Viewpoint: Lily’s Chickens

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Nearly every vegetable we consume, we can grow ourselves. Most of whatever else I need comes from the local growers I meet at farmer’s markets. Our family has arrived, as any sentient people would, at a strong preference for the breads and pasta we make ourselves, so I’m always searching out proximate sources of organic flour. Just by reading labels, I have discovered I can buy milk that comes from organic dairies only a few counties away; in season I can often get it from my neighbors, in exchange for vegetables; and I’ve become captivated by the alchemy of creating my own cheese and butter. (Butter is a sport; cheese is an art.) Winemaking remains well beyond my powers, but fortunately good wine is made in Virginia, and I am especially glad to support some neighbors in a crashing tobacco-based economy who are trying to hold on to their farms by converting them to vineyards. Somewhere near you, I’m sure, is a farmer who desperately needs your support, for one of a thousand reasons that are pulling the wool out of the proud but unraveling traditions of family farming.

I am trying to learn about this complicated web as I go, and I’m in no position to judge anyone else’s personal habits, believe me. My life is riddled with energy inconsistencies: We try hard to conserve, but I’ve found no way as yet to rear and support my family without a car, a computer, the occasional airplane flight,

a teenager’s bathroom equipped with a hair dryer, et cetera. I’m no Henry D. Thoreau. (And just for the record, for all his glorification of his bean patch, Henry is known habitually to have gone next door to eat Mrs. Ralph W. Emerson’s cooking.) Occasional infusions of root beer are apparently necessary to my family’s continued life, along with a brand of vegetable chips made in Uniondale, N.Y. And there’s no use in my trying to fib about it, either, for it’s always when I have just these items in the grocery cart, and my hair up in the wackiest of slapdash ponytails, that some kind person in the checkout line will declare, “Oh, Ms. Kingsolver, I just love your work!”

Our quest is only to be thoughtful and simplify our needs, step by step. In the way of imported goods, I try to stick to nonperishables that are less fuel-costly to ship: rice, flour and coffee are good examples. Just as simply as I could buy coffee and spices from the grocery, I can order them through a collective in Fort Wayne, Ind., that gives my money directly to cooperative farmers in Africa and Central America who are growing these crops without damaging their tropical habitat. We struggled with the notion of giving up coffee altogether until we learned from ornithologist friends who study migratory birds being lost to habitat destruction, that there is a coffee-cultivation practice that helps rather than hurts. Any coffee labeled “shade grown” — now available in most North American markets — was grown under rain-forest canopy on a farm that is holding a piece of jungle intact, providing subsistence for its human inhabitants and its birds.

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