Land & Table Book Club

Books play a key role in helping us envision and take steps towards positive life change. And it’s a journey - no one ever arrives, but we can encourage each other along the way.

The Land & Table book club is a way to engage with the core ideas and topics that are motivating a new generation to create a more resilient food system and vibrant local community life. We’ll be reading books about: eating local, self-reliant living, agrarian culture, growing food, culinary history, community resilience, going back-to-the-land, and more.

This is not a book club that will be technical in nature. And if you don’t have a green thumb, you’ll still feel at home. You don’t have to grow your own food or be a homesteader or farmer to enjoy these books. But…you do have to be curious about reviving your connection with the land, with other people, and with the food you eat. And the reality is: tending to those connections is important for all of us.

We meet on the first Thursday of each month and welcome anyone to our meetings - even if you have not read the book we will be discussing.

Registration is encouraged, but not required.

For more information about Land & Table, please visit their website: https://landandtable.com/.

This month we will be discussing: Blessing the Hands That Feed Us : What Eating Closer to Home Can Teach Us About Food, Community, and Our Place on Earth by Vicki Robin.

(Paperback edition has a different subtitle: Lessons from a 10-mile Diet.)

(Click title link above to place a copy on hold. Blessing the Hands That Feed Us also available as an ebook and as an audiobook on HOOPLA.)

Summary 

Taking the local food movement to heart, bestselling author and social innovator Vicki Robin pledged for one month to eat only food sourced within a 10-mile radius of her home on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound, Washington. Her sustainable diet not only brings to light society's unhealthy dependency on mass-produced, prepackaged foods but also helps her reconnect with her body and her environment.

Like Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and the bestselling books of Michael Pollan, Blessing the Hands That Feed Us is part personal narrative and part global manifesto. By challenging herself to eat and buy local, Robin exposes the cause and effect of the food business, from the processed goods laden with sugar, fat, and preservatives to the trucks burning through fuel to bring them to a shelf near you.

Robin's journey is also one of community as she befriends all the neighboring farmers who epitomize the sustainable lifestyle. Among them are Tricia, the prolific market gardener who issued Robin's 10-mile challenge; Britt and Eric, two young, enthusiastic farmers living their dream of self-sufficiency; and Vicky, a former corporate executive-turned-cheese maker.

Featuring recipes throughout, along with practical tips on adopting your own locally sourced diet, Blessing the Hands That Feed Us is an inspirational guide and testimonial to the locavore movement and a healthy food future.