 minutes (until puffy and golden).

  Download this and all Animal, Vegetable, Miracle recipes at www.AnimalVegetableMiracle.com

  * * *

  6 * THE BIRDS AND
THE BEES

  One of my favorite short stories is Eudora Welty's "Why I Live at the P.O." It's a dead-on comic satire of a certain spirit of family life, and it feeds my private fantasy that I too might someday take up residence in the USPO. If other people don't share this ambition, they just haven't been blessed as I have. Latest in the line of my estimable mail associates was Postmistress Anne, manager of all things postal in our little town--these things taking place within a building about the size of a two-car garage. When we moved, I rented one of their largest boxes for my writer mail, apologizing in advance for the load of stuff I'd be causing them to handle. Anne and her colleagues insisted the pleasure was all theirs. We're lucky we still have a P.O. in our little town, they explained. The government keeps track of what's moving through, and if the number is too low they'll close the branch. "I'll bet you get lots of interesting things in the mail," they surmised.

  I thought to myself: You have no idea.

  So I turned over three pieces of ID to prove I was citizen enough to rent a postal box in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and since then I have wondered if they've ever had second thoughts. Such surprising gifts come to me through the U.S. mail: a "Can-Jo" (rhymes with "banjo," with a body made from a Mountain Dew can) hand-crafted by a man who felt I needed to have one. (So did, he felt, President Carter.) Class projects. Paintings of imaginary people. More books than probably burned in the Alexandria library. Anne sounded unfazed on the morning she called to say, "You'd better come get this one, it's making a pretty good racket."

  Maybe in places like Hollywood, California, postal clerks would be uneasy about weighing packages and selling stamps while twenty-eight baby chickens peeped loudly into their right ear and four crates of angry insects buzzed in their left. Not here. They all just grinned when Lily and I came in. The insects weren't ours, but Anne invited Lily to check them out anyway. "Come on back behind the counter, hon, take a look at these bees. They've got honey dripping out already."

  Bees? Ho-hum, just an ordinary day at our P.O. I adjusted my notion of myself as a special-needs postal customer.

  Lily bent over the bee cages, peering at the trembling masses of worker bees humming against the wire mesh sides of the boxes. The sticky substance dripping out was actually sugar water sent along to sustain the bees through their journey. Down below the buzzing clots of worker bees sat the queen bees with their enormous hind ends, each carefully encapsulated in her own special chamber. These big-bootied ladies were replacement queens ordered by local beekeepers from a bee supply company, to jump-start hives whose previous queens were dead or otherwise inadequate.

  But Lily quickly turned to the box with her name on it: a small cardboard mailing crate with dime-sized holes on all sides and twenty-eight loud voices inside: the noise-density quotient of one kindergarten packed into a shoebox. Lily picked it up and started crooning like a new mother. This was the beginning of a flock she'd been planning for many months and will be tending, I presume, until we see her off to college. Because we knew the chicks were coming this morning, I had allowed her to stay home from school to wait for the call. She wasn't sure the principal would consider this an excused absence. I assured her it was a responsibility large enough to justify a few hours of missed class. I hadn't even known we'd be having lessons in the birds and the bees.

  Once she'd brought them home, taken her twenty-eight chicks out of that tiny box, and started each one on its path to a new life under her care, Lily was ready to get back to third grade. When we signed her in at the principal's office, the secretary needed a reason for Lily's tardiness. Lily threw back her shoulders and announced, "I had to start my own chicken business this morning."

  The secretary said without blinking, "Oh, okay, farming," and entered the code for "Excused, Agriculture." Just another day at our elementary school, where education comes in many boxes.

  I already knew what we'd be in for when we got the baby chicks home. I'd been through the same drill a week earlier with my own poultry project: fifteen baby turkeys. I'd lifted each one out of the box and they hit the ground running, ready to explore the newspaper-lined crate I'd set up in the garage. Right away they set about pecking at every newsprint comma and period they could find. These peeps were hungry, which meant they were born two days earlier. Poultry hatchlings don't need to eat or drink for the first forty-eight hours of life, as they are born with a margin of safety called the yolk sac--the yolk of the egg absorbed into the chick's belly just before hatching. This adaptation comes in handy for birds like chickens and turkeys that have to get up and walk right away, following Mom around to look for something edible. (Other baby birds live in a nest for the first weeks, waiting for a parent to bring takeout.) Newborn poultry can safely be put in a box right after hatching and shipped anyplace they'll reach in two days. Some animal-rights groups have tried to make an issue of it, but mail-order chicks from reputable hatcheries have virtually a 100 percent survival rate.

  Until I opened up the box and let in the sunlight, my poultry babies must have presumed they'd spent their last two days of incubation in an upgraded, community egg. Now they were out, with yolk-sac tummies crying, Time's up! I scattered a handful of feed around the bottom of their crate. Some of the less gifted pushed the food aside so they could keep pecking at the attractive newsprint dots. Oh, well, we don't grow them for their brains. I filled a shallow water container and showed them how to drink, which they aren't born knowing how to do. They are born, in fact, knowing a good deal of the nothing a turkey brain will ever really grasp, but at this stage their witlessness was lovable. I picked up each one and dipped its tiny beak into the water. Soon they caught on and it was the rage, this water drinking, as all the poults tried dipping and stretching like yodelers, now urgently pecking at any shiny thing, including my wristwatch.

  From time to time one of the babies would be overtaken by the urge for a power nap. Staggering like a drunk under the warm glow of the brooder lamp, it would shut its eyes and keel over, feet and tiny winglets sprawled out flat. More siblings keeled onto the pile, while others climbed over the fuzzy tumble in a frantic race to nowhere.

  It's a good thing they don't stay this adorable forever. I'd raised turkeys before, with the cuteness factor being a huge worry at the start. When they imprinted on me as Mama and rushed happily to greet me whenever I appeared, I just felt that much more like Cruella De Vil. Inevitably, though, all adorable toddlers turn into something else. These babies would lose their fluff to a stiff adult plumage, and by Thanksgiving they'd just be beasts--in the case of the toms, testosterone-driven beasts that swagger and charge blindly at anything that might be a live female turkey (i.e., anything that moves). As time took its course, turkey nature itself would nudge us toward the task of moving them from barnyard to the deep freeze. This one little shoebox of fluff, plus grain, grass, and time, would add up to some two hundred pounds of our year's food supply.

  I can't claim I felt emotionally neutral as I took these creatures in my hands, my fingers registering downy softness and a vulnerable heartbeat. I felt maternal, while at the same time looking straight down the pipe toward the purpose of this enterprise. These babies were not pets. I know this is a controversial point, but in our family we'd decided if we meant to eat anything, meat included, we'd be more responsible tenants of our food chain if we could participate in the steps that bring it to the table. We already knew a lot of dying went into our living: the animals, the plants in our garden, the beetles we pull off our bean vines and crunch underfoot, the weeds we rip from the potato hills. Plants have the karmic advantage of creating their own food out of pure air and sunlight, whereas we animals, lacking green chlorophyll in our skin, must eat some formerly living things every single day. You can leave the killing to others and pretend it never happened, or you can look it in the eye and know it. I would never presume to make that call for anyone else, but for ourselves we'd settled on a strategy of giving our food a good life until it was good on the table. Our turkeys would be
pampered as children, and then allowed a freedom on open pasture that's unknown to conventionally raised poultry. Thanksgiving was still far away. And some of these birds would survive the holidays, if all went according to plan. Our goal was to establish a breeding flock. These were some special turkeys.

  Of the 400 million turkeys Americans consume each year, more than 99 percent of them are a single breed: the Broad-Breasted White, a quick-fattening monster bred specifically for the industrial-scale setting. These are the big lugs so famously dumb, they can drown by looking up at the rain. (Friends of mine swear they have seen this happen.) If a Broad-Breasted White should escape slaughter, it likely wouldn't live to be a year old: they get so heavy, their legs collapse. In mature form they're incapable of flying, foraging, or mating. That's right, reproduction. Genes that make turkeys behave like animals are useless to a creature packed wing-to-wing with thousands of others, and might cause it to get uppity or suicidal, so those genes have been bred out of the pool. Docile lethargy works better, and helps them pack on the pounds. To some extent, this trend holds for all animals bred for confinement. For turkeys, the scheme that gave them an extremely breast-heavy body and ultra-rapid growth has also left them with a combination of deformity and idiocy that renders them unable to have turkey sex. Poor turkeys.

  So how do we get more of them? Well you might ask. The sperm must be artificially extracted from live male turkeys by a person, a professional turkey sperm-wrangler if you will, and artificially introduced to the hens, and that is all I'm going to say about that. If you think they send the toms off to a men's room with little paper cups and Playhen Magazine, that's not how it goes. I will add only this: if you are the sort of parent who threatens your teenagers with a future of unsavory jobs when they ditch school, here's one more career you might want to add to the list.