Zucchini bread. Zucchini cake. Fried zucchini. Baked zucchini. Zucchini soup. Stewed zucchini. Raw zucchini. Her repertoire of recipes for the vegetable was endless, much like the profusion of green emanating from our garden each day. My mother had carefully paced out the large square in our new backyard, eager to exercise her botanical talents after a year of apartment living. The container garden with its wild strawberries and cherry tomatoes took a back seat to the long, even rows of watermelon, potato, carrot, tomato, and, of course, zucchini plants. It all thrived, but none so much as the zucchini. I was probably six at the time, and I remember our fascination with the hearty plants as they took over their surrounding areas. Carrots were rescued from under the tumbling vines, potatoes buried under the foliage. Something in that Baltimore city soil spoke to those plants and we had quite a harvest in our own backyard. No one visited friends without taking along a tubular green gift that summer. As appreciative as we were, the next year that end of the garden hosted a lot more tomato plants.

Barbara Kingsolver, best known for her novels like The Bean Trees and The Poisonwood Bible, recreated that memory for me with her latest book, a non-fiction recollection of the past year in the author’s life. In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Kingsolver, with the help of her husband and daughter, describes what fueled her family’s decision to not only move from Tucson to their 100-year-old farm in Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains, but also to attempt to develop a locally-sustainable food relationship with the area.

About ten years ago, I was living in Minneapolis, a very forward-thinking city, and I became a member of my friend Andrea’s Community Supported Agriculture program (CSA) that essentially allow members to purchase a share of a local small farm’s harvest. Whatever Andrea and her helpers unearthed that week was what we received in waxy boxes from the back of her girlfriend’s truck every Sunday. At the time, I had no idea what half of the vegetables were, but Andrea was creative and resourceful, and she soon developed a cookbook to accommodate those of us who had not yet cooked Kohlrabi on our own. I still have the cookbook; it’s filled with information about each vegetable, including harvest, storage, and cooking information. Although Andrea explained it to me, I was also relatively unaware of the importance of CSAs and the idea of local eating. Kingsolver makes a compelling argument for the growing movement towards local eating.

"Locavores" is the term that Kingsolver decided best fit her family’s decision. She, her husband, and their two girls banned all non-local food from their home, excepting a few necessities like olive oil. Goodbye to oranges in January, tomatoes in February, and salads in December. As they waited for their new garden to begin producing, the family relied on the local farmer’s market, their early ventures there rewarded with the surprising bounty of food. Free-range chicken from local farms and their own eggs rounded out a healthy, tasty diet. Throughout the somewhat chronological book, Kingsolver’s daughter, Camille, a nineteen-year-old college student and yoga teacher, adds short essays of her own that give a clearer picture of the daily meals the family eats during a given part of the growing season (even winter); she also includes simple recipes and website resources for more.

Although many people mistakenly think that this lifestyle is only for people with money, Kingsolver argues that those critics are unfamiliar with the concept and the benefits of the choices she made. First, she’s not advocating buying the high-priced prepackaged organic food from the health food section of the local Giant. Instead, she explains the benefits of CSAs, a low-cost alternative available throughout the nation. Free-range chickens are higher-priced in the grocery store, but farmer’s markets allow the consumer to develop a direct relationship with the local farmer, cutting out the travel and mark-up costs while leaving more money in the pockets of the farmer, better taste and a healthier product for the consumer, and an infinitely more environmentally responsible transaction—a large part of the reason why Kingsolver began this endeavor.

Steven L. Hopp, the author’s husband, is a professor of environmental studies; he, too, offers his perspective throughout the book. While Camille wrote a more personal reflection, Hopp gives the statistics in short, relevant sidebars that balance his wife’s writing without bogging it down. In one such sidebar titled "Oily Food," he explains, "getting the crop from seed to harvest takes only one-fifth of the total oil used for food. The lion’s share is consumed during the trip from farm to your plate." In fact, energy use for agriculture is almost as high as that for cars. So that Prius purchase sours if you’re not using it to drive to the farmer’s market instead of a supermarket.

Finally, Kingsolver wonders why we (herself included) ever pay as much as we do for the privilege of eating fruit and vegetable out of season when they taste so bad. In order to eat cantaloupe in May in Delaware, the melon I bought yesterday (at a local produce store!) had to have been grown far from here. Yup. I flipped it over and that "candy lope" is from Mexico. I sliced it open, took one bite and threw out the whole mushy, tasteless mess. Vegetables and fruit are not meant to be eaten that far from their homes. Transport destroys the amazing burst of flavor I associate with freshly-picked tomatoes. Those mealy orbs piled high and shining in the produce section in January are no substitute.

Kingsolver is asking her readers to consider awakening the nearly-spiritual relationship with food harvest cycles that we have lost as a society. It’s a fairly simple request. I took the much-delayed step of finding CSAs in this area. It took about a fifth of a second on Google to locate communityorganics.org, a local farm run by the Bell family in Sussex County. Shares in this new CSA are available for periods as short as four months, with pick up locations at the Lewes and Rehoboth farmer’s markets. The farm’s website is also a wealth of information about why and how local eating is important. My application and check are on their way to the farm right now; I may even take Tim Bell up on his invitation to visit the Greenville-based farm. This summer, Beth and I will be enjoying a variety of vegetables and eggs collected just a few miles from home. It’s not quite the undertaking that Kingsolver made, but it’s a start. Local eating also validates our dedication to Dogfish Head brewery, not that we needed a reason. While they do ship nationwide, we pick it up ourselves right from the brewery. Perhaps by August, I’ll pair a cool pint of Shelter Pale Ale with a grilled zucchini sandwich for a sunshine-filled lunch on the back porch.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an inspiring, and highly-readable blend of Kingsolver’s trademark narrative style with factual information. Read it and reap the rewards all summer long.