First came "eat local" now it's "drink local." That's the trend, according to Dave McIntyre, writing in the Washington Post about the burgeoning wine country that is Loudon County, Virginia.

In 1985, there were just a few wineries in the county. Now there are 23. The growth has been fueled by young vintners eager to serve the discriminating palates of the metropolitan Washington, D.C., region. The vineyards serving the wineries are home to an impressive number of grape varieties, and McIntyre is enthusiastic about the quality of both the grapes and the wines that are made from them.

Chefs in the region have long been foraging for local food producers. As the quality of local wines improves, those same chefs and restaurant managers are now shopping for wines made close to home.

McIntyre said he tasted 28 Loudon County wines with Todd Thrasher, sommelier at Restaurant Eve in Old Town Alexandria. Thrasher told McIntyre that he would be pouring only wines from Virginia and Maryland at his annual Farmland Feast, which benefits area farm markets.

McIntyre's article is here http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/13/AR2009101300433.html?hpid=features1&hpv=national

Do you know where your hamburger has been? In an opinion piece in our current edition, Lancaster Farming editor Dave Lefever asks us all how eager we are to eat a burger that contains meat from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and a processor in South America. It's tough, these days, to find a butcher shop where you can actually watch a cut of sirloin being ground into hamburger. And maybe that day will never come around again, but Dave feels there's something seriously amiss with the present system.

So, who's the birdbrain here? http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=funny+parrots&pq=funny+parrot&docid=1190169084086&mid=E3D43CCCC035BFE4C926E3D43CCCC035BFE4C926&FORM=VIVR8