a n i m a l , v e g e ta b l e , m i r ac l e 338 But it’s also true what the strategists say about hearts and minds—you have to win them both We will change our ways significantly as a nation not when some laws tell us we have to (remember Prohibition?), but when we want to During my family’s year of conscious food choices, the most important things we’d learned were all about that: the wanting to Our fretful minds had started us on a project of abstinence from industrial food, but we finished it with our hearts We were not counting down the days until the end, because we didn’t want to go back A few days after my momentary chest-deep-in-food fantasy, we had dinner with our friends Sylvain and Cynthia Sylvain grew up in the Loire Valley, where local food is edible patriotism, and I sensed a kindred spirit from the way he celebrated every bite of our salad, inhaling the spice of the cut radishes and arugula He told us that in India it’s sometimes considered a purification ritual to go home and spend a year eating everything from one place—ideally, even to grow it yourself I liked this name for The Blind Leading the Blind Critics of local food suggest that it’s naive or elitist, whereas industrial agriculture is for everybody: it’s what’s for dinner, all about feeding the world “Genetically modified, industrially produced monocultural corn,” wrote Steven Shapin in the New Yorker, “is what feeds the victims of an African famine, not the gorgeous organic technicolor Swiss chard from your local farmers’ market.” The big guys have so completely taken over the rules of the game, it’s hard to see how food systems really work, but this criticism hits the nail right on the pointy end: it’s perfectly backward One of industrial agriculture’s latest feedthe-hungry schemes offers a good example of why that’s so Exhibit A: “golden rice.” It’s a genetically modified variety of rice that contains beta-carotene in the kernel (All other parts of the rice plant already contain it, but not the grain after it is milled.) The developers of this biotechnology say they will donate the seeds— with some strings attached—to Third World farmers It’s an important public relations point because the human body converts beta-carotene to vitamin A; a deficiency of that vitamin affects millions of children, especially in Asia, causing half a million of them every year to go blind GM rice is the food industry’s proposed solution time begins 339 what we had done: a purification ritual, to cultivate health and gratitude It sounds so much better than wackadoo Over the years since I first acquired children and a job, I’ve often made reference to the concern of “keeping my family fed.” I meant this in the same symbolic way I’d previously used (pre-kids, pre-respectable job) to speak of something “costing a lot of bread.” I was really talking about money Now when I say bread, I mean bread I find that food is not symbolic of anything so much as it is real stuff: beetroot as neighbor to my shoe, chicken as sometime companion I once read a pioneer diary in which the Kansas wife postponed, week after week, harvesting the last hen in her barren, windy yard “We need the food badly,” she wrote, “but I will miss the company.” I have never been anywhere near that lonely, but now I can relate to the relationship When I pick apples, I miss the way they looked on the tree Eggplants look like lightbulbs on the plant, especially the white and But most of the world’s malnourished children live in countries that already produce surplus food We have no reason to believe they would have better access to this special new grain Golden rice is one more attempt at a monoculture solution to nutritional problems that have been caused by monocultures and disappearing diversity In India alone, farmers have traditionally grown over 200 types of greens, and gathered many more wild ones from the countryside Every single one is a good source of beta-carotene So are fruits and vegetables Further, vitamin A delivered in a rice kernel may not even help a malnourished child, because it can’t be absorbed well in isolation from other nutrients Throwing more rice at the problem of disappearing dietary diversity is a blind approach to the problem of blindness “Naïve” might describe a person who believes agribusinesses develop their heavily patented commodity crops in order to feed the poor (Golden rice, alone, has seventy patents on it.) Technicolor chard and its relatives growing in village gardens—that’s a solution for realists STEVEN L HOPP 340 a n i m a l , v e g e ta b l e , m i r ac l e neon purple ones, and I observe the unplugging of their light when I toss them in the basket My turkey hens have names now I know better, but couldn’t help myself / At the end of March, one of my turkey mothers found her calling She sat down on the platform nest and didn’t get up again for a week Then two, then three This was Lolita, the would-be husband-stealer—the hen who had been first to show mating behaviors, and then to lay eggs Now she was the first to begin sitting with dedication We expunged “Lolita” from her record and dubbed her “Number One Mother.” Underneath the platform where she now sat earning that title, we fixed up two more nests to contain the overflow Together the hens had now produced more than fifty eggs While Number One Mother incubated about two dozen of them, Numbers Two, Three, and Four were showing vague interest in the other piles Number Two had started to spend the nights sitting on eggs, but still had better things to in the daytime Three and Four were using the remaining nest the way families use a time-share condo in Florida But something inside the downy breast of Number One had switched on Once she settled in, I never saw her get up again, not even for a quick drink of water With her head flattened against her body and a faraway look in her eyes, she gave herself over to maternity I began bringing her handfuls of grain and cups of water that she slurped with desperation I apologized for everything I’d said to her earlier I was the free bird now, out in the sunshine as much as possible, walking into the open-armed embrace of springtime A balmy precipitation of cherry petals swirled around us as we did our garden chores The ruddy fiddleheads of peony leaves rolled up out of the ground The birthday garden made up of gift plants I’d received last year now surprised me like a series of unexpected phone calls: the irises bloomed; the blue fountain grass poured over the rocks; I found the yellow lady’s slipper blossoms when I was weeding under the maple One friend had given me fifty tulip bulbs, one for each of my years, which we planted in a long trail down the driveway Now they were popping up with flaming red heads on slender time begins 341 stalks like candles on a birthday cake The groundhog that dug up some bulbs over the winter had taken a few years off I would try to remain grateful to the groundhog later on, when he was eating my beans Spring is made of solid, fourteen-karat gratitude, the reward for the long wait Every religious tradition from the northern hemisphere honors some form of April hallelujah, for this is the season of exquisite redemption, a slam-bang return to joy after a season of cold second thoughts Our personal hallelujah was the return of good, fresh food Nobody in our household was dying for a Moon Pie, but we’d missed crisp things, more than we’d realized Starting the cycle again was a heady prospect: cutting asparagus, hunting morels, harvesting tender spinach and chard We’d made it Did our year go the way we’d expected? It’s hard to say We weren’t thinking every minute about food, as our family life was occupied front and center by so many other things Devastating illnesses had darkened several doors in our close family We’d sent a daughter off to college and missed her company, and her cooking If our special way of eating had seemed imposing at first, gradually it was just dinner, the spontaneous background of family time as we met our fortunes one day, one phone call, one hospital visit, wedding, funeral, spelling bee, and birthday party at a time It caused us to take more notice of food traditions of all kinds— the candy-driven school discipline program, the overwhelming brace of covered dishes that attend a death in the family But in the main, our banana-free life was now just our life So much so, in fact, I sometimes found myself a bit startled to run across things like bananas in other people’s kitchens—like discovering a pair of Manolo Blahnik sandals in the lettuce bed Very nice I’m sure, just a little bit extravagant for our kind We pressed ourselves to pronounce some verdicts on our year Our planning and putting-by for the winter had passed muster, as we still had pesto and vegetables in our freezer to last comfortably till the abundances of June We’d overplanted squash, could have used more garlic, but had enough of everything to stay happy The Web site of the local-eating Vancouver couple said they’d ended their year fifteen pounds lighter (despite what they described as “a lot of potatoes”), whereas we all weighed out of 342 a n i m a l , v e g e ta b l e , m i r ac l e the year right about where we’d weighed in, and hoped to remain— except for Lily, who had gained twelve pounds and grown nearly five inches Obviously we never went hungry, and you can’t raise that much good kid on potatoes alone The Canadians had been purists, though, and really we weren’t; we’d maintained those emergency rations of mac-andcheese (And anyone giving up coffee gets a medal we weren’t even in the running for.) But frankly, any year in which no high-fructose corn syrup crosses my threshold is pure enough for me Our plan to make everything from scratch had pushed us into a lot of great learning experiences In some cases, what we learned was that it was too much trouble for everyday: homemade pasta really is better, but we will always buy it most of the time, and save the big pasta-cranking events for dinner parties Hard cheeses are hard I never did try the French-class mayonnaise recipe I’d also imagined at some irrational moment that I would learn to make apple cider and vinegar, but happily submitted to realism when I located professionals nearby doing these things really well On the other hand, making our daily bread, soft cheeses, and yogurt had become so routine we now prepared them in minutes, without a recipe Altered routines were really the heart of what we’d gained We’d learned that many aisles of our supermarket offered us nothing local, so we didn’t even push our carts down those: frozen foods, canned goods, soft drinks (yes, that’s a whole aisle) Just grab the Virginia dairy products and organic flour and get out, was our motto, before you start coveting thy neighbor’s goods A person can completely forget about lemons and kiwis once the near occasion is removed As successful as our sleuthing into local markets had been, we never did find good local wheat products, or seafood I was definitely looking forward to some nonlocal splurges in the coming months: wild-caught Alaskan salmon and bay scallops and portobellos, hooray In moderation, of course I had a much better sense of my options now and could try for balance, buying one bottle of Virginia wine, for example, for every import The biggest shock of our year came when we added up the tab We’d fed ourselves, organically and pretty splendidly we thought, on about fifty ... hungry, and you can’t raise that much good kid on potatoes alone The Canadians had been purists, though, and really we weren’t; we’d maintained those emergency rations of mac-andcheese (And anyone... birthday party at a time It caused us to take more notice of food traditions of all kinds— the candy-driven school discipline program, the overwhelming brace of covered dishes that attend a death... 339 what we had done: a purification ritual, to cultivate health and gratitude It sounds so much better than wackadoo Over the years since I first acquired children and a job, I’ve often made reference