In the first chapter, Barbara Kingsolver establishes the premise of the book: It is an account of a year-long challenge she and her family set for themselves to eat locally, sustainably grown food. The family consists of Barbara, her husband Steven L. Hopp, her daughter from her previous relationship Camille Kingsolver, and her daughter Lily Hopp Kingsolver. The year begins when the family ends “our existence outside the city limits of Tucson, Arizona, to begin a rural one in southern Appalachia” (2).

They move to a farm, which Steven has owned for 20 years “with a farmhouse, barn, orchards and fields” (2). Their mission is to “attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew. We tried to wring most of the petroleum out of our food chain” (10)

Kingsolver then explores a history of the farming and food production industry in America. She explains that the “drift away from our agricultural roots is a natural consequence of migration from the land to the factory […] but we got ourselves uprooted entirely by a drastic reconfiguration of U.S. farming, beginning just after World War II” (13).