Perhaps eating healthier or doing more to support your community is on your list of resolutions for 2021. Or maybe, you’re just focused on simply staying home and keeping safe during the pandemic. Luckily, by eating more local food and shopping local as much as possible, we can all move forward on these resolutions.
If you’re not sure where to start, we hope to help. As we enter the cold, dark days of wintertime, many of us are snuggling up by the woodstove with a good book. We are sharing a few of our favorites, that may just inspire you to eat and live well from the land in your community.
The Dirty Life and Good Husbandry by Kristin Kimball
Kristin Kimball shares the beauty and heartbreak of the hard work that is involved in bringing sustainably raised food to market on her farm in Essex, New York. Her two memoirs are a must-read for anyone looking to better understand the landscape of agriculture in the North Country.
Vegetable Literacy by Deborah Madison
Deborah Madison explores the botanical link between vegetables, herbs and flowers and how these connections can inspire and transform how we think about cooking. It is a “celebration of diversity in the plant kingdom”, and helps readers better understand the foods we eat in their living plant form.
Local Dirt by Andrea Bemis
This is the cookbook that will help you re-think how you’ve been preparing the items in your CSA share. Bemis is a farmer on six acres of land with her partner outside of Portland, Oregon, and the recipes and stories featured in this book easily translate to the seasons and experience of farms in New York State. This cookbook will help and inspire you to create meals with ingredients as close to the source as possible.
ROSEMARY GLADSTAR’S MEDICINAL HERBS: A BEGINNER’S GUIDE BY ROSEMARY GLADSTAR
If you’re looking to understand and use more herbs in your day-to-day life, this is a great book to start with. Rosemary Gladstar is the rock star of herbalism, and this introductory guide will help you think beyond eggs and lettuce when it comes to buying local. This book will help stock your home with many delicious concoctions that claim to ease common ailments- such as pickled garlic and thyme infused honey.
FIBERSHED BY REBECCA BURGESS
This beautiful read will inspire you to transform your thinking about textiles. This book calls for a more ethical and sustainable farm-to-closet model of textile consumption that focuses on good health for animals, people and the planet. Learn more about the more sustainable types of growing, dying and fashioning textiles. This is a must-read for the conscious consumer, farmer, or homesteader.
UNCULTIVATED: WILD APPLES, REAL CIDER, AND THE COMPLICATED ART OF MAKING A LIVING BY ANDY BRENNAN
While large-scale agriculture has brought more and more technology and mechanization into food production, Brennan makes a case for moving back to a wilder model with much less human intervention. His story of making a small farm business making cider with wild apples in the Catskill region.
BRAIDING SWEETGRASS BY ROBIN WALL KIMMERMER
A list of books to read is not complete without listing Braiding Sweetgrass. This book of short stories and essays guides readers to consider the interconnectedness of land, animal, and human communities. Kimmermer uses storytelling, botanical wisdom and philosophy to shine a light on environmental and social problems associated with blind consumption. This is a book full of indigenous wisdom and inspiration to think deeper into the systems (like where our food, fur, and lumber come from) that we participate in.
Have you read a great book that has helped inspire you to consider where you spend your dollars? Let us know which books you would add to the list on Facebook and Instagram. Find local food and goods near you in our directory.
