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deepwinterodd 's review for:
I think I enjoyed this book in no small part because I'm familiar with a lot of the organizations and places Hewitt details in the book: Pete's Greens, Jasper Hill Cheese, Vermont Soy, and the town of Hardwick in general. It's also dovetailing with a debate my own small Vermont town is having over whether to allow a big box store to move in and force a total rethink of traffic patterns.
Let me back up.
I agree with other reviewers who have stated that the title of this book is misleading; it is, in reality, a series of poignant vignettes, profiles of places and people engaged in food and farming in rural Vermont, interspersed with the author's sometimes ham-handed attempts at talking through sustainability in a local food movement. Because as Hewitt makes clear, Hardwick didn't find vitality in local food so much as wrestle with a discussion between long-time traditional farmers, newcomers with weird soy-based ideas, and Vermonters not engaged in farming at all and struggling to feed their families anything at all.
The vignettes are delightful. Hewitt is a vivid and descriptive place-teller and the subjects of his profiles come to life, warts and all. There's a whole chapter on soil fertility that is one of the most engaging pieces of anything I've read in years.
But unfortunately, Hewitt himself struggles to unpack the local food sustainability / growth / economic access situation unfolding in Hardwick. And to be fair, he admits he struggles with it, but oh boy, the struggles. They go on for days, and sometimes Hewitt flips back and forth on a topic within the space of a few pages, like when he decries Claire's restaurant for serving $12 entrees (too pricey for a town where the average salary was (in 2009) $14K), and then decries Hardwick for not accepting the challenge of prioritizing to eat $12 entrees ...and then settles on dour disapproval of the restaurant's pricing.
It's confusing, and the wool-gathering in this vein goes on for a very long time. I wish he'd brought in an economist or someone whose area really is food sustainability systems and let them do at least half the wool-gathering.
But I really liked meeting all the farms in and around Hardwick, I liked thinking about local food systems with Hewitt (Hewitt farms over in Cabot and I wanted to hear more about his farm as well as all the others), and I'm still mad that Jasper Hill has stopped producing Constant Bliss.
Let me back up.
I agree with other reviewers who have stated that the title of this book is misleading; it is, in reality, a series of poignant vignettes, profiles of places and people engaged in food and farming in rural Vermont, interspersed with the author's sometimes ham-handed attempts at talking through sustainability in a local food movement. Because as Hewitt makes clear, Hardwick didn't find vitality in local food so much as wrestle with a discussion between long-time traditional farmers, newcomers with weird soy-based ideas, and Vermonters not engaged in farming at all and struggling to feed their families anything at all.
The vignettes are delightful. Hewitt is a vivid and descriptive place-teller and the subjects of his profiles come to life, warts and all. There's a whole chapter on soil fertility that is one of the most engaging pieces of anything I've read in years.
But unfortunately, Hewitt himself struggles to unpack the local food sustainability / growth / economic access situation unfolding in Hardwick. And to be fair, he admits he struggles with it, but oh boy, the struggles. They go on for days, and sometimes Hewitt flips back and forth on a topic within the space of a few pages, like when he decries Claire's restaurant for serving $12 entrees (too pricey for a town where the average salary was (in 2009) $14K), and then decries Hardwick for not accepting the challenge of prioritizing to eat $12 entrees ...and then settles on dour disapproval of the restaurant's pricing.
It's confusing, and the wool-gathering in this vein goes on for a very long time. I wish he'd brought in an economist or someone whose area really is food sustainability systems and let them do at least half the wool-gathering.
But I really liked meeting all the farms in and around Hardwick, I liked thinking about local food systems with Hewitt (Hewitt farms over in Cabot and I wanted to hear more about his farm as well as all the others), and I'm still mad that Jasper Hill has stopped producing Constant Bliss.