One could easily dismiss Michael Ableman’s latest book, Fields of Plenty, as little more than one man’s account of the classic American experience: the road trip. In early summer, the author packs up his VW van and disappears down the endless back roads of America into what proves to be no ordinary road trip.

As a farmer, Ableman embarks on “a pilgrimage—part personal, part political,” during which he visits and dines with 25 independent farmers scattered across North America, arriving eventually at his childhood home in Maryland. What results is one part travelogue, one part memoir and one part cookbook.

Ableman is a well-known figure in small-scale agriculture after years as the managing farmer of Fairview Gardens, a 12-acre organic farm situated in heavily suburbanized southern California. He is also an accomplished author, boasting two other titles - On Good Land: The Autobiography of an Urban Farm and From the Good Earth: A Celebration of Growing Food Around the World.

In Fields of Plenty, Ableman takes a look at farmers closer to home. He finds a myriad of farming styles and philosophies, each adapted to fulfill a local and specific niche. In addition to stories and insights from the small-scale farm movement in this country—a sort of metaphoric “food for the soul”—the author also dishes up more literal gastronomic fare, including recipes with the fresh ingredients available on the various farms.

Ableman is also an accomplished photographer with an artist’s eye and a farmer’s sensibilities. His color photographs sometimes tend toward the quaint or picturesque, but the best of them are still and contemplative images of fields and farmers, often in the dramatic light of early morning or late evening.

Still this book is more than a simple travelogue or a personal narrative of a man in search of hope and home. Fields of Plenty offers us a preview of a possible future, one sustained by small farmers, and gives us the food to fuel the journey ahead.

This article orginally appeared in the July/August 2006 edition of World Ark, the magazine of Heifer International. Reviewed By Jaman Matthews, Heifer Staff Writer Used by permission.