The five mile diet

Not to get too twee about things, but the Saturday hunting and gathering expeditions don't get any better than they are in late summer early fall in western Mass.

What a good food day it was today. I realized that, combined with our own eggs, we are able to eat a lot of locally-generated food.

The corn is, remarkably enough, still really good, and we're talking yellow corn, not just Silver Queen. Tomatoes and eggplant from Deerfield, shiitake mushrooms from Colrain, of all places, and potatoes dug this morning from Hicks's Farm on the Mohawk Trail. Goat cheese spread from Goat Rising in Charlemont, maple syrup from Norman Hicks and Davenport's in Shelburne.

Half the places I bought all this stuff didn't even have cash registers, just a cash box where you left the money.

Not many places you can still do that.

The Times Hearts Chickens

The New York Times has definitely discovered chickens. What took them so long?

Not long ago there was a piece on the growing popularity of free range chickens, now today comes a piece about urban coopsters....