Photograph: Winter Market by Jennifer Steen Booher

In his slide talk, author Carl Little will offer highlights from his article in the 2025 Chebacco on the farm-to-table movement on Mount Desert Island. Starting with some history, Little will highlight the efforts of several island restaurant owners dedicated to connecting farms to their tables. Featured eateries include the Town Farm Restaurant, The Burning Tree, and Rupununi. The talk will touch on the challenges and the rewards of local sourcing and report on the current status of local food spending in Maine. A poet and art writer, Little is a regular contributor to a range of publications, including the Island Journal, The Working Waterfront, and Maine Boats Homes & Harbors. His most recent publications are Blanket of the Night: Poems and the monograph John Moore: Portals. 

The talk takes place at the Jesup Library on Thursday, October 30, at 5:30. The event will include a special appetizer sourced from a local farm, courtesy Brasserie Le Brun.  

This program is a collaboration between the MDI Historical Society and Jesup Memorial Library. It will be offered in-person and virtually via Zoom and recorded for later viewing.

Born in New York City, Carl Little holds degrees from Dartmouth, Columbia, and Middlebury. Little is the author of a number of art books, including The Watercolors of John Singer Sargent and Edward Hopper’s New England, as well as monographs on Joel Babb, Irene Olivieri, Dahlov Ipcar, John Moore, and others. Little writes for Art New England, Hyperallergic, The Working Waterfront, Maine Arts Journal, and Ornament. In 2021, the Rabkin Foundation honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award for art writing. Blanket of the Night: Poems came out in 2024. He lives in Somesville, not far from Beech Hill Farm.