is the most inspirational book I have read in a long time. Author Barbara Kingsolver has been a favourite since I first read The Poisonwood Bible yonks ago, but who knew? She is also a consumer with a conscience! I almost feel as if she should be classed as a non-consumer, having read how they as a family pledged utter self-sustainability for the period of a full year, and the delightful results of said pledge.
After six months of non-blogging I have been driven to my computer to continue blogging, if that will make a difference to anyone's life who may come across the articles and read them (all the future ones I now have in mind especially!)
I am sure that having come that far, living off the land and by one's own means for a full calendar year, it becomes second nature not to look to supermarket shelves for sustenance anymore, because whatever you are looking at has been grown from hybridised or GM seed, so that it will outlast transportation and the inordinate time spent in packing sheds being washed and handled, and on supermarket shelves, with little regard for taste. And then it has either been processed, transformed into something different and sometimes unrecognisable (try chocolate coated olives!) transported 100,000 miles, radiated or otherwise preserved, with even less regard for nutritional value than taste. Having tasted one's own produce, grown from honest seed which is true to how that food looked and tasted 100 years back, and having experienced the energy boost from ingesting such food, and the obvious health benefits, there is no going back.
What am I saying? I am now more than ever convinced it is the right thing to source and grow heirloom type vegetables, I am looking forward to this year of change, and of growing the old so that it seems brand new...
