The Local Food Report

Our native forests are full of food. The understories are packed with blueberries and huckleberries and for thousands of years, local overstories have been full of nut trees: hickories and chestnuts and walnuts and oaks.

Mob grazing is a strategy Dan Athearn is working with to try to control what's growing on this unique stretch of grassland. His family took over managing the land with a group of other local growers and cattle farmers in 2021.

When Debbie Athearn's father bought the 25 acres that started Morning Glory Farm in Edgartown, times were different.

Almost fifty years ago, when Haraldur Sigurdsson first came to the University of Rhode Island from Iceland, he got interested in what makes some clam shells more purple than others.

My friend Nicole Cormier is a registered dietician and studying for a masters in herbalism. And when she told me she eats pine pollen — and that in fact, it's one of her favorite things to forage, I had to tag along.

Many of our native bees — and a few other surprising insects — evolved with and rely on many native edible species.

This week on the Local Food Report, a Korean Natural Farming teacher on the relationships that create healthy soil.

John Bunker has spent the past fifty years learning everything he can about North American apple varieties.

Earlier this year, I finally made the journey north to meet John Bunker — a farmer in his 70s who arguably knows more about apple varieties than almost anyone alive in New England today.

This week on the Local Food Report, a naturalist takes Elspeth hunting for hazelnuts.

This week part three of a mini-series on big picture local food issues—today with a focus on what we can change with a little hyper-local creativity.

This week on the Local Food Report, weekend meals to help hungry kids.

Liz Wiley is executive director of the Marion Institute — a non-profit focused on improving human and environmental health and food quality in southeastern Massachusetts. And when I asked her what she's working on right now, she said regional communication.

This week part one of a mini-series on big picture local food issues—starting with the shellfish industry.

Years ago, Lou Quattrucci's neighbor came home from a trip to Italy with a gift. It was a bottle of creamy limoncello.

Around this time every year, Elspeth talks with a local farmer or gardener about ordering seeds for the upcoming growing season. This year, she's branched into aquaculture.

You've probably heard that you're supposed to prune fruit trees. But did you know that it's also important to prune berries?

I sat down with Russell Norton a horticulture and agriculture educator with the Cape Cod Cooperative Extension and started by asking him: why do we prune?

Back in 2001, Lauren Leveque and her husband Josh learned to seed save as professionals with High Mowing Seeds in Vermont.

This week on the Local Food Report, five ways to eat a cabbage.

Melissa Lynch works with Sustainable Cape, a non-profit dedicated to connecting local food to healthy places and people. Since April of 2024, she's been running the organization's Food is Medicine program, where Mass Health actually pays Sustainable Cape to deliver some of its patients' local food:

One fall, I lead a foraging walk with visiting fellows from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. I pointed out Prickly Pear Cactus — a plant that I've heard you can eat, but that we're not allowed to harvest in Massachusetts, because here it's considered an endangered species.

Imagine yourself sitting down to dessert at the end of a holiday feast. What are you looking for in a pie? This is the question a panel of judges in Provincetown asks themselves each year at an event at the Provincetown Commons called Pie Fest.

This week, a Falmouth man heads to the Midwest to meet a rare local fruit.

This week on the Local Food Report, a re-telling of the Thanksgiving story with an unexpected narrator.

Until the other day, I'd never thought about how an animal's diet affects the ways farmers control them. When we talk about the differences between farm animals raised on grass versus grain, we usually focus on health. But there's also a set of relationships that's lost when these animals follow the sound of grain in a bucket instead of grazing.

When Brewster farmer Ron Backer first read about honeynut squash, he knew he wanted to grow it.

This summer, farmer Dave Dewitt of Truro told me he's growing something I've always thought of as a southern crop — okra.

Harvesting Dinner—and Jewelry—from the Sea.

For years now, farmer Stephanie Rein of the non-profit Sustainable Cape in Truro has been teaching kids about growing food. She does this in multiple elementary schools on the Outer Cape, and when she first started, she had the kids make something she called a seed wish list.

A few years ago, a Philadelphia arborist named Max Paschall read an article about a man named John Hershey. Hershey ran a tree nursery and experimental farm in Pennsylvania in the 1930s.

Helen loved kvass. The flavor, the fizz, everything about this drink made from fermenting stale bread with water and sugar. But when she got home, she forgot about it for almost forty years.

I have a friend in Barnstable who's always telling me about unusual edible plants, particularly perennials. Recently, he told me he's planting something new called a Cornelian Cherry.

To plant a fig tree in our climate is an act of faith. Most figs are native to the tropics—and in the heat and sweat of this world they do amazing things. They've co-evolved with a wasp that crawls into the fruit and pollinates it from the inside out.

As a fisheries and aquaculture specialist at the Barnstable County Cooperative Extension, Abigail Archer spends a lot of time trying to help the public connect the dots between shellfish, nitrogen, and healthy estuaries. This relationship starts when nitrogen travels through freshwater streams and runoff into our marine environment.

In 2015, Jess Tsoukalas was living in Wellfleet at a rental property that the tenant before her had planted with an abundance of fruit trees.

Carrie Richter of Peach Tree Circle Farm in Falmouth is a self-proclaimed garlic fanatic."It makes every dish better. There's nothing about garlic that I don't like."

This time of year at the farmers markets, lettuce is the variety queen. It comes in heads and leaves, reds and greens, crisp hearts and soft butter leaves. Over the past few weeks, I've spoken to farmers about growing lettuce, and what varieties they like.

It's high season for a common wild berry with a whole lot of names.

I've been hearing about the Herring River Restoration Project since I moved to Wellfleet in 2004. Restoring tidal flow to the 1100-acre saltwater estuary, which was diked in 1908, is an effort that's been decades in the making — and hands-on work finally began in early 2023.

Have you ever been in a grocery store and seen items marked “WIC approved”? It stands for “women infants and children.” It's a federally funded state run supplemental nutrition assistance program.

Over the past few years, I've started noticing how much I can control certain plants' productivity by managing their flowers and seeds.

A New Jersey forager visits Falmouth to give a talk on the magic of weeds.

It's that time of year where many of us are getting summer seedlings in the ground. And I don't know about you, but my excitement is usually bigger than my garden — I can't fit everything I want to plant.

Most cooks have heard of broccoli rabe. But what about other rabe varieties? This week on The Local Food Report, Elspeth Hay talks with growers at the Orleans Farmers' Market about this spring delicacy from the Brassica family.

This week, the joys of keeping indoor-outdoor food plants.

This week on the Local Food Report, a slaughterhouse in Westport.

There aren't many things that will get me out of bed at 5:30 in the morning. But bagels—or really just the prospect of learning how to make them—is one. Recently, I stood in Wellfleet's Bagel Hound with owner Ellery Althaus, while the windows were still dark, staring a pile of dough.