This was written in more of a textbook style format, which honestly - I loved.

Deep diving into more serious topics like our local food systems, movement and production was eye opening. From there, I learned about local food and the different impacts sustainability and moral codes offer us as a community. This was a very cool concept.

I am not a working farmer, but as someone who appreciates the fundamentals and legacy farming offers was very interesting. I really enjoyed reading about different types of farmers and their overall importance and impact.

The publisher provided this ARC for an honest review of the contents.

I liked this book even though it's entirely different from what I assumed it was going to be about by the title and the cover itself. I expected it to be more of a how-to book rather than inspirational stories about farmers or people and restaurants that buy the products from these farmers. Even for a small-scale farmer, I feel like this is more of an anecdote than anything really helpful to farmers at all. Perhaps this book wasn't geared toward me and this would be more helpful to someone planning on making a job out of farming or even to those who would like to work closely with farmers to see what it's been like in the last five to six years with the pandemic and the state of agriculture in the community. Overall, I was not the intended audience but the stories did remind me of watching an episode of an Anthony Bourdain TV show which made it super enjoyable for me.

Too be honest, this book was not what I expected, but not in a bad way. I really appreciate Stephen Ellingson's through research and taking the time to interview a number of small scale famers and local food retailers. I found the stories as to why people choose to work with the land to produce food inspiring and insightful. I think this would be a beneficial book for anyone who desires to get involved in agriculture, small scale farming or jump on the farm-table food movement. I think overall the writing style is academic, which is great if you are using his book for business or educational purposes.

Thorough investigation of planting. Full of activism and wisdom. This is more of a dense academic read. Warning- there are no pictures. The homesteader can still glean advice and how-to advice, just know you are not the intended audience. Well written; just not what I was expecting.

Interesting perspective presented. I agree that this was more of an academic style text with well researched points of view and referenced resources. However, the perspectives also include the interwoven stories from several farmers. The subject content was very well written and thoroughly researched.

I thought this was going to be a more practical guide to planting food. This was more of an academic text about farming, food sources, and where our food is coming from. As a gardener I was looking for something different. This just wasn't the book I was expecting. I'm not sure how to rate this one since it was still well written and researched, I should have read the description more clearly I was just so excited by the front cover!

What an inspirational read! My husband and I have plans to purchase land and relocate our family within the next couple of years, and this book spoke to our values and soul. We already keep chickens and rabbits and planted a garden for the first time this past spring and will be expanding our homesteading operations once we can get a larger plot of land and move to a more rural environment. This book provides great reinforcement and confidence in the fact that there are others out there currently living the life we want for our family and it is possible.

I wish I could have enjoyed this book more, but I am a visual person and would have preferred there to be more imagery. There was a lot of information and content there - just not much that I could absorb, unfortunately.