I like to recommend Kentucky native Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Prodigal Summer to people as a “novel of reproduction and ecology,” which may be redundant repetition. I also like that one of the characters had the same name as my quirky, kindly elementary school principal, Garnett Walker.

Avid Blue Moon (Garlic) Farm readers Jean and Leo Keene sent a link to a new Kingsolver essay, published in Orion Magazine, on the joys and wisdom of eating local foods in season. In a nice nod to the Slow Food movement and its principles, Read the rest of this entry »

Friends Jean and Leo Keene, Blue Moon Garlic growers, sent a link to the March 12, 2007 TIME Magazine cover story: “Eating Better Than Organic.” The great thing about living in central Kentucky is that we do not have to choose between eating organic food and eating local food. Leo and Jean, Mac and Ann Bell Stone, Arwen Donahue and David Wagoner, Suzy Quick, and many others, we eat sustainably grown food, organic, delicious, fresh. On April 14, Lexington Farmers Market opens outdoors for the 2007 season on Vine Street in downtown Lexington. I can’t wait!

Sign up now for a share of an organic farm’s produce all through the 2007 growing season. Places to look for participating farms: Local Harvest, Kentucky Department of Agriculture, and Green People.

The friend I have had longest told me what he saw in New Zealand last year: After school, children rode the bus home and ran the distance to their houses, shucking school clothes as they went. Within moments they came back outside, dressed for work, heading for the family vineyard.

My friend and I lived a Kentucky version of that New Zealand scene as we grew up, coming home after school to change clothes and do farm chores with animals, crops, gardens, fences, and machinery. I could never have imagined, then, that Kentucky children might one day have work to do in their families’ vineyards.

Now I imagine it often. Read the rest of this entry »

A version of this article first appeared in Nougat Magazine, February, 2007.

When someone tells me how much they like Dudley’s, I get ready to make a new friend. I assume they like what I like.

Dudley’s, at 380 South Mill Street, was the first Lexington restaurant to serve beautifully prepared fresh, locally grown foods, and among the first to operate in a renovated historic building downtown. I like everything about going to eat there.

I usually eat at home, but recently I got lucky and ate at Dudley’s three times in three weeks. Like most of the meals I have eaten at Dudley’s since it opened in 1981, all three took place in daytime.

Most recently, I ate lunch with my oldest friend on a grey January workday. Read the rest of this entry »