ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Feed us with Trees, with Elspeth Hay
When I sat down with writer and food systems storyteller Elspeth Hay for Sense Making in a Changing World, I felt like I was nodding all the way through our conversation. Her new book, Feed Us With Trees: Nuts and the Future of Food, weaves together ecology, history, language and personal story to ask a simple but radical question:
What if our primary food story was about trees, not fields
Elspeth lives in an oak forest on Cape Cod in the north east of the United States. She grew up in another oak forest in Maine, yet for most of her life she never really saw those trees as food. Like many of us, she was told that before colonisation people lived on “nuts and berries” which did not seem to match what she could see in the woods.
“I walked out in the woods all the time and I never saw any nuts. You cannot live on berries, so it seemed like a pretty useless answer.”
Elspeth Hay
Everything changed when she realised that acorns are edible.
The acorn light bulb moment
Discovering that people have eaten acorns for thousands of years was a complete shock to Elspeth. She had been interviewing people about food for almost fifteen years and yet no one had mentioned them.
“There is a really abundant nut that we can eat that has been in the woods my whole life. Why did no one ever tell me this”
That one realisation turned the forest from an obstacle to food production into a huge, overlooked pantry. It also opened a crack in the story she had been given about human beings and the land. If there was food all around her that she had never been taught to see, what else had been hidden
In our conversation we laughed about similar moments. Walking through the city on the way to an urban agriculture conference with my daughter, we found ourselves surrounded by pepper berries, street acorns and other foods that most people step over without noticing. My daughter was seven, holding a handful of “street food” and confidently telling adults that, yes, we can eat acorns.
These are small but powerful shifts in perception. Once you see food everywhere, it is hard to unsee it.
From nut forests to the standard American diet
Elspeth uses the grimly accurate acronym SAD for the “standard American diet”. Her book traces how cultures that once relied on nut forests and perennial commons were pushed into an industrial system based on annual monocultures, enclosure and displacement.
As she followed acorns back through time, she found that people across the northern hemisphere had deep relationships with oaks and other nut bearing trees. In many places these trees were tended, not just for timber but as staple food. Then, in the written record, there is a strange gap where this relationship disappears.
“All these different cultures had tended these trees, and then there was just this big gap in the history and it was like, and now we do not. I kept asking, what happened”
Her research led her into the early internal colonisation of Europe. Common woods and nut lands were enclosed and privatised, and the people who had depended on them were pushed off. Many of those people later arrived in North America as debt prisoners, indentured servants or convicts, not free settlers choosing a “land of opportunity”.
She draws on the work of historian Joanna Brooks, whose book Why We Left follows old English ballads to uncover grief and violence beneath the migration story. Ordinary people did not simply decide to leave for a better life; in many cases they were removed from their homelands as commons were taken and nut economies dismantled.
This history sits alongside the stories we hold here in Australia of a whole continent described in one early account as a single great estate of tended food forests. What settlers were taught to see as untouched wilderness was in fact carefully managed human habitat.
Trees as keystone species and human habitat
A central idea in Elspeth’s work is that trees are keystone species not only in ecosystems but in our food culture. A keystone species is as vital to its community as the keystone in an arch. Remove it and the whole structure begins to collapse.
She shares the research of entomologist Doug Tallamy, who has shown that oaks are the top “life support” plants in many North American ecosystems. They host more insect species than almost any other plant, which means they feed birds, mammals and many other beings.
“There are a few plants that are heavy lifters in terms of supporting insect life. Oaks have this outsized importance.”
At the same time she was learning about acorn food traditions, Elspeth was listening to Indigenous people such as Ron Reed from the Karuk people in present day northern California. The Karuk describe themselves as “fix the world people”. Their work with oaks and other keystone trees is understood as creating habitat and being a life giving force for other beings.
This sits in stark contrast to the dominant Western story that humans are ecological wreckers who do not really belong in the natural world. We are taught to see ourselves as separate from nature and somehow fundamentally bad for the planet.
“There is this idea that we do not really fit into the natural world. We are always destroying it to grow our food. That story has been very powerful.”
But when you put Tallamy’s research and Karuk practice together, a different picture emerges. Oaks need regular low, cool fires to regenerate. In many places it was cultural burning by Indigenous peoples that maintained oak woodlands for thousands of years. When fire is suppressed, these trees struggle.
Elspeth trained in prescribed burning and now works with state fire crews to burn in ways that support oaks and other species. She points out that almost every time a national park was created in the United States, the first step in the legislation was to remove Indigenous people from the land. What is now called “wild” was often created human habitat.
Our conversation kept circling back to this truth. We are not separate from ecosystems. We are part of them. We can harm, but we can also heal and reweave.
Yield, “no farms no food” and the red herring
At one point we talk about the bumper stickers that say “No farms, no food”. Elspeth calls this the “no farm food” story, and she began her research by asking farmers whether perennial systems could feed the world.
One response stayed with her. A farmer told her that the question “Can this feed the world” is a red herring. At first she did not understand, so she kept digging.
“I managed to completely debunk that idea for myself in the process of writing the book. It is also a story, one that has been purposefully seeded.”
Elspeth reminds us that yield is a ratio between what comes out and what goes in. Current yield numbers for industrial crops do not include the land where fuel, machinery, fertilisers and pesticides are produced, or the landscapes damaged by mining and extraction.
When you count all the land used by monocultures, the picture shifts. Very little of the enormous United States corn crop actually feeds people. Almost all of it becomes animal feed, ethanol or is exported in ways that undercut farmers in other countries.
By contrast, complex perennial polycultures have far more photosynthetic surface, deeper root systems, layered canopies and many more relationships. Where researchers have compared them fairly, they produce more food per unit of total land and support biodiversity rather than erasing it.
For Elspeth, the first step is to separate ecological questions from economic ones. The current economic system demands constant growth and maximum output per unit of counted land, so it favours simplified monocultures. Ecologically, however, polycultures and nut forests are far more productive and resilient.
The language and memory of acorns
Another thread in the conversation is language. Elspeth points out that in many Indigenous languages there are rich vocabularies for acorns, processing methods, textures and dishes. English by comparison has collapsed hundreds of species and preparations into a single blunt word: acorn.
Working with foragers such as Sam Thayer, she discovered just how diverse acorns really are. Some species can be leached of bitter tannins with four rinses of water. Others, such as northern red oaks in Maine, might need seventy or more. Without that local knowledge, recipes go badly wrong.
She found an old map created by an anthropologist documenting acorn processing techniques across North America. When you know the different species, you can see that each tradition is closely adapted to place.
Even within English, there are fossil traces of old relationships if we look closely. Elspeth shares the example of “mast trees”, the collective term for nut trees. The word mast comes from the Gothic mat, meaning food. Our language still remembers nut trees as food trees, even though most of us do not.
“Even though we as a culture have lost this knowledge, our language still holds little memories of it.”
This is both heartbreaking and hopeful. So much has been lost through colonisation, forced conversion and enclosure. Yet there is also much to rediscover, and room for a great deal of play, experiment and local adaptation.
Commons, currencies and new stories of success
Our conversation also wanders into the history and future of the commons. Elspeth visited Appalachia to speak with a historian about the chestnut economies that once flourished there. Up until the late nineteenth century, unenclosed land was treated as commons, and people brought in nuts to local stores in exchange for credit. The nuts travelled to the cities, but the wealth stayed local.
Crucially, that economy was not based on interest bearing debt. It did not have the same built in demand for endless growth. When chestnut blight and enclosure arrived, that whole system unraveled.
Today there are organisations like the Agrarian Commons in the United States working to put farmland into community ownership, and groups such as the Savanna Institute promoting tree based systems like oak savannas in place of vast annual monocultures.
Closer to home, we talked about local currencies. Elspeth described these as one of the most promising paths she has seen for rebalancing economic relationships with land. I shared that our local currency where I live is called the Bunya, named for the large Indigenous nut that has fed people here for countless generations. It felt like another small way that trees can sit at the centre of our shared story.
Elspeth is also experimenting with gatherings that help young people imagine different futures. She and a friend received a small grant to bring a group of young women together for four days as “Commons Keepers”, learning from shellfish harvesters, salt marsh restoration, medicine making and basketry. The aim was to offer an alternative picture of success where staying rooted and tending place is seen as an honourable life path.
“We want to share careers in environmental care as an alternative vision of success.”
Rewriting the stories we live inside
Underpinning all of this is the question of story. Elspeth has been a storyteller for many years, yet even she was surprised by how deeply some cultural narratives had shaped her thinking.
She tells a striking personal story about chronic back pain. For sixteen years she believed that a damaged disc meant her back was broken and fragile. A surgeon insisted she attend a particular physiotherapy clinic before surgery. The physiotherapist looked at her scan and said, “There is nothing wrong with your back. You are weak because you have been afraid to use it.”
For reasons she still cannot quite explain, she believed him. Two weeks later the pain that had framed her daily life was gone. The disc had not changed, but the story had.
“He told me a new story and I understood it and I believed it. It completely changed my life.”
Elspeth sees this as a metaphor for our relationship with land. We have been told a story that humans are a problem, that commons always fail, that feeding people requires destroying ecosystems, that being a “success” means leaving our home places behind. These stories feel natural because we hear them everywhere, yet they are as constructed as any other myth.
If they are stories, we can tell different ones. That does not mean indulging in fantasy. It means looking clearly at history, listening to Indigenous knowledge, paying attention to local ecologies and choosing narratives that open space for healing, reciprocity and belonging.
In our conversation we keep returning to curiosity. What if, instead of accepting that “nature is better off without us”, we asked where our presence can be beneficial What if we assumed, as many cultures have, that we have an ecological role to play, and then set about learning it
Children as new story keepers
One of my favourite moments in the interview comes at the end, when Elspeth shares a story from the foraging classes she runs for children.
“I had a kid the other day ask if we could make pine pollen pancakes and nettle pesto pasta. I thought, okay, you have absorbed a new story.”
That small request carries so much. This child now knows there are good things to eat in the forest. They know there are more ways to cook and live than the supermarket suggests. They have begun to imagine themselves as part of a more abundant, rooted and playful food culture.
I find that deeply hopeful. If we can help a new generation grow up in relationship with acorns, chestnuts, bunya nuts, olives, oaks and all the other food trees of their regions, we are not just changing diets. We are changing how people understand what it means to be human.
An invitation
You can find Feed Us With Trees: Nuts and the Future of Food through New Society Publishers and at local bookshops. If it is not on the shelf where you live, I encourage you to request it. The stories it holds are rich fuel for book clubs, permaculture courses and kitchen table conversations.
After you listen to our full conversation, perhaps take a slow walk in your neighbourhood. Notice which trees are already feeding someone. Notice the “ordinary” oaks, bunyas, olives or others that might one day feed many more. Ask yourself, as Elspeth does, what it would look like if tree based foods were at the heart of your community again.
These are not small questions, but they are beautifully practical ones. They ask us to look up, not down, and to remember that we belong here.
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🎧 Abridged Transcript: Morag and Elspeth
Morag: Elspeth, thank you so much for joining me. I have been immersed in your book and absolutely love it. To begin, where are you calling in from, and what is the title of your book
Elspeth: I am calling in from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, this tiny spit of sand on the east coast of the United States. The book is called Feed Us With Trees: Nuts and the Future of Food. It lived in my head for a long time, and I am grateful it has finally come out into the world and is starting some of these conversations.
Morag: Early in the book you share a story about acorns that really struck me. You grew up in oak forests but did not see them as food. Can you talk about that acorn light bulb moment
Elspeth: I grew up in Maine in an oak forest and now live in another oak forest, and I always saw the woods as an impediment to food production, not a place with food. I remember people saying Indigenous people here ate “nuts and berries,” and that made no sense to me because I never saw any nuts. You cannot live on berries. When I learned that acorns are edible, I realised there was this abundant nut all around me that no one had ever told me about. It really upended everything I thought I knew about growing food and how we relate to the living world.
Morag: I have had similar experiences, noticing food falling from trees in cities and people not recognising it. Your book also talks about the shift from tree based food systems to industrial agriculture and the violence in that story. What did you find when you looked into that history
Elspeth: I did not expect learning about acorns to become an ancestral healing journey, but it did. When I looked back, I found that people all over the northern hemisphere had long relationships with oaks and other keystone nut trees. Then there is this big gap where that relationship disappears. Following the nuts back led me into internal colonisation in Europe. Common wooded lands that had been tended collectively were enclosed and fed into a new colonial capitalist system. Many people left not because of opportunity, but because they were pushed off their homelands. That was not the story I had grown up with.
Morag: You use the term keystone species for trees. How do you see trees as keystone species in our food culture
Elspeth: In ecology, a keystone species is as important to an ecosystem as the keystone in an arch. Take it out and everything collapses. Oaks are like that. Work by Doug Tallamy shows they are the top life support plants in many North American ecosystems. They host huge numbers of insects that feed birds and other animals. When I learned that and then heard from Indigenous people like Ron Reed of the Karuk, who call themselves “fix the world people” and tend oak habitat as their life giving work, it challenged that idea that humans are always bad for the environment. These trees actually need us.
Morag: Here in Australia we have also been told that wild landscapes are better off without people, even though they were tended food forests. You talk about national parks in the United States and prescribed fire. Can you share more about that
Elspeth: Where I live, oaks are mid succession species. They do not regenerate well in deep shade. For thousands of years Indigenous communities used cultural burning to maintain oak and hickory forests. After fire suppression, those forests started to shift and oaks struggled. I looked at the history of parks and found that almost every time a national park was created, legislation first removed Indigenous people. These “wild” landscapes were in fact created by humans. I ended up getting trained in prescribed fire and now burn with the state wildlife agency. It feels like stepping back into an old relationship with these trees.
Morag: Yield is something that always comes up when we talk about perennial systems. In the book you unpack the “no farms, no food” slogan. How did your thinking shift there
Elspeth: I used to worry that if we moved toward perennial food systems we would not feed everyone. I started asking farmers “Can this feed the world” and one of them said that question is a red herring. I kept digging and realised that almost none of our US corn goes directly to feeding humans. A lot of it goes to animals, ethanol or export. Then there is the fact that yield is a ratio of what you get out to what you put in. We are not counting the land used to mine for tractors, make fertilisers or extract fossil fuels. When you include all that land, perennial polycultures actually out produce monocultures. The problem is economic, not ecological.
Morag: There is a beautiful part of the book where you talk about language around acorns. Why does language matter in this work
Elspeth: In many Indigenous languages there are specific words for different acorn foods and processing methods. In English we just say “acorn” and lose so much nuance. Working with foragers like Sam Thayer, I learned that different oak species behave very differently. Some acorns need a few rinses to remove tannins, others need many. I found an old map showing Indigenous acorn processing across North America. Once you know the species, you can see how adapted each method is to place. Even in English we still have traces, like the word “mast” for nut trees, which comes from a word meaning food. Our language remembers, even when we have forgotten.
Morag: We also talk about the commons and different economic stories. You visited Appalachia and learned about chestnut economies. What stayed with you from that
Elspeth: In parts of Appalachia, unenclosed land was treated as commons until after the Civil War. People gathered chestnuts and brought them to country stores, where they received credit. The nuts went to the city but the wealth stayed local. It was an economy not based on interest bearing debt, so it did not require endless growth. When enclosure and chestnut blight came, that whole system collapsed. A historian there told me that some of the most promising work now is in local currencies, because economics is just a story we made up. We can tell a different one.
Morag: Toward the end of the conversation we come back to story itself. You describe how a new story about your own body changed long term back pain. How does that experience shape the way you think about food stories
Elspeth: For sixteen years I believed my back was damaged because I had a herniated disc. A surgeon sent me to a particular physical therapist who looked at my scan and said, “There is nothing wrong with your back. You are weak because you have been afraid to use it.” For some reason I believed him. Within two weeks the pain was gone. The disc had not changed, but the story had. That made me realise how powerful stories are. Many of our stories about the commons, about humans as inherently destructive, about what food systems are possible, are like that. Once you see they are stories, you can start to change them.
Morag: You teach foraging to children as well. Do you see their stories changing
Elspeth: Yes. I had a child recently ask if we could make pine pollen pancakes and nettle pesto pasta. That is a small thing, but it shows they have absorbed a different story about where food comes from and what is possible. I did not know that as a kid. It gives me a lot of hope.
Morag: Elspeth, thank you so much for sharing your work and your stories. They are powerful conversation starters and awakenings.
Elspeth: Thank you for having me. It has been wonderful to talk with you.
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