Rooted: Central Arkansas Table & Farm

Planting a seed is just the beginning.

Committed carnivores and veggie lovers alike will more intimately understand and appreciate the locavore foodways of Central Arkansas as Rooted unearths the stories of two dozen farmers, artisanal food producers, and restaurants driving the food scene in the heart of The Natural State.

As you meet local chefs who stop by the farmer's market at the end of the day to buy leftover produce and work it into a recipe, farmers growing for local schools and poverty-stricken residents, a former orphanage now providing education for future farmers, a grower applying his experience to the burgeoning hemp industry, and a welder turned buffalo farmer, you'll see there is much more happening in our local food movement than meets the eye.

As the tight-knit network of Central Arkansans committed to bringing the community a healthier, higher-quality product are revealed, readers will come to understand the vital nature of these relationships in elevating us all.

Lacey Thacker is an author, editor, and all-around investigator. Her interest in the intersection of personal and professional made writing about food and farming for Rooted a natural fit. Lacey has learned from farmers, chefs, and farmer's market coordinators as editor of Arkansas Food and Farm magazine. Alongside her extensive involvement in the local food movement, she also holds a master's degree in professional and technical writing from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Lacey is now drafting her next project, a book about family, aging, dying, and how we find our place in the world. Overall, her mission is to uphold the idea that a journalist's job is to take the important and make it interesting, not to make the interesting seem important.

Sara Mitchell is a native Nashvillian who has lived in Arkansas for nearly a decade. After receiving a master's in professional and technical writing from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Sara became an adjunct instructor teaching writing at UA Little Rock and Hendrix College. She was a contributing writer for Soirée, and her work has appeared in Deep South Magazine and on Tales From the South. There is no place Sara would rather be than outdoors with her husband Jay and two young children. Rooted gave her the perfect opportunity to traipse through the mud exploring Arkansas and its many great residents.