Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

by Barbara Kingsolver

  I was as stumped on the answer to that as I’d been earlier on the mushroom guidance. However much we despise the monstrous serial killer called global warming, it’s hard to bring charges. We cherish our fossil-fuel-driven conveniences, such as the computer I am using to write these words. We can’t exactly name-call this problem, or vote it away. The cure involves reaching down into ourselves and pulling out a new kind of person. The practical problem, of course, is how to do that. It’s impossible to become a fuel purist, and it seems like failure to change our ways only halfway, or a pathetic 10 percent. So why even try? When the scope of the problem seems insuperable, isn’t it reasonable just to call this one, give it up, and get on with life as we know it?

  I do know the answer to that one: that’s called child abuse. When my teenager worries that her generation won’t be able to fix this problem, I have to admit to her that it won’t be up to her generation. It’s up to mine. This is a now-or-never kind of project.

  But a project, nevertheless. Global-scale alteration from pollution didn’t happen when human societies started using a little bit of fossil fuel. It happened after unrestrained growth, irresponsible management, and a cultural refusal to assign any moral value to excessive consumption. Those habits can be reformed. They have been reformed: several times in the last century we’ve learned that some of our favorite things like DDT and the propellants in aerosol cans were rapidly unraveling the structure and substance of our biosphere. We gave them up, and reversed the threats. Now the reforms required of us are more systematic, and nobody seems to want to go first. (To be more precise, the U.S.A. wants to go last.) Personally, I can’t figure out how to give up my computer, but I’m trying to get myself onto a grid fueled by wind and hydro power instead of strip-mined coal. I could even see sticking some of the new thin-film photovoltaic panels onto our roof, and I’m looking for a few good congressmen or-women who’d give us a tax credit for that. In our community and our household we now have options we didn’t know about five years ago: hybrid vehicles, geothermal heating. And I refused to believe a fuel-driven food industry was the only hand that could feed my family. It felt good to be right about that.

  I share with almost every adult I know this crazy quilt of optimism and worries, feeling locked into certain habits but keen to change them in the right direction. And the tendency to feel like a jerk for falling short of absolute conversion. I’m not sure why. If a friend had a coronary scare and finally started exercising three days a week, who would hound him about the other four days? It’s the worst of bad manners—and self-protection, I think, in a nervously cynical society—to ridicule the small gesture. These earnest efforts might just get us past the train-wreck of the daily news, or the anguish of standing behind a child, looking with her at the road ahead, searching out redemption where we can find it: recycling or carpooling or growing a garden or saving a species or something. Small, stepwise changes in personal habits aren’t trivial. Ultimately they will, or won’t, add up to having been the thing that mattered.

  We all went crazy over finding the ivorybill because he is the Lord God’s own redheaded whopper of a second chance. Something can happen for us, it seems, or through us, that will stop this earthly unraveling and start the clock over. Like every creature on earth, we want to make it too. We want more time.

  Natural cycles persist in being predictable, despite all human caprice. It probably happened by the grace of biology, rather than magic, that the very date Lily had circled on her calendar one year earlier got circled now on mine, for the same reason. When Number One Mother sat down on her clutch of eggs, I’d made note of it in my journal. Now I counted forward like expectant mothers everywhere: My babies due!

  I was on pins and needles, watching the date approach. Having done it myself twice, I knew the expectant-mother gig: focus, summon strength for the task at hand. But now I found myself in a role more along the lines of expectant dad: dither uselessly. I could do absolutely nothing to help, which increased my need to hover.

  On the actual due date I walked down to the poultry barn to check on Mom. Maybe, oh, about sixteen times. She raised her hackles and hissed at me to go away. This was a whole different demeanor from her glassy-eyed hunker of yesterday and the twenty-six days previous. I took her fussy defensiveness to be a good sign. Chicks begin peeping from inside the egg a day or so before they hatch. This mother must be hearing that, I thought, getting ready for the blessed event.

  The outcome of Sunday, April 23, however, was a big nothing. Monday brought more of the same. Has any anxious person ever really respected the warning about watched pots that never boil? Well, good for you, is all I can say, because I checked that nest morning, noon, and night, hoping for little fluffy chicks that did not appear. After all we’d been through together, Number One and I, what if nothing hatched at all?

  On Tuesday I went back through my journal and recalculated the due date, thinking I might be off by a day. I wasn’t. They would hatch by the end of Tuesday then, I concluded reasonably, and they did not. That night I double-checked my reference books, which all agreed the incubation period for domestic turkey eggs is “about 27 days.” What does about mean? Twenty-nine? Forty? On Wednesday I checked on the poor mother until she was visibly fed up. I even poked my hand under her to feel the eggs. She stuck tightly to the nest, but became so accustomed to my prodding that she began to ignore me rather than hissing. Possibly she was slumping into post-due-date despair.

  Looking for Mr. Goodvegetable

  * * *

  How small is a small farm? How nearby does local have to be? Is organic more important than local? Which of these should we favor, and when?

  Eco-gastronomy isn’t just a minimum-distance food-buying contest. The three basic components of responsible eating are to favor food grown in an environmentally responsible way, delivered with minimal petroleum use, in a manner that doesn’t exploit the farmers. Most of us won’t have a diversified farm located within walking distance, or a Local Foods-R-Us opening nearby anytime soon. Here are some guidelines that can help define responsible food choices.

  Begin by visiting a nearby farmers’ market to see what’s available. Don’t go in with the goal of buying anything in particular, but simply to learn. Is it local? Most farmers’ markets have rules about how recently vegetables can have been picked. Are they from a small farm? Probably; if not, they likely wouldn’t be sold there. Are they organic? Likely; while certification is not always required at these markets, most small market growers have assumed sustainability as part of their identity. It’s probably the most common question they hear, so ask. Pay attention to what’s available, what is in season. Every region has its strengths and weaknesses. Some are obvious (seafood near the coasts, or citrus in Florida). Others you’ll need to learn. Buy a good supply of what you can use.

  Now, armed with what you learned at the farmers’ market, you can visit your conventional grocery store. Applying ethics in a modern grocery store can be daunting, but here are a few general rules that may help sort out the whole equation.

  If items are available regionally, and are in season, get them from a farmer or ask a grocer to obtain them from a local source.

  Do as much as possible of your own cooking or preparation. Make meal plans for the seasons, rather than starting with a recipe and having a treasure hunt for its ingredients.

  Food processing uses energy in two main ways: (1) extracting, dicing, mixing, and cooking the ingredients; (2) transporting each individual ingredient. Products with fewer ingredients have probably burned less gas. For example, the oatmeal box on our pantry shelf lists one ingredient: rolled oats. With some local walnuts and honey, it makes a great breakfast. By contrast, our Free-range Happy 75% Organic Cereal Chunks box lists seventeen ingredients, all of which had to be transported to the processing plant. Who even knows how much fossil fuel it took to make it 75% Happy?

  For fresh fruits and vegetables, consider travel distance. On an autumn trip to our grocery
I found apples grown in a neighboring state (North Carolina), Washington State, and New Zealand. That choice is easy. If we lived in Oregon, that would be a different easy choice.

  Consider how you feel about using energy to move water. All fresh produce contains a lot of it. Apparent differences between more and less juicy items can be deceiving: watermelon is 92 percent water; cucumbers 96 percent; tomatoes 95 percent, while on the firmer side, carrots are 92 percent; peppers 94 percent; and broccoli 91 percent. All watery. If you care about this, when considering world travelers, favor dried fruits or vegetables, dried spices, nuts, coffee beans, dry beans, and grains.

  If produce or a processed item needs to be refrigerated (or frozen), energy was used to keep it cool from its point of origin to you. How can you tell? It’s refrigerated (or frozen) in the store!

  Should you buy industrial organics? By shifting to organic methods, corporate farms are reducing the pesticide loads in our soil and water, in a big way. This should be one of many considerations, along with everything listed above.

  How local is local? Our friend Gary Nabhan, in his book Coming Home to Eat, defined it as a 250-mile-radius circle for the less-productive desert Southwest. By contrast, the Bay Area group Locavores (www.locavores.com) recommends a 100-mile-radius circle for the more fertile California valleys. It depends on the region, and the product. For us, in Appalachia, seasonal vegetables are literally next door, but our dairy products come from about 120 miles away. That’s better, we think, than 1,200, which is also an option in our store. We bear in mind our different concerns: fuel use, pesticide use, quality, and support for farms. By pushing the market with our buying habits, we continually shape our buying choices, and the nature of farming.

  * * *

  STEVEN L. HOPP

  Or maybe she was starting to sense what I hated to admit: that these eggs were dead. A hundred things can go wrong with the first breeding attempt of an animal that was not even selected, to begin with, for its reproductive wits. Infertility is common in first-year males, compounded by the incompetent mating attempts of creatures reared by humans. Bacteria in the nest can stealthily destroy the embryos. Improper incubation is also fatal. Had the mother left the nest, on one of the freezing nights we were still having in late April? She seemed dedicated, but lacked experience. She might, just once, have flown up to the roost to get warm among her child-free peers. One hour of that kind of exposure could kill the developing chicks.

  Increasingly glum, I had no good news to report on Thursday morning when I came back to the house from my crack-of-dawn nest check. And now we had to leave the farm. I was due that evening in North Carolina for an event that had been scheduled for a year. Steven and Lily were going along too, since we planned a quick visit with Camille at college. At noon, in my earrings and dress shoes, I was still dithering in the poultry house, postponing our drive till the last minute on the grounds that a hatch would probably happen in the warmest part of the day. In truth, I couldn’t bear to leave my expectant mother, though I knew the feeling was not at all mutual. Steven assured me that she could manage without me. Kindly, he did not say, “Honey, it’s a turkey.” I sighed, threw my overnight bag into the car, and off we went.

  The event went without a hitch. I delivered my lecture from the pulpit of a magnificent gothic chapel and did not even once mention poultry. The book signing afterward went on until midnight, but still I was up before dawn the next day, pacing in our hotel room. As soon as the hour seemed forgivable I roused Steven and insisted on an early return to the farm.

  The drive back was endless. I felt like a dope for my impatience, aware that if current trends held, I was rushing us all back to a surly turkey hen sitting on a mound of dead eggs. Even so, as we approached our interstate exit and Steven suggested going on into town to run some errands, I snapped a panicky “No!” Looking straight ahead, I adjusted my tone. “Can we go straight back to the farm, please?”

  Before we even pulled up to the house I was out of the truck, making a beeline for the poultry barn. When I stepped inside I thought I heard a new sound—a peeping sound. It was probably the sparrows that always hung around the barn looking for spilled grain. “Don’t be disappointed,” I counseled myself, and then repeated the warning aloud because Lily was right behind me. I opened the door to the turkey coop and we slipped inside, approaching the nest-corner slowly, letting our eyes adjust to the dimness inside the slatted turkey room. Number One Mom still sat on her nest. She looked different, though, with her wings held out oddly from her body. We stood still and watched.

  There, under her wing, was it something? Lily squeezed my hand and uttered a high-pitched squeak like a baby mouse. It was something. A tiny dark eye, as small as a hatpin head, peeked out at us. A fluffy head emerged. Two heads!

  One of them wiggled out from under Mama, and it was the real thing: a ball of fluff just like a marshmallow peep, honey blond with a dark spot on top of its head. We could see the white egg-tooth still on the end of its beak. This chick was still damp from the egg, its fluff a bit spiky and its walk adorably uncoordinated. Lily looked at me with huge eyes and whispered: “We have babies.”

  “She has babies,” I said. This time they would be raised right, by a turkey mother, ending once and for all in our barnyard the indignity of unnatural intervention. But my heart was on Lily’s side: we had babies. This was about the youngest creature we had ever seen, tottering on wobbly legs, falling over its feet.

  It was hard to resist the temptation to scoop it up in our hands, but we didn’t. We were dying to know how many more she had, how old, whether the hatch was finished. But when we approached she lowered her head and hissed at us, snakelike, rumpling her auburn feathers to make herself twice her normal size. Then she looked away. Number One Mother had bigger things on her mind now, and the instincts to do them perfectly.

  She had been so faithful to her nest, she had to be hungry and thirsty. Bribery might be just the ticket. Lily ran outside to gather a handful of grass while I approached with a cup of water, holding it close enough for her to get a long drink. She accepted détente and settled down. When Lily came back with the grass, she gobbled it.

  While she was distracted by the food, I reached underneath her breast feathers. I could feel a considerable number of eggs under there, smooth to my fingertips. Their heat was almost shocking. One of them felt less smooth. I touched its surface carefully and decided it was slightly cracked. As slowly as I could manage, I drew it out from under her and took a close look. Near the pointed end, a spiderweb of cracks had begun.

  The egg began to tremble and thump in my palm, a sensation so animate and peculiar. I put it to my ear and heard a sturdy, high-pitched peeping. I held it to Lily’s ear, and watched her eyes grow wide. This egg was alive, though it looked for all the world like an ordinary breakfast food. The effect was wildly unsettling. My heart raced as I tucked the warm egg back under Mama.

  We’d gone the whole circle, raising our mail-order hatchlings into the most senior demographic of American turkeys. Now, just after her first birthday, one of the nation’s eldest had begat its newest. Only a few times in my life have I actually seen lives begin, and never had I held in my palm that miracle caught in the act.

  The chick that had come out now dived back into the feather security blanket, disappearing completely under Mom. But we kept staring. We couldn’t help it. She glared back—I suppose she couldn’t help that either. After another minute, a whole crowd of little black eyes appeared under their mother’s wing—two, four, six, eight, ten.

  It’s hard to explain how irrationally proud I felt of this success. Their success, a mother’s and, in his clumsy way, a father’s too, but most of all these creatures who had pecked themselves heroically into the bright wide world to give this life a go.

  Lily and I backed away and slipped out of the turkey coop into the grain room. I thought of that day when I’d tried to explain to Lily the beginning of everything. However I might have bungled it, I ha
dn’t undone for her the Beautiful Mystery. That part tells itself. Crazed and giddy, there in the dusty barn, we held hands and danced: Babies! That was all, and that was enough. A nest full of little ding-dongs, and time begins once more.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Every list of gratitudes should begin with the hands that feed us: Anthony and Laurel Flaccavento, Tom and Deni Peterson, Charlie Foster and family, Mike Hubbard, Paul Rizzo, Kirsty Zahnke, Kate Richardson, the Kling family, Will and Charlie Clark, David King, and everyone else at the Abingdon market. People always say, “I couldn’t have survived without you,” but in our case that’s literally true.

  Many mentors helped shape this project: Wendell and Tanya Berry were there all along; everything we’ve said here, Wendell said first, in a quiet voice that makes the mountains tremble. Joan Gussow also did it all ahead of us, and is the kind of friend who’ll help with anything, whether it’s scholarship or pulling weeds. Gary Nabhan, fellow chile-roaster from the early days, still keeps us smiling from a distance. Wendy Peskin and the Peruvian staff of Heifer International opened extraordinary doors to help us understand sustainable development. Marikler Giron truly saved us. Our debts to other colleagues and writers are as numerous as the books in our library: especially Vandana Shiva, Michael Pollan, Wes Jackson, and Brian Halweil. And the kitchen bookshelf: Alice Waters, Deborah Madison, Mary Beth Lind, and Cathleen Hockman-Wert.

  Friendship with a writer—or in this case, a whole family of them—means you may sometimes fall into the pages when you’re weren’t looking. We’re grateful to all those who opened their lives this way: most courageously, David and Elsie Kline, and the Worth-Jones family. Also Ricki Carroll, Tod Murphy, Pam Van Deursen, Anne Waddell and our postal pals, Amy Klippenstein, Paul Lacinski, Wendell and Ginny Kingsolver, Joann Hopp, and the Hopp-Ostiguys. Neta and Joe Findley are not just neighbors but family, and tell the best stories. Bill, Sanford, and Elizabeth are forever with us. Kate Forbes has earned a lifetime pass as our official extra farm kid, along with Abby Worth-Jones, who provided the title for chapter 14. Abby, Eli, Becky, and Roscoe Worth-Jones, Laura and Jerry Grantham, and the Malusa-Norman and Malusa-Froelich families get medals of valor for not running away on harvest day. Kay Hughes didn’t run from a hungry crowd. Nancy and Paul Blaney, Sandy Skidmore, Jim Warden, Tandy and Lee Rasnake, Dayle Zanzinger, Fred Hebard, Rob Kingsolver, Ann Kingsolver, and so many others have sustained us with bread and kindness, rain or shine. Will White rose to any challenge; Mary Hanrahan pulled the Devil’s Own weeds. The Bobs were fearless and undaunted. Jim Watson uncovered Eden from the brambles, and Cade helped. Our hardworking friends at Appalachian Sustainable Development keep reminding us why farmers matter: Anthony Flaccavento, Tom and Deni Peterson, Robin Robbins, Rebecca Brooks, Kathlyn Chupik, and all the staff.