A website in support of our forthcoming book, to be published by Heyday Books in fall of 2008

The Great Central Valley of California has been recently conquered by an empire known as corporate agribusiness. But that conquest is incomplete. On its edges exists a different kind of life. There are small family farms that have not yet succumbed to development. Keepers of bees who bottle honey in their garages or barns. Gatherers of wild sage and watercress. Grinders of acorns. Hunters of boars. Fishermen of wild salmon. Trappers of crayfish. Gardeners of unnamed herbs from homelands across the seas. Eaters and sellers of ugly produce. There are still people who seek a personal and edible relationship to the land on which they live, who acknowledge the need for some wildness on their plates, for whom the sterile abundance of the supermarket is not enough. These are the people we seek and the stories we shall tell.

The oil will dry up. The machines will rust. But the land, through personal cultivation and in its natural wildness, will continue to bring forth the plants and animals humanity joys in eating. This way of life is ancient. Until now it has not needed a word. Hunting, fishing, gardening, farming, all have been content to stand separate from each other. But there is a thread that binds them. The question: can we eat it? Beyond organic, before the invention of agriculture, edibility is the most basic description of our relationship to the earth. All those who seek to retain this relationship are edibilists. May their ranks increase.

Please drop us a line!