Feed Us with Trees: Nuts and the Future of Food

A new and ancient story about perennial nut trees, our ecological role as humans, and the future of food

The day Elspeth Hay learned that we can eat acorns, stories she'd believed her whole life began to unravel.

Until then she'd always believed we must grow our staple foods in farmed fields-- the same fields wreaking havoc on our land, air, and water. But all over the Northern Hemisphere, Hay learned, humans once grew our staple foods in forest gardens centered on perennial nut trees: oaks, chestnuts, and hazelnuts. In Feed Us with Trees, Hay brings us along as she gets to know dozens of nut growers, scientists, Indigenous knowledge-keepers, researchers, and food professionals--and discovers that in tending these staple trees, we once played a vital environmental role as one of Earth's keystone species.

Feed Us with Trees is Hay's hopeful manifesto about a brighter, more abundant world-- and a critical look at the long-held stories we'll need to rewrite to build it. It will appeal to environmentalists, regenerative farmers, permaculture enthusiasts, agroforesters, locavores, and anyone hungry for a more vibrant future.

Elspeth Hay is a writer, public radio host, and creator of the Local Food Report, a weekly feature that has aired on CAI, the Cape & Islands NPR Station, since 2008. Deeply immersed in her own local food system, she writes and reports for print, radio, and online media with a focus on food and the environment. Elspeth's work has been featured in the Boston Globe, NPR's Kitchen Window, Heated with Mark Bittman, The Provincetown Independent, and numerous other publications. Through her conversations with growers, harvesters, processors, cooks, policy makers, Indigenous knowledge-keepers, scientists, researchers, and visionaries, she aims to rebuild our cultural store of culinary knowledge--and to reconnect us with the people, places, and ideas that feed us. Elspeth lives with her family on Cape Cod, MA.