In the early hours before the sun rises, especially on a rainy day in the Oregon mountains, the lucky insomniac can find a place of unspeakable, timeless bliss in his alone hours, with only a cat for company.

They used to be gods in Egypt, but in 21st Century America, they’re just companion animals and living, shedding indoor decoration. Yume (it means “dream” in Japanese) is resting on the windowsill, pushing away sleep like me. He neither writes, nor does he toil or spin, but his presence is conducive to the flow. Occasionally, we have long discussions. Recently, I discovered that we both like eggs. He suggested that I write about it.

Yesterday, I made an omelet with three eggs. The bald fact of it would seem to be no big deal, except: These eggs were one day old, with huge orange yolks, laid by free-range hens. But wait, there’s more. Those chickens live on the farm of a world-class artist. Don’t know how much you pay for eggs, but this dozen was delivered to my door for the amazingly low price of $2.50, and they’re such good eggs that I’ve taken them to local, secret restaurants and paid for my breakfasts with one dozen — green, brown and utterly organic, seething with good art and wholesomeness. These are not ordinary eggs.

By doing so, I’ve probably violated some ordinance or other, relating to public food. OK. My conscience is clear; I watched those eggs being picked from under happy, free-range, bug-eating chickens, and put into recycled cardboard cartons by the hands of a genius artist. Then I hand-carried them in a cooler to a little restaurant that is locally famed for excellent breakfasts, talked with someone, and that’s how a dozen eggs went into the food chain without government authorization. The diners who ate them probably felt better all day, without knowing why.

It is becoming fashionable to raise chickens, even in urban environments. I happen to know firsthand that the city of Forest Grove, Ore., prohibits keeping “farm livestock” within the city limits; yet, I also know outlaws who do so. And there is a movement afoot to change the rule, if it has not already been rescinded by now …

Chickens. Eggs. Manure for the garden. If there is a downside to the ownership of chickens, someone please explain it to me. In her classic book, The Egg and I, author Betty MacDonald made a hilarious case for not living on a chicken ranch. A thousand chickens is arguably too many. But everyone should have a dozen chickens. They’re far more soothing to the jangled city psyche than colorful fish swimming in a tank on a bookshelf. Hens make a soothing clucking noise, and they give you eggs on your breakfast plate that are better and fresher than Bill Gates eats, unless he also keeps chickens.

Last night I left the farm and drove into Manchester to see Food Inc. (which was wonderful) and engage in a group discussion about industrial food. Now, I knew I was going to the movies, but I had no idea when the film was over there would be a stay-in-you-seats discussion over local community action. There was. I love Vermont.

A local group call Manchester Town Transition hosted the post-film talk. The MC walked down the rows, mic in hand, asking about changes that could happen in our area to help solve the problem. I listened to local small farmers take turns talking about their issues: horror stories about trying to sell to grocery store chains, the struggle to get apathetic people involved in the town farmer's market. We passed around the microphone with ideas and talking points and when it got to me I had one question to ask the eager audience.

"How many people here have a garden?"

Everyone shot up their hands. We were preaching to the choir.

Not one of us needed to see this movie. It was like an evangelical popping in a praise-n-worship CD in a station wagon with the rest of the youth ministry. What we needed was to get our unsaved friends in the seat next to us. People who, unless handed the microscope, would never look that close into their cereal bowl. That's where you come in. Go see this movie and take someone who doesn't give a damn about corn.

The problem is that Americans have convinced themselves that cheap food, a seasonless selection and endless variety are their rights — not healthy food, in-season crops and reasonable variety. Some folks say a local organic diet is an elitist goal. That regular folks can't afford it. (Then you learn that only counts for organic pre-prepared meals. We'd rather watch TV than cook a meal together.) We've bought the lie that eating whatever we want of lesser quality is a good thing. Because it's easier. Because by eating industrial beef rather than local, we don't have to connect the cow with the burger.

This is scary to me. Really scary.

Ask the average American if they'd rather buy feed-lot chicken that comes with a death warning or drive to a farmers market down the block and pay a dollar more a pound for a free-range, disease-free bird. Most will prefer the healthier option, yet few choose it. One hilarious section of the movie interviewed a well known organic farmer who was almost shut down for processing his poultry outdoors near the fields they free range on. So he sent a large sampling of his stock and sampling of similar meat from the grocery store shelves to be tested for bacteria. The results showed that his stock was ridiculously healthier, and his animals never went through chlorine baths and a packaging plant. It's how the animal is raised, son.

I understand that we have a world to feed. The movie wasn't so much against industrial food as it was against the lack of regulation, safety standards and solid policy. The creators of Food Inc. aren't asking everyone to boycott the grocery store; they're asking you to change what's inside — by voting with every purchase for healthier food. Buy local, organic, and do your best. True, not everyone can afford an all-local diet, but most of us can afford one local meal a day. Experts say that if every American ate one meal sourced from within 100 miles of her home each week, the food industry would be forced to change dramatically. Then organic wouldn't be expensive, it would be normal.

Get some oats at the farmers market and you've just eaten a breakfast that can change the world.

The base problem is most people don't want to think about where their food comes from. They don't want to buy healthier meat for more money and eat it less. They don't care about local farmers, or that poisoned peanut butter and salmonella outbreaks have become nothing more than background noise on the evening news. They have jobs, lives and families to take care of. I get it. I have a job, too. But I'll be damned if I'll sit back and watch the food my family eats hurt them. We may have our disagreements, even about blog posts like this, but they can count on me to produce meat, eggs, vegetables and energy that won't put them in the hospital.

You are what you eat. Be something better.

You can find more posts from Jenna here. Plus, read about her food and homesteading adventures on her blog, Cold Antler Farm.

Homesteading in its broadest interpretation can entail being almost completely self-sufficient: growing, raising and crafting most of the daily necessities of life. A return, as it were, to the days of our pioneering ancestors who did it themselves or did without.

By contrast, an urban homesteader, which I consider myself to be these days, gleefully takes advantage of local foods, not feeling the necessity of growing or raising all their own veggies and fruit, or even eggs. In Topeka, during the months of July and August, fresh peaches can be found at most of the major produce stands at the Saturday local farmer’ market.

I hold up the line as I pick up and smell the fresh peaches in the little green cardboard boxes. If a warm, sweet, peachy aroma doesn’t reach my olfactory senses, I move on. I want the essence of a fresh peach to practically knock me to the ground. The fuzzy packages of flavorful goodness do not come to us cheaply — $4 for a box of five peaches. And it is imperative that you look at the one on the bottom of the carton as it may be an older, slightly bruised specimen, snuck into the deal. The peaches come from orchards in Missouri and Georgia. Missouri is just a stone’s throw from Topeka, so it seems reasonable to still call the Missouri peaches local. Kansas has not had the best weather recently for a predictable peach crop

I settle on the right box of perfectly ripe, fresh peaches, gently placing the treasure into my shopping bag and quickly head for home. I want to place each peach on the counter, not touching the others, to cut down as much as possible on the possibility of a tiny bruise exploding into a nasty blemish. The fun of making this summer dessert begins as I carefully peal the soft skin from the juicy flesh, the aroma tempting me to just pop half the peach into my mouth and be done with the agony of waiting for the perfect flavors to come. I slice the peach into a custard cup, one at a time, add a teaspoon of sugar, stir and wait about 15 minutes for the juices to develop. Then, just before eating, I drizzle a tablespoon of cream into the cup and stir gently.

Ahhh, peaches and cream. For me the most perfect of fruit flavors — cool, sweet, creamy and aromatic. By Sunday evening they are gone, and I must wait another week and hope they’re still available at the Saturday farmers market. Tomorrow is one of those Saturdays. I can almost taste the fresh peaches and cream right now.

Have you tried hunting for wild foods? Do you look forward to sleuthing out succulent morels and versatile dandelions each spring? What’s the biggest, baddest wild harvest you ever brought in? Are you aware of great local resources for foraging information? Please share your food foraging tips and stories with each other in the comments section below!

Haven't gotten on the local-food-hunting bandwagon yet? Learn more:

• Food Foraging: Find and Enjoy Wild Edible Plants 
• Eat Your Weeds (but Get to Know Them First)
• Interview with Euell Gibbons, the Modern Forager

Trendy’s not usually my thing. For more than 30 years, I’ve worn the same outfit of thrift store overalls colored with Rit Dye. My hairstyle has been pretty much the same since eighth grade; when it gets so long it hangs in the toilet, I whack off a few inches. So to find myself part of the hottest new food trend is unsettling. I’m a locavore, the New Oxford American Dictionary’s 2007 word of the year. Furthermore, since I was chomping local long before it was cool, you might say I’m a trendsetter. This is heady stuff for a person who has marched out of step and in the wrong direction most of her life.

For example, there was a year in the ’80s when we lived on a tiny hammock in the Everglades. Hunters stopped by our primitive camp site where we weighed carcasses, pulled jawbones from deer and measured antlers for wildlife biologists. The nearest supermarkets were a world away on the outskirts of Miami, but that doesn’t mean we went hungry. We feasted on local tomatoes, green beans, avocados, citrus fruit, game and fish.

The fish were hand-sized sun perch caught by our son Brint. Several times a week we’d roast a batch of them in a long-handled basket over the campfire. No plates required, we just nibbled them off the tiny skeletons. One night we were late starting supper and had to roast them after dark. Not only did they get too brown — charcoal comes to mind — but by the time we finished eating we were smeared with essence of fish from slapping at mosquitoes with our greasy hands. It seemed like a good night for a bath.

Most evenings we washed quickly at the artesian well that bubbled up in our yard. To take a real bath with hot water involved hauling a battery to the park ranger’s cabin for charging. While waiting for the battery, we carried buckets of water from the well to a propane water heater. By the time the 12-volt pump chugged the heated water to our bath tub, we were giddy with anticipation.

Bath night also meant we could use the freshly charged battery to watch our little black and white 12-volt television. By 10 o’clock all three of us were scrubbed, dressed in clean t-shirts and perched on the end of the fold-out bed, waiting to connect with the outside world. The screen flickered on, and the first thing we saw was a pitch for paint-on goo that would make microwaved meat turn brown.

There was total silence as we looked at each other, puzzled at first, then gradually realizing we were not watching a comedy sketch but a real commercial. We had tapped into a parallel universe at just the right moment to make an uproarious memory. The story would be told at family gatherings for the rest of our lives.

That night the joke was on us for being so out of touch. Not wanting to spoil the gaiety of the moment, I didn’t mention the sadness I felt that there could be a market for such a product.

Two decades since that night, the pendulum has slowly swung back toward more Americans demanding real food grown close to home. The grassroots movement has been helped along recently by books like Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore's Dilemma.

The Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program (SARE), where I work in the Southern Region, has funded more than 700 projects supporting local food systems. To read about them, type “local food systems” into the project database. Here are a few ways researchers, farmers and community activists are using those funds:

* The Save Our Seed project used a SARE grant to educate farmers in producing organically grown seed suited to their microclimates. They use the seeds on their own farms or to sell to other organic farmers. The website has seed production guides and other hard-to-find information.

* Another SARE project helped establish the web resource Florida Farmlink to help farmers and consumers find each other. The site also has listings of land and equipment for sale, educational events and jobs related to food and farming.

*  Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project used SARE funds to track the availability and demand for local food in western North Carolina and then went on to promote ways to get farmers and consumers together. Their farm-to-school project Growing Minds creates relationships between kids and food by taking them to farms and into kitchens to help prepare their own healthy meals. (See photos in the Image Gallery.)

I don’t know what the word of the year will be for 2008, but for those of us who know the satisfaction of eating food grown within hollering distance of our kitchens, locavore is good enough to live by for another year.

As part of the Growing Minds farm-to-school program near Asheville, N.C., 3rd grade students from Brush Creek Elementary help prune celariac at R-Farm in Madison County.

Third grade students from Brush Creek Elementary shell corn for grinding at Palmer Ford Organics.

It's been getting around the playground at my son's school that I bought a $95 turkey for Thanksgiving this year. The consensus has run somewhere between general disbelief and the statement that my turkey sure better be laying some golden eggs to justify the expense. So, let me back up and explain.

Late last spring I heard a local farmer discussing his pasture-raised beef on our local NPR station. The farm, Thundering Hooves, also offers pasture-raised, heritage turkeys, but you'd better get your act together because they sell out as soon as they go on sale in July.

Who wants to think about Thanksgiving in July? Well, I for one, and it certainly appears that plenty of others do as well. So, we dutifully ordered our turkey as soon as we could and have been diligently waiting ever since. The turkeys were processed a few weeks ago and we picked ours up last weekend. We'll be roasting it rather simply since we want to be able to really taste the meat and see how it compares to the standard breeds.

How's it Heritage? 

This bird is a rare heirloom Unimproved Standard Bronze. Thundering Hooves keeps their own flock so the eggs are produced and incubated on site (rather than chicks purchased from another grower). According to their website:

"There are extremely limited numbers of breeding flock [of unimproved turkeys] left in the country. The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy estimated that in 1987 there were 'less than 300 breeding hens' found in America with the possible exception of a limited number of turkeys used by hobbyists and show goers."

These birds are becoming endangered simply for the fact that turkey growers are breeding birds that have larger amounts of white meat. I'm sure you've heard of some commercially grown broad-breasted birds that are so busty they can barely walk and are so far removed from nature that they don't know how to mate and must be artificially inseminated in order to breed. A more thorough examination of the issues with commercial turkeys is made in Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

Out to Pasture

Most commercially grown turkeys are raised in confined and cramped quarters, given little access to the outside (if at all) and are fed a limited and unnatural diet. This makes for a very low-quality life for the turkey and some argue that it results in a less flavorful and nutritious meat.

Pasture raising is a method of raising flocks that is more than just "free range," which generally means that the birds have access to a small outdoor area that they may or may not actually use. On the other hand, our pasture-ranged turkey roamed freely in the fields, eating bugs, grasses and vegetarian feed. The birds on the farm are free to roam about as they please and their roosts are periodically moved throughout the field. This is generally referred to as pasture rotation and it allows the birds access to new areas of grass and bugs for their dining enjoyment.

Eat Local for Thanksgiving 

Not only was it important for us to purchase a turkey that is raised sustainably and preserves a heritage breed, but it was important for us to buy local. Each year I host an Eat Local campaign urging individuals and families to choose local foods for their Thanksgiving table. Not only does it help support local farmers, but the reduction in transportation of foods also results in lower carbon emissions, some say as much as 2.2 lbs of CO2 per plate of local foods chosen.

So, if you are interested in joining the movement to Eat Local for Thanksgiving, stop by and sign the pledge!

For many, the Thanksgiving meal is the culinary apex of the year. Rolling pins find their way out of dusty corners, choice ingredients are stockpiled over the preceding week, the flesh of freshly picked pumpkins is scooped out with tiny bare hands; heck, most ovens see more action on the fourth Thursday of November than they do all year. Two or three or even four generations preparing a meal together is a celebration indeed.

Thankfully, someone usually remembers to bring a nice bottle of wine or Champagne to kick off the festivities. But these days, a growing number of conscientious eaters are committed to locally sourcing the makings of their holiday meals. So why not celebrate the most American of holidays with the original local American beverage: hard cider. (OK, maybe the fourth of July is the most American holiday, but save the local beer for that one!) Hard cider is a true treat for fall, when apple harvests are at their peak.

Cider makers are bobbing up all over this country once again, and rededicating themselves to that pre-Prohibition pursuit of balanced acidity and sweetness. Unlike wine and grapes, you can usually still taste apple when you sip cider. And not just any apple: If you’re lucky, you’ll enjoy the specific combination of apple varieties whose tasty tongue-dance has been carefully choreographed by a real artisan. And this is where you really get to enjoy regional variation. Steve Wood up at Farnum Hill Ciders in New Hampshire simply cannot grow the heat-loving ‘Virginia Hewe's’ crabapples that Diane Flynt enjoys so well down at Foggy Ridge Cider in the blue ridge mountains of Virginia. But Steve grows numerous apple varieties well-suited to the New England climate, such as a tasty ‘Kingston Black,’ which makes a remarkable still cider but refuses to grow in the South. He shares these well-adjusted apples of French, English and American descent with other cider makers in the region, too, like West County Cider in Massachusetts.

Hard ciders range from dry and very tart with nary a bubble in sight, to supersweet and Champagne-bubbly. Last night, I got to try a wonderful dessert cider fortified with apple brandy (Pippin Gold), and a spectacular semi-dry cider from Slyboro Ciderhouse, which at the foothills of the Adirondacks, is in my neck of the woods. Slyboro Hidden Star is made from a blend of ‘Northern Spy’ and ‘Liberty’ apples grown on the fertile soil of New York state’s oldest U-pick orchard, and it definitely deserves the Double Gold Medal it won at last year’s International Eastern Wine Competition. (The raw sheep's milk cheese I relished it with — Hidden Springs Ocooch Mountain — deserves the awards it has won, too!)

So this Thanksgiving, why not pair that roasted turkey leg with a well-made local hard cider? Or a nonalcoholic sweet cider — they make those too! Try a few. Experiment to see what you like. But most importantly, find a good cider maker near you and make that artist your friend.

RESOURCES

* To locate artisan cider makers near you, search by ZIP code at Local Harvest. And don’t forget to ask the wine merchants in your closest shop if they carry any local ciders. Consumer interest is a key ingredient to the success of this old-new American industry.

* To learn more about the how-to and history of cider making, look for these wonderful books:

  Cider, Hard and Sweet by Ben Watson
  Cider: Making, Using and Enjoying Sweet & Hard Cider by Annie Proulx
  Making the Best Apple Cider by Annie Proulx (an e-book available from our online store)
  The Botany of Desire: A Plant's Eye View of the World (Part I of IV) by Michael Pollan

* And, oh yeah, you can also learn more in the many articles on cider we’ve published over the years:

  Enjoy Delicious Apple Cider, Sweet and Hard by Megan Phelps
  Fall’s Sweetest Harvest by John Stuart
  Make Your Own Hard Cider by Nathan Poell
  Falling for Apples by Noel Perrin
  Get Ready for Cider Pressin’ by Judy White
  Juice of the Apple by Michael Phillips
  Pouring Apple Cider by Richard Varr (from Grit, our sister magazine)

* Want to recommend a great local cider to our readers? You’re in luck — that’s what our comments section is for!

Urban homestead gardening can take many forms, from courtyard raised-bed gardens to potted tomatoes on an eighth-floor apartment balcony.

But what if you don’t have the time or space to plant, weed and harvest? Buying and eating local is one option. But check out how some urbanites are becoming clean-hand garden owners, right in their own backyard. You might even be inspired to put your gardening experience to work starting an urban garden business.

Now that you've probably heard about the benefits of eating locally grown food, you'll want to check out the following searchable databases. They'll have you chowing down on regional grub in no time. Most of these sites allow you to enter your ZIP code or at least search by state. And some even allow you to narrow your search to something as specific as 'pumpkin patches' within '50 miles' of 'Phoenix, Arizona,' or 'local food restaurants' in 'Lawrence, Kansas.' Scroll to the bottom to find local food producers outside the United States.

Local Harvest

Real Food. Real Farmers. Real Community.

Search for farmers markets, CSAs (community supported agriculture groups), co-ops and restaurants featuring local food.

Eat Wild

The #1 Site for Grass-Fed Food & Facts

Search for grass-fed meat and dairy.

Local Food Directories

State-by-state resources from the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service

Eat Well Guide

Wholesome Food from Healthy Animals

USDA List of Farmers Markets

Search for farmers markets nationwide. 

USDA CSA Resources  

Find community supported agriculture programs to join in your area.

Green People Directory

From the Organic Consumers Association, a list to help locate food producers and other merchants in your community

Chefs Collaborative Local Food Search

Chefs come here to locate local farmers, and you can locate restaurants serving up local fare.

Food Routes

The organization that helps other organizations rebuild community food systems also helps you find local food producers in your area.

Gourmet Magazine 2007 Restaurant Guide

This year's list of great American restaurants focuses on those whose chefs are taking locally sourced ingredients in new and exciting directions.

OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES

Real Food Directory: London Listings

From the Times Online, find the best restaurants, local produce and markets in the London area.

ATTENTION READERS:
If you know of more resources to help people find the world's best food (locally grown, that is!), please share it in the comments section below. I'm especially interested in regional rather than national guides, and also international sources.