By Kris Nelson

“What are the costs of leaving one’s homeland?” “What are the true human costs of our food?” “What is a ‘New England’ story?” These questions are at the heart of stories told by migrant dairy farm workers in Vermont, collected in the nonfiction comics anthology, The Most Costly Journey / El viaje más caro: Stories of Migrant Workers in Vermont, Drawn by New England Cartoonists edited by Marek Bennett, Julia Grand Doucet, Andy Kolovos, and Teresa Mares. Mares, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Vermont, discussed the book, and how it came to be, in her keynote presentation at a recent Farm to School professional development event for Vermont educators, Multiple Perspectives and Counter Narratives in VT Food Systems. I recently attended the event, hosted by Shelburne Farms, Vermont Folklife, and the Vermont Historical Society, with Farm to School Coach Sheila Humphreys.