42 pages • 1 hour read
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
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Chapters 17-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 17 Summary: “Celebration Days: November-December”
This chapter primarily deals with the family’s first Thanksgiving as locavores, although Kingsolver first updates the reader on the progress of Lily’s egg business as it gets underway and starts to be profitable.
Kingsolver points out that Thanksgiving is really the only US holiday “with food traditions that are really our own” (280). It is a harvest festival, deeply rooted in farming, although “in modern times it’s mostly pageantry, of course, this rejoicing over harvest and having made it to winter’s doorstep with enough food” (281). For the family, however, the harvest is more literal, and they celebrate the miracle and “the promise to do it all again next year” (284).
The family had successfully cut out most non-local food, though Kingsolver admits with practicality that they still buy some staples like pasta and cereal, taking steps to purchase sustainably produced versions. Since they have reached winter fed and with enough stored to get through to spring, the experiment seems to have been a success. However, Kingsolver knows “we needed fellow locavores to add clout to our quest, and in time we’ll have them” (286).
The author then explores other holidays because “for most people everywhere, surely, food anchors holiday traditions” (288). She advocates for eating well at holidays like Thanksgiving, rather than giving into the “stigma my culture has attached to celebrating food, especially for women” (288). She also discusses the Mexican holiday, the Day of the Dead, which is a food-rich celebration of loved ones and is not morbid at all. This approach to death is something that Kingsolver’s own American culture does not have. She feels her ancestors would be pleased with her success in farming and feeding herself.
This chapter includes the essay “How to Impress Your Wife, Using a Machine” which advocates the regular use of the bread machine.
The chapter ends with Camille’s essay “Food Fright,” which discusses the American cultural fear of food, especially for women who are constantly told to lose weight. She says: “the first step toward valuing and trusting food is probably eating food that has some integrity” (292).
Chapter 18 Summary: “What Do You Eat in January?”
Kingsolver describes the slow January month, during which the family uses their stored and frozen food to cook, along with a few fresh vegetables that keep producing, like chard and kale. Although January isn’t a lean month, as many would expect, the family does miss some foods, like fish.
She uses this description to explain that farming—the act of producing food for oneself or as a job—requires careful planning and a long view; for example “a meat farmer has to plan in spring for the entire year, starting the Thanksgiving turkeys in April” (298). Even for urbanites, “It’s an entirely reasonable impulse, to stock up on what’s in season” (305). Ultimately, her conclusion is: “eating locally in winter is easy. But the time to think about that would be in August” (309).
Kingsolver also tallies up the total savings from a year of local eating and concludes that the family saved over $7,500 in food costs, making the economic argument for being a locavore.
The chapter ends with Camille’s essay “Getting Over the Bananas” in which she explores how some foods, like bananas, don’t have a local source, and how the family may cut them out altogether as a matter of practicality.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Hungry Month: February-March”
Kingsolver details the challenges of turkey mating season—when her turkeys begin to show signs of being sexually mature and ready to mate, she is unable to find much reliable information about what to expect or even how turkeys mate in general. The reason is that “turkey mating has gone the way of rubberized foundation garments and the drive-in movie” (320). In other words, the turkey industry relies on artificial insemination to produce huge numbers of turkeys bred only to live one year until harvest. The knowledge of natural turkey mating habits is unneeded and lost.
Kingsolver compares this example of humans essentially artificially breeding out survival behaviors from turkeys to the human education system that includes classes on advanced politics but none on how to farm or produce food. As a result, each generation has lost essential knowledge of basic life processes, and “from a biological perspective, the ultimate act of failure is to raise helpless kids” (324).
However, as Kingsolver’s turkeys eventually figure out what they’re doing, there is also hope for future humans to re-learn how to feed ourselves.
This chapter includes the essay “Legislating Local” from Hopp, which praises certain legislation that promotes “school garden projects and acquisition of food from local farms” (324).
Camille’s essay, “Taking Local on the Road,” which talks about her struggle to keep to the local food experiment while living at college, ends the chapter.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Time Begins”
Kingsolver wraps up her account of a year of local eating with a return to the start of spring. The family experiment has been a success, though it didn’t always go as planned. In her words: “we set out upon a journey. It all seemed so ordinary on the face of things, to try to do what nearly all people used to do without a second thought. But the trip surprised us many times” (335).
Kingsolver also looks outward and describes how local eating isn’t just an experiment by her family but has become a social movement. It also has opposition, mostly fueled by industrial farms. Crucially, “the ‘why bother’ part of the equation was also becoming obvious” as global warming became front-page news (337).
The chapter ends with the turkeys hatching their first flock of babies, at long last; turkeys that will be better than their parents at survival and perpetuating their kind. The miracle of seeing new life begin in a natural way is what ends the book, and is the point of the book. The way we eat is more than what is on the plate in front of us; the way we eat is the way we live.
This chapter includes the essay “The Blind Leading the Blind” from Hopp, which briefly explores the way industrial farms attempt to modify food to solve global hunger and other problems, when the less profitable but more logical method of eating natural, local foods exists.
Hopp has a second essay in this chapter, called “Looking for Mr. Goodvegetable,” which includes useful tips for identifying and purchasing local food no matter where one lives.
Chapters 17-20 Analysis
In the final section, Kingsolver resolves her arguments and looks toward the future. First, she underscores how deeply food ties to holidays and family; it nourishes the body as family nourishes the soul. She brings this up as if to say that the focus on food, the food culture of America, has been there all along—but it shouldn’t be just for the holidays.
On the subject of combating ignorance, Kingsolver hits hard, saying that to allow children to go on with no knowledge of the fundamentals is to do harm to them, because “from a biological perspective, the ultimate act of failure is to raise helpless kids” (324). Although much common knowledge of food and growing has disappeared over the past few generations, it still exists. Humans should therefore re-learn this knowledge.
Finally, Kingsolver is careful to explain that this book is not meant to be the end of the experiment. The family proved to themselves that being a local consumer is possible and hugely rewarding, but “we needed fellow locavores to add clout to our quest, and in time we’ll have them” (286). Ultimately, the book is not just a memoir, it is a call to action to take an interest in food, discover the joys of local eating, and, by eating locally, to refuse to support industrial farming and the conglomerates that have warped American food culture.
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