Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Kingsolver gives a brief history of her family’s home and farm, which dates back to 1901 and includes carefully planted orchards that the previous family, the Webbs, cultivated. Most pertinently, the farm includes an old goat pen called “Old Charley’s Lot” which now grows highly prized morel mushrooms (72).

In describing her farm’s history, the author also delves into the history of farming in Appalachia, which today depends heavily on tobacco as a cash crop, as “virtually no other legal commodity commands such a high price per acre that farmers could stay in business with such small arable fields” (73). However, as tobacco use has plummeted, there is a strong need for a suitable substitute crop. In Kentucky, “two of the best tobacco-transition experiments to date are organic vegetables and sustainable lumber” (75).

Kingsolver points out that the transition to an economy of healthy, local produce would be profitable, but that “the presumed antagonism between ‘Man’ and ‘Nature’ is deeply rooted in our politics, culture, bedtime stories, […] and maybe even our genes” (77).

Kingsolver then describes the unique experience of gathering mushrooms, including the prized morels that grow on her property, which “are among the few foods that must be hunted and gathered.