The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food

by Ben Hewitt

Over the past few years, Hardwick, Vermont, a typical hardscrabble farming community of 3,000 residents, has jump-started its economy and redefined its self-image through a local, self-sustaining food system unlike anything else in America. Even as the recent financial downturn threatens to cripple small businesses and privately owned farms, a stunning number of food-based businesses have grown in the region.  The Town That Food Saved  is rich with appealing, colorful characters, from the optimistic upstarts creating a new agricultural model to the long-established farmers wary of the rapid change in the region.

Hewitt, a journalist and Vermonter, delves deeply into the repercussions of this groundbreaking approach to growing food, both its astounding successes and potential limitations. The captivating story of an unassuming community and its extraordinary determination to build a vibrant local food system,  The Town That Food Saved  is grounded in ideas that will revolutionize the way we eat and, quite possibly, the way we live.

Genres: Food, Nonfiction, History, Agriculture, Environment, Foodie, Audiobook

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Ben Hewitt writes and farms in Northern Vermont. His work has appeared in numerous national periodicals, including the New York Times Magazine, Wired, Gourmet, Discover, Skiing, Eating Well, Powder, Men's Journal, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, Bicycling, and many others. He lives with his wife and two sons in a self-built home that is powered by a windmill and solar photovoltaic panels. To help offset his renewable energy footprint, Ben drives a really big truck.


His book The Town That Food Saved, published by Rodale, tells the story of a rural, working-class Vermont community that is attempting to blueprint and implement a localized food system. Ben is currently working on a book about food safety, to be published by Rodale in 2011.

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hate “Big Food” and sick of shopping at the Big Y? Dream about being a locavore or an agripreneur (if that’s Greek to you, check out a Foodie dictionary)? Wish you could eat at a restaurant on Main Street, Your S.A., that gets 80% of its ingredients from sources within 15 miles? This book is for you.

It’s the story of one town that’s doing what other towns can only dream of doing. And if Ben Hewitt’s book goes as big as, say, a Michael Pollan release, then Hardwick, Vermont, will not be pleased with the ensuing increase of real estate values caused by well-off yuppies who are ready to forgo Whole Foods in favor of Whole Hog.

One by one, Hewitt introduces the players: a seed seller, soy maker, dairy farmer, cheese artisan, pig slaughterer, head chef, co-op food store manager, etc. You hear their opinions of their jobs and of each other's livelihoods. Tension? Sure. A lot of these youngish agripreneurs are already growing rich (not just vegetables) by selling their products to big city markets and internet shoppers. They should be feeding their own first and foremost, some argue. But then, how can they survive if “their own” alone isn’t enough to support their businesses? Paradoxes in the Green Mountain State. Hewitt's all over it and up to the philosophical musings on the topic.

At times a bit dry with its journalistic feel, The Town that Food Saved should satisfy its base, the growing ranks of foodies. Consider it a blueprint. And, if you’re too impatient to see this happen in your own town, consider it an invitation to Hardwick. Before it gets too expensive to live in, I mean.

[Happyreader · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title is a misnomer. Hardwick, VT has not been saved by food but this agricultural community has spawned some nascent organic food companies - and good for them. I enjoyed the personal stories and the exploration of some of the controversies surrounding a couple of those businesses getting some good press, such as a a 2008 NYT piece, and trying to establish themselves as community change agents to the annoyance of some of the more established organic farmers. No new local food system has yet been set up since the locals are not the primary consumers of the end products. The bulk of the revenue seems to come from outside the region and none of the new businesses have yet achieved profitability. Still these businesses have value in that they are attempting to prove the economic viability of providing organic food.

While I enjoyed the slice of rural life aspect of the book, I really did not enjoy the writing, especially during the first 50 pages. The author's style is frequently clumsy and he spends too much time pontificating on the end of life as we know it and is too focused on the media attention the town received for a short period of time. While reading this book, I met a mathematical forecaster for an options firm whose job entails removing the media noise to more accurately identify actual business and environmental trends. He stated that in the short-term it's always the noise that is most dominant. This book had too much noise obscuring the actual trends.

[Gwyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I had to sum this book up in one word, that word would be "meh". The author sets out to describe how the small Vermont community of Hardwick transformed itself from a run-down town into a local-foods hotspot. There are a few problems with this goal, which the author himself admits. First of all, the "food revolution" doesn't take place in Hardwick itself, but rather in the Hardwick area, including several nearby towns. Also, Hardwick, although certainly not the most prosperous town in the world, was not nearly as run-down as the dust jacket would have you believe. Finally, there was already a strong and deep-rooted local-food tradition in the area; the "revolution" was largely what the author calls "agreprenuers" who create small, vibrant business that would fit the "local" bill perfectly--except that they export most of their food outside the community.

There's something else the dust jacket gets wrong: "Lively, funny, and candid, The Town That Food Saved tells the fascinating story of an unassuming community..." Well, it is candid and the community is unassuming, but I can't say the book is lively or funny, or that the story is fascinating. Mostly it's slow, has too many chapters, and takes forever to get to the point. If you are a big fan of this genre or are looking for more information on Hardwick, you might check this out. But it's definitely no Omnivore's Dilemma.

[Shelah · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I read non-fiction books, I'm accustomed to two different kinds of approaches: 1) the memoir, where someone tells their insider experience with a subject (where they're expected to be biased), and 2) the journalist, where the person researches a subject and forms an opinion based on what they've found. Ben Hewitt seems to approach The Town that Food Saved from the point of view of a journalist (I believe that the book grew out of an article that he wrote for the now-defunct Gourmet magazine) but he's such an insider in the food community of Hardwick, Vermont, that it feels as if an outright memoir would have been a better approach.

Believe me, I don't broker any notions that Michael Pollan is impartial when he writes about food. Over the last few decades, he's written about little else, and his opinions come loud and clear both in what he says in his books, and his choice of subject material. On the other hand, he's not a peer with the slaughterhouse managers or restaurant chefs he interviews. Ben Hewitt is a peer with the small-time farmers living in and around Hardwick. In some ways, it feels as if Tom Stearns, the cheerleader of Hardwick's food movement, found out that Hewitt could write and appointed him to get the word out about what's going on in Northern Vermont. The story itself is pretty engaging, and I love some of the character profiles, but it feels weird to be writing journalistic character profiles about the guy who used to be your high school bus driver.

If you're really into reading books about sustainable communities or revamping the food system in America, then I think Hewitt's book is worth reading. But if you haven't read The Omnivore's Dilemma or Fast Food Nation or Animal, Vegetable, Miracle yet, start there first.

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did like the description of the modern agriculture lifestyle (in its many forms) because I think it's something that more people need to reconnect with.

I think the thing that threw me a bit off this book is that the author kept on referring to the exceptionalism of his town in Vermont. I live in Durham, which was named by Bon Appetit as the "foodiest town in America", so I kept wanting to interject with "Hey! We do that here, too!" (even down to having compost experts sell their wares at our neighborhood farmers market). I'm used to having access to food straight from the farmers. I'm used to my local restaurants serving seasonal menus because they're getting their food straight from the farmers too. I've seen local coffee shops, with their local pastries and roasted beans, push Starbucks out of business on at least two corners. It felt like the challenges in scaling that the author was anticipating had already been solved here. Maybe Hardwick is exceptional, and Durham is also exceptional just like Hardwick, but I'd rather hope that the locavore movement has more traction than that. I had hoped this book would have more to say on the potential for scaling up, rather than all the challenges of starting small.

[Zak · Rating 3 out of 5]

First off, I did like this book, and it was interesting to hear of a little rural community coming back to life through local/food/ag/etc. That is great and amazing and inspirational and neat. However, though it is great to hear all of this, I felt the author focused so much on his little community that he came across as thinking their community was the ONLY community doing these things. I think the entire country is experiencing what this small town in Vermont is experiencing. Co-ops, seed trading, composting, etc happens all over this country and is nothing new in little communities and even cities. So, again, I liked this book, but sometimes it came off as a little pretentious to think that Hardwick is the last bastion of hope in the world for food. We can learn things from them, but I think they could learn things from say, Milwaukee and our amazing local co-ops, composting, community gardens, etc too. Just my opinion. Still a good read for those looking to see what other communities are doing in the local food/ag "movement".

[audrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Melisa Buie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Theme- Investing and buying locally is an investment in your neighbors and community.

This book is a bit dated but message is still relevant.

[A.M. Arthur · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title is a touch misleading, but the book does present a lot of interesting ideas on combating the globalization of food production and bringing it back to a local, human level. A bit wordy in places but worth a read, especially if you're into buying local, organic products.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading "The Town that Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food," I felt that the subtitle was a more appropriate title than the actual title. Indeed, it did not seem as though food saved the community of Hardwick, Vt. Rather food seemed to be a common thread that led to the community being revitalized.

But I digress. It's a book worthy of a read, especially if, like me, you wonder whether a true local food movement would work in the Milwaukee, Wis., area (or the area where you live).

The author, Ben Hewitt, describes several older and younger people in the Hardwick area and the roles they have filled and the businesses they have created. He tells how all those people add up to create a food-centric community that has added to the revitalization of the area.

Those companies: High Mowing Organic Seeds, Highfields Center for Composting, Pete's Greens, the Center for an Agricultural Economy, Heartbeet Lifesharing, Vermont Soy Company, Vermont Natural Coatings, Jasper Hill Farm, Claire's. There are other farms and farmers, too; this is not a be-all, end-all list.

And now, the hail of bullets:

the author says "sustainable" has been corrupted: "At its core, agriculture is a human manipulation of a natural process. Is there a version of agriculture that is truly sustainable? Probably so. Is there a version of agriculture that is truly sustainable and able to feed 7 billion people? Almost certainly not."
talking about the decrease in the number of farmers: "Every step toward diluting the farming population among us is another step toward food insecurity."
a decentralized agricultural system will force us to think differently about how we shop and about what we eat.
Hewitt, who has a farm, on the value of food: "... the value of the food we grow isn't the food minus the labor necessary to bring it to the table. It is the food plus the labor."

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

To understand the effect this book had on me, I suppose it makes sense to give some context.

After much deliberation and internal struggle, I recently made a decision to return to graduate school in California to study Community and Regional Development. I wanted to figure out the ways in which agriculture and food business can do good: create jobs, improve the physical environment, improve people's health, and promote cultural change that, among other things, may lead to more cooperation, more compassion, more participation, and ultimately, a more satisfied, happy society.

More and more people have a hunch that there's something magical about community and local and regional "systems," or at least as opposed to the centralized, industrialized system that we've created over the past 100 or so years and this book starts to articulate and demystify some of this magic, not through theory or metrics, but through a story.

I guess it's unsurprising that this story fired me up, made me feel excited and validated and ready to get out there and buy a a mobile food truck and hire a few students and get produce from local farms and serve people affordable food.

By the end of the story, I was jumping out of my skin, crawling with anticipation, with ideas. Now, a few days later, the flutters have died down a bit in my gut and I've started to think more deeply about what I need to DO and I'm feeling a deep sense of satisfaction and purpose.

Hooray for inspiration.

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this book because I enjoy reading about our food system and because I spend a lot of time not far from Hardwick. I do much of my food shopping at Pete's Greens, the co-op, the Hardwick farmers' market, and local farm stands. I have eaten at Claire's. I also love the Galaxy Book Store. So I was interested to read an in depth analysis of the town and the changes taking place there, and was somewhat disappointed. To be sure, it would be very difficult to write an objective piece about a community, even an extended community, in which you live and work, especially in rural Vermont. Hewitt raises some good issues - how local is local, what tensions arise when new ideas and people try to change established communities, - but in the end, I found the book some what lacking a more rigourous and grounded approach based on an understanding of rural sociology, community dynamics, and power. Someone else mentioned that it felt like an overblown feature story for a magazine. I would agree with that. I would have liked more context and more facts to support Hewitt's arguments and observations. I also wish that discussions about local food systems would incorporate individual driving into an analysis of the carbon footprint of local systems, because while the food may not be traveling a great distance, I am traveling much more to buy it. Overall, this book is worth reading if the local food movement is a particular interest of yours.

[Kim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was very disappointed with this book, I expected it to be exactly how the title described it; The Town that Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food. Instead it was a hodge-podge mess of snippets of stories and interviews that the author conducted with his friends and neighbors (many whom he describes in unflattering ways). If you are looking to read this in hopes of finding a way an ag or food based community can be created in your town, don't waste your time. The book describes all the random farmers, growers, and other ag-based businesses in the author's region, very few who interact in a positive manner with each other, and in the end there is no "saving". Reading between the lines there is still no buy-in from the locals that have had their town taken over by a few transplants with grand ideas, by the end of the book some of these agrepreneurs, as Hewitt likes to call them, have come to realize this problem but no one had, as of the completion of the writing, taken steps to create a more collaborative relationship. In the end, the book seems to be more a guideline as to what not to do in starting a new-style ag-based town.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good story that could have been better edited. The author gives an entertaining perspective and it helps that I know some of the personalities involved. However, the book is a redundant in places and lacking in depth in others. The ending is a bit ambiguous, and misses an opportunity to engage people in their own communities. New England's eccentricity and insularity comes through. Can this work everywhere? The author isn't sure. Without giving away the ending, the author understands the need to go beyond saving a town, but doesn't give the reader a clear understanding of how to get to where we want to be.

[Melissa Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting story, I enjoyed reading the Hardwick's story and hearing (literally, I listened to the audio book of this) about the small agricultural businesses and their ethics. Unfortunately, the author tries far too hard to be clever, which distracts from the story at almost every turn.

[Andrea Thorpe · Rating 1 out of 5]

I went up to about page 60 and tossed in the towel...Hewitt spent chapter after chapter prepping you for his point, but never actually making the point.

[Alex Furst · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book #4 of 2022. "The Town That Food Saved" by Ben Hewitt. 3/5 rating.

This book is all about Hardwick, VT's drive toward a new type of local food. While it was not the most interesting book overall, it made me think about some ideas of local food that I had never really articulated as important in the push to save our agricultural system.

Just about everyone agrees that our current food and agriculture system are in shambles. But how can this shift away from the current system that is feeding America - but at the expense of obesity, real food, and (dare I say it) happiness - actually begin? Ben explores this through the small Vermont town's experiments with the shift.

Ben did a good job of asking a lot of questions about the recent move towards agrepreneurship and a push for "local food". While it is always assumed that the hip idea of expensive, local food (that only sometimes actually stays local) is good, it is important to explore this topic. He puts 4 necessities for a truly decentralized system that are so true, but somehow often skipped over:
1) "It must offer economic vitality to small-scale food producers."
2) "It must be based on sunshine."
3) "It must feed the locals."
4) "It must be circular."

We must actually support farms: especially the success of small ones - meaning those who farm for themselves all the way up to those who can sell outside their own region. For those of us that can, we should look to have our own gardens, maybe a few animals: goats, chickens, whatever. The food is important, but more than this, being close to the soil, having a connection to the land and growing the food we consume are all powerful ways to live a better life.

Hardwick's agrepreneurs are looking to show the world a process for a decentralized system of agriculture, but more than the actual process, Ben offers them as an inspiration for small towns who want to make some of this shift.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun Fact: I'll read pretty much anything about Vermont.

This book was good, but not great. It's a bout a small town in Vermont in the 2008 - 2009 era (book came out in 2011, but he put his pen down in '09) that was experiencing lots of media attention about it's burgeoning food culture. Lots of new businesses getting major write ups in places like the NY Times.

This is a small blue collar town in the middle of nowhere. Median family income is in the low thirties. A small number of businesses getting that sort of attention caused some alienation between the new "agripeneurs" and the older subsistence and farmer's market farmers.

This isn't Wendell Berry and this isn't Michael Pollan. You aren't going to gain any great insights. Heck, the author admits that he can't really come to any conclusions about local food resilience - but that turns out to be the genius of the book. Good people can disagree. The three acre farmers think that the thirty acre guy is too big. The thirty acre guy helps support lots of smaller operations, but he is a bit loud and aggressive. But here's the kicker: Not getting along matters. You need to bump elbows with people. Living as we do, in suburban neighborhoods where we drive into our garage and never do more than maybe wave at the people we live close to? That ain't healthy. We didn't evolve to live this way. No wonder people are so miserable. Sure, "hell is other people" but so is being cut off and alone.

I don't know what the answers are, either - we do need to move away from industrial models of agriculture, and we do need to rely more on our neighbors. This book is a look at a community trying to figure those things out, and as an act of sociological reporting, it's worth a read.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

More like a 3.5 but I did really like this book.

I've always loved the idea of food systems.
When my mom was young, my grandma had 4 friends that they would get their families together twice a week for a communal dinner 😊
One friend had cattle and would bring some meat, one friend had a huge produce farm so would bring veggies, my grandparents had bees and grandma would make the bread, and the other friend had was in charge of something else.
But combined they'd make a very nice dinner for all their families and split the leftovers.

My grandma growing up had to live off their garden. Her father was a teacher and 95% of his salary went into the hospital bills for my great aunt Leah who was sickly. She would help her parents care for the garden and can/bottle the abundance so they'd have food during the winter.

When I read other books, like The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, and read how certain families managed better than others because they knew to garden and can and be self reliant, I'm always jealous.

I try gardening every year, and I fail. I must be doing something wrong but have no one to teach me.
These types of food systems where you work as a community to support each other and help each other are just great.
If only someone could teach me.
That's why I'm only giving this book a 3.5.
I wanted more teaching how to do this but just talking about it.
But still, it's great!

[Karen Fasimpaur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read many books about sustainable ag and food politics, this one had a unique perspective and made some important points that are often missed.

Misnamed, this book really isn't about a town that food saved (in fact, food doesn't appear to have saved this town at all), but rather about the unique characteristics and people in a small Vermont town that led to a media story about agrepreneurs sprouting up there. It also delves into some of the more complex nuances of the local food movement, including its apparent appeal to a fringe (and sometimes elite) element, challenges of economics and distribution (leading to the fact that much "local food" isn't bought or consumed locally), issues of scale, scarcity of expertise and willingness to produce food in small-scale sustainable ways, and the always looming dominance of capitalism and what that means for local food economies.

For anyone interested in local food and its feasibility as more than a fringe idea, this is a must read.

[Brian Conor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, a fascinating series of essays about people in nearly every facet of an emerging local food system. Hewitt managed to interview people leading the changes and those who criticized every change. But there was a huge hole in the book because the other 95% of the population was left out. In addition, I only gave 3 stars just because the title of the book seemed to promise what it couldn't deliver: a narrative about how a town was saved by its local food system revolution. And yet, Hewitt spent the majority of the book saying something along the lines of "we don't know if local food will save the town, but I hope it does". Obviously real life doesn't get neat, happy endings, but I was hoping for an afterword or epilogue where he revisits Hardwick a few years later to see the progress (or lack of it).

Overall, the book was interesting and Hewitt did a great job of telling the stories of the people he met and how they fit into the local food system. But it feels like there should have been more to it than that.

[NOLaBookish aka blue-collared mind · Rating 4 out of 5]

While in Burlington, VT for a series of meetings and the NOFA-VT Winter Conference, I stopped at the Crow Bookstore to see what I could pick up for background on Vermont’s agricultural movement to understand its emergence as a “direct marketing” flag bearer for the alternative food community.

The book is focused on Hardwick, Vermont a small town (3200 pop.) 30 miles from the capitol of Montpelier and an hour or so from Burlington.
Hewitt starts slowly with the idea of exploring Hardwick's reputation as one of those Alternative Agricultural Stars, which he acknowledges has been made so by outside media, including Hewitt himself and The New York Times, among others.
The book profiles a few of the Hardwick’s ag economy’s “leading citizens” including Tom Stearns of High Mowing Seeds, Pete Johnson of Pete’s Greens (at the time, the state’s largest CSA, along with mucho wholesale and farmers market sales), Andrew Meyer of Vermont Soy Company, and assorted others like Jasper Hills Farms, Tom Gilbert of Highfields Center For Composting, North Hardwick Dairy, Claire’s Restaurant, Buffalo Mountain Coop, Center For an Agricultural Economy, and a few individual farmers and neighbors who take the time to give their opinion on the state of things in Vermont. He lets those interviewed tell him the pros and cons of what they and their neighbors are creating. He finds a couple of schools of thought although all sides seem to agree that this is a revolution of one type or another. Some offer their analysis of the Hardwick story from the point of view of a small, committed group building new components for achieving wealth and knowledge to share while the others believe they show it through their independent but community-connected lifestyle that doesn’t want to “win” over the other guys and exists as the opposite of what American capitalism has weakly offered most places.

This book was helpful to me. I spend my life thinking about alternative food systems and most of that time working among the disciples of it rather than those not yet sure that it serves them. To his credit, that Hewitt includes a few voices critical of this system like Steve Gorelick and Suzanna Jones in Walden is incredibly useful and incredibly rare in books of this kind. Their argument is one that I hear less often but one that I actually agree with: the new system cannot be built on the industrial model: either from its economics, its scale or its terminology. Suzanna points out her loathing of terms like entrepreneurs and food security and gave me the first laugh of the book: “People are always doing stupid things in the name of groovy ag movements.”


Hewitt makes the fair point that much of what is being touted as local food is actually being exported or is simply out of the reach for the cash-restricted Hardwick citizen. Those participating might agree but make the point that they are preparing the way for the next wave of farmers and entrepreneurs and boldly testing systems and new relationships.
He also considers the hard work and commitment that these new ag leaders are putting into building their projects. All of them are thinking about how to spread their worth and influence while showcasing their (often dazzling) project success to investors and policymakers.
I found Tom Gilbert to be a particularly effective champion for both sides of the argument, probably in part because he seems to see the holes that yet exist in it. “We have not created a new system in Hardwick; we’re just rebuilding and utilizing the infrastructure that was already here. I think we let the media get ahead of us. People read all of this amazing stuff was happening and it put everyone’s expectations on steroids…This is a building process, and we’re not ready to put the roof on, because we haven’t put the walls up yet.”

Hewitt also includes one of the most elegant, simple descriptions of local systems that I have seen in recent years in the book. It’s on Page 172 and I could write it out (because I copied it!) but I think everyone should read it within context of the arguments made.

The question of how to measure these systems is also touched upon and since that questions is so near and dear to my own heart, I wish more time had been spent discussing that with the members of the community.
Near the end, Hewitt attempts to unravel the issue of scale, which also proves that he has done his homework because it seems to me to be the Kryptonite of alternative food systems. A comment from Tom Stearns near the end shows the complicated relationship that this community has with the issue: “There is the assumption that big is bad, but maybe it’s just that big is only bad when doing bad things.”
I can only imagine what Suzanna Jones thought about THAT statement.

The Town That Food Saved as the title seems to me to be one of the only under thought-out ideas in this book. Hardwick seems saved by its size, its wealth of shared intellectual capital (sorry Suzanna!) and by being in a state that offers a safety net to all and yet seems to try to leave its citizens alone.
As for food systems, Hewitt hits on the reason why alternative food systems are growing so quickly in Vermont when he talks about the editorial that the Hardwick Gazette printed, linking food system skills to participation in democratic systems, and he himself does it on the aforementioned page 172: the idea of being responsible for your own and your neighbors’ (read community in 21st century speak) quality of life has never gone out of fashion in Vermont.
To finish that argument, my go-to guy in this story (Tom Gilbert) said it very well: ‘One of my missions is to equip people with the tools for community health and sovereignty. I‘m most interested in how whole systems can be used to combat other forms of oppression.”
Amen brother. And pass the local cider.

[John Hopkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me by one of my small town's notable "get it done" citizens, and it's now clear why. The people described here, most of them, are doing something difficult that goes against our country's prevailing habits and dominant economy. They are admirable not just because they swim out if the mainstream but because they show the character and ingenuity to follow their dream. Their dream will be familiar to Michael Pollen's followers: good food, healthy food, raised close to those who consume it. The locavore concept doesn't quite work out, though. The inspiring harvest and tempting cheeses cost too much to feed the growers' Vermont neighbors, so markets are found as far away as Boston. That's pretty much what I see here in Floyd, Va.,

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although now a bit dated, this slim volume opened my eyes to the recent philosophy of circular actions. One of our kids went to school in the Hardwich ME area so it was additionally interesting to me.
Local food development plus community are the themes developed by Hewitt. He is a lifetime native and it very familiar with the area, its attributes and population. There is a developing local food economy described here and I'm looking for more recent news about it. A wide variety of food producers and attendant endeavors were growing at the time of this printing in 2009, in spite of dismal finances of that recession.
If I find more recent news, I'll add to this. I pray they're thriving!

[Cheryl Beseler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was not only a great story about a town with a history of economic hardship, but also a town that is truly a community. It is also an unlikely place for the agricultural revolution Ben Hewitt describes so well in this story. It is probably not a new model of agriculture that would work in a smaller or larger town, but it is an alternative view to the corporate agricultural worldview that now dominates our food system. We no longer are invested in food, a fundamental to our very existence. This book reminds you of how far you are from where you need to be in how you think about the food you eat and where it comes from.

[J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting book that is a first person narrative on the front lines of a transforming local economy. This a brutally honest and at times humorous account about one town's struggle to place itself amidst the idealism and challenges of a developing local food system. It's like reading a modernized agrarian tale, akin to Wendell Berry's fiction - but with cussing, and possibly more colorful characters. Lot's of lessons here for local food idealists - no matter where you live.

[steph (librarianish) · Rating 4 out of 5]

#54. Mis-titled, but if you can get past that, it's a fantastic (and relatively quick) read. There are layers upon layers upon layers of agricultural and related businesses around this community, and whether the younger generations' talk and effort has created a sea change is questionable. But for the wealth of information about all the pieces that go into making a thriving local food economy, I'm buying this one for my bookshelf.

[Patricia E. Harding · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hardwick, Vermont, resident and writer Ben Hewitt investigates the various aspects and goals of this town's food economy. He interviews local residents who share their ideas about the importance of local seed storage, compost production, crops, dairy, markets, and coops. They share traditions of the past and make predictions for the future. An important look at how a town of 3,000 people kept ahold of one the most important parts of its community.

[Callista · Rating 3 out of 5]

The whole book I was waiting for it to “get better” but it was all very average for me. I listened to this one. I felt like the whole book the author was trying to figure out what his point actually was. I just think it could have been plotted out better. I love the local food idea though and truly wish it would happen- big agriculture is so so bad.

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book took me a while to read since it was not what I originally anticipated it would be. The writing was too unnecessarily descriptive. The author gives far more details than you need and it’s easy to get bogged down in them. At the same time, it is inspiring and motivating to want to support the local food system.