Feed Us with Trees: A Conversation with Elspeth Hay and Chez Liley

How do the stories we tell impact the physical landscape? Join Elspeth Hay, author of the new book Feed Us with Trees: Nuts and the Future of Food, and Chez Liley of Wellspring Commons as they explore how narratives shape our food system, as well as our relationships to the ecosystems we call home.

As a girl, Elspeth learned that we humans are a blight on the natural world. Her lived experience confirmed this time and again—until the day she learned that humans can eat acorns. Suddenly, stories she’d believed her whole life began to unravel. 

Chez Liley sees the way our current dominant cultural narratives paint humans as separate from the natural world—and has come to understand food as a key pathway for reconnection. 

During this conversation they both will explore what it means to be human and hungry in New England today, and how our food systems might change if we broadened our vision of staple crop production to include not just farmed fields but also our native nut trees.

Feed Us with Trees: Nuts and the Future of Food will be available for sale and signing.

Elspeth Hay is the creator and host of the Local Food Report, a weekly feature that has aired on the Cape and Islands National Public Radio station since 2008, and the author of the award-winning book Feed Us with Trees: Nuts and the Future of Food. Deeply immersed in her own local-food system, Elspeth's work focuses on the people, places, and ideas that feed us. Learn more at elspethhay.com.

Chez Lilley co-founded Wellspring Commons Stewards as a creative forum for multidisciplinary collaborations towards sustainability solutions in northwest Connecticut, part of the larger story of the regeneration of the Housatonic River Valley Watershed.