Interview with Author of Chicken Poop for the Soul
Kristeva Dowling: more than just a Mazer
Food sovereignty goes beyond addressing the need to secure a daily food source. Food sovereignty means having the right to determine where your food comes from and how it is produced. In 2008, alarmed by the impact agro-business was having on Canadian food quality and security, Kristeva Dowling decided to take control of her own food source. In an attempt to achieve 100 percent self-sufficiency on her small holding in BC’s Bella Coola Valley, she ploughed under her land, converted her garage to an intensive care unit for chickens and learned to hunt, fish, gather and preserve her own food.
In the tradition of the “back-to-the-landers” of the ’60s, Dowling sheds the habits of her urban life and, with no agricultural background, begins an emotional and political journey towards independence.
Dowling’s story is a witty, humorous and often bizarre journey of trial and error. Between rendering maple syrup, mothering baby chicks, canning hundreds of pounds of preserves, tracking wild game and growing her own wheat, Dowling finds time to reflect on her new-found tangible skills, her intangible problems and the politics and legislative barriers that face BC’s small farming community.
Chicken Poop for the Soul is about a common dream: to leave the city and return to a simpler life. It is a story of success, failure and determination, that is guaranteed to make you laugh, shake your head in disbelief and get damned angry.
Dowling writes openly and directly here about her social and philosophic concerns, her material planning, and her many disagreements with the regulatory bodies governing small farms in British Columbia. Rare for a book with a food-driven audience, Chicken Poop raises all sorts of issues that might seem a long way from growing your own veg. Marketing boards, abattoir regulations, eating wild animals, killing wild predators: the great advantage of this book, to me, has to be the breadth of Dowling’s careful thinking about her multifaceted subject… She does a great job, in particular, of unpacking the assorted challenges posed by BC’s legislative and administrative restrictions on local food production.
Chicken Poop for the Soul is, in part, a personal journal documenting Kristeva Dowling’s quest to take more control of the food she consumes by spending several years growing, foraging, bartering, hunting, and fishing for enough food to be self-sufficient. It is also an important contribution to the literature on local food and farming… Dowling provides a window through which urban dwellers can view the trials and tribulations of becoming a farmer, and the lifestyle of a newly aspiring ruralista in British Columbia; but the subtitle, “In Search of Food Sovereignty,” is perhaps the more important part of Chicken Poop… Chicken Poop for the Soul is a good introduction to the subject of food sovereignty as it relates to both the producer and the consumer.
To purchase a copy of Kristeva’s Book, CLICK HERE.
