Chicken Poop for the Soul: In Search of Food Sovereignty

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. This book is about a common dream: to leave the city and return to a simpler life. It is a story of success, failure and determination, which is guaranteed to make you laugh, shake your head in disbelief and get damned angry.

About the Author :
Kristeva Dowling was born and raised in Vancouver, BC, and attained her master's degree in Social Anthropology in New Zealand. In 2003, she returned to Canada and bought a small acreage in the Bella Coola Valley. Determined to grow her own food, she turned her attention to sustainable farming, started a blog on homesteading and began to write about self-sufficiency. She has been a contributor to "Not Dabbling in Normal", the Coast Mountain News and the Williams Lake Tribune. She has also been published in Small Farm Canada, and has an upcoming article in Outdoor Edge Magazine about moose hunting. Kristeva is now living Grande Prairie, Alberta.

Review :
"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 eighteen months 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." -- BC Studies "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." -- book addiction "While the title Chicken Poop for the Soul: In Search of Food Sovereignty is a bit of a retread of the popular Chicken Soup series, the content definitely is not. Author Kristeva Dowling penned what she sees as the 'next step' to the 100-mile diet over an 18-month period at her home in Hagensborg in the Bella Coola Valley. Her goal was an attempt at 'food sovereignty.'" -- Williams Lake Tribune