Field Notes

A collection of recent stories

Elspeth Hay Elspeth Hay

Homemade Limoncello on Martha’s Vineyard | The Local Food Report

It’s creamy as in instead of being made with water and sugar, it’s made with sugar and heavy cream. When he first saw this new-to-him version of the famous Italian after-dinner drink, Lou wasn’t sure what to make of it, put it in the freezer, and for months, completely forgot about it.

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Elspeth Hay Elspeth Hay

Oyster Seed Ordering for the Spring | The Local Food Report

Today the oysters in Barnstable Harbor are farmed by aquaculture growers. Like all farmers, oyster growers have to buy seed each season. And Greta Nelson says that when their oyster seeds arrive from the hatchery, they’re tiny, so small that they can’t just be put out on the flats — they grow them in bags made of fine mesh.

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Elspeth Hay Elspeth Hay

Pruning Tips for Backyard Berries | The Local Food Report

The way that we generally prune blueberries is they're shrubs that often produce new shoots out of the ground. And it's really important to for almost all shrubs that produce shoots out of the ground to maintain youthfulness in the shrub.

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Elspeth Hay Elspeth Hay

SHADBERRIES | The Local Food Report

Shadbush berries are delicious—kind of like a cross between a beach plum and a blueberry, with small nutty seeds. Most of the time we just eat shadberries—they're so good, and also they don't keep that well—but in the rain this weekend I decided to experiment.

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Elspeth Hay Elspeth Hay

SPRING FORAGING | the local food report

I reached out to friends all over the Cape about what they're foraging. Together, we compiled a list of what's out there this time of year. The idea is to help you keep yourself healthy and fed during these difficult times. The links are either to old blog posts on these wild edibles, or other websites that have good identification guides.

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Elspeth Hay Elspeth Hay

MIGRATORY BEEKEEPERS | the local food report

Most people have no idea migratory beekeepers even exist—they do their work at night, moving bees while they're all back in the hive and unloading into orchards and fields in the dark—let alone how important they are to our huge, industrial food system.

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Book Coming July 2025

The day Elspeth Hay learned we can eat acorns, stories she’d believed her whole life began to unravel. We’re thinking about agriculture all wrong, she realized. Feed Us with Trees is her hopeful manifesto about a new and ancient food system centered on our keystone perennial nut trees: oaks, chestnuts, and hazelnuts.