I recently read Animal, Vegetable, Mineral by Barbara Kingsolver and enjoyed it. It is a little preachy in the beginning, but then really picks up. She and her family try to restrict their diet to food grown in their county in West Virginia. My favorite chapter is the one about their attempts to get turkeys to mate. My book group read it and then I took them on a field trip to the farm in our village where I buy my meat and most of our vegetables. We had a great time. Agricultural endeavors in our area are small-scale and wonderfully delicious. For example, I am amazed at how small a herd of milk cows can be for a farmer to find it worthwhile to continue dairy-ing. Our village is too small to support a gas station and our corner store just closed due to lack of business, so we are very small. Yet there are two dairies on our main road. Both sell to a larger company for packaging of their milk, and one lets neighbors buy raw "cow warm" milk on the honor system. We go 4 times a week. It doesn't do to let unpasturized milk sit long in the fridge. I think I'll suffer a little culture shock when I get back to the states.
