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uthor of Feed Us with Trees, creator of The Local Food Report, and passionate proponent of place-based living.
As a kid, Elspeth wondered: Why is our species so out of place? Why don’t we belong in the natural world?
Growing up in Maine with two birdwatcher parents, she was well-versed in the ways other species were perfectly adapted to the wild ecosystems of her home state. Sapsuckers used their chisel-like bills to drill neat rows of sap wells into birches and maples; crossbills had mandibles perfectly adapted for extracting seeds from the cones of pines, hemlocks, and spruces.
But the human communities Elspeth knew seemed to be destroying wild places at an ever-increasing rate—not only through overconsumption, but simply to meet our most basic needs, including the need to eat.
In her quest to understand why—and how and if we might change—Elspeth’s spent the past 15+ years interviewing local food producers, harvesters, processors, cooks, policymakers and visionaries about what it means to be human and live thoughtfully in place. In the process, she’s come to understand that we humans are, in fact, perfectly adapted to a wide range of places—and to believe that reconnecting with our home ecosystems is both the great challenge and great joy of our times.
In addition to her work as a writer and public radio host, Elspeth is deeply immersed in the local food system of her own home community of Wellfleet, MA on the Outer Cape. She is part of the team behind the Wicked Oyster restaurant in Wellfleet, a co-founder of the Wellfleet Farmers Market, co-founder of the newly launched Commons Keepers, and a passionate student and teacher of place-based living.
Photo Credit: Joe Navas, 2021