Feed Us with Trees: A Conversation with Elspeth Hay and Chez Liley, Middlebury, VT
Fri, Apr 24
|Middlebury College
How do the stories we tell impact the physical landscape? Join Elspeth Hay, author of the new book Feed Us with Trees: Nuts and the Future of Food, and Chez Liley of Wellspring Commons as they explore how narratives shape our food system, as well as our relationships to the ecosystems we call home.
Time & Location
Apr 24, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM
Middlebury College, Axinn Center 229 Old Chapel Road Middlebury, VT 05753
About the event
How do the stories we tell impact the physical landscape? Join Elspeth Hay, author of the new book Feed Us with Trees: Nuts and the Future of Food, and Chez Liley of Wellspring Commons as they explore how narratives shape our food system, as well as our relationships to the ecosystems we call home.
As a girl, Elspeth learned that we humans are a blight on the natural world. Her lived experience confirmed this time and again—until the day she learned that humans can eat acorns. Suddenly, stories she’d believed her whole life began to unravel.
Chez Liley sees the way our current dominant cultural narratives paint humans as separate from the natural world—and has come to understand food as a key pathway for reconnection.
During this conversation they both will explore what it means to be human and hungry in New England today, and how our food systems might change if…