I was in Putney, Vermont, a couple of weeks ago working on a book for Stewart, Tabori & Chang. The author, Deborah Krasner, trumps me in the best-job category—she raises sheep, chicken, and guinea fowl on a fully sustainable family farm, where they host weeklong culinary vacations. The people in Putney look like they're always thinking good thoughts. Maybe it's the bacon.

Here's our crew, led by Marcus Nilsson, shooting a dinner scene in Deborah's pasture at dusk. You can't see it, but there's a roast on the table that came from "Shank the Sheep," a former resident of the Krasner farm. Shank's pelt was salted, left in the sun for 10 days, then sent to a tanner in Pennsylvania. It now adorns a vintage Danish side chair in their living room.

I'm tempted to move here so I can join Lizzie Krasner (Deborah's daughter) in the Naked Table Project. Open only to Vermont residents, each participant spends the weekend making a dining room table from Vermont sugar-maple timber. At the end, they plant a tree in honor of the timber they used, carve the coordinates of exactly where the tree that gave up the timber for the table stands, and then prepare a meal together, which gets served on their newly made tables, all pushed together. How perfectly Vermont.

On my last night in Putney, they had their first frost, which threatened Lizzie's tomato plants. With her permission, I harvested the last of the tomatoes. She has a plan for the ripe ones but graciously let me keep the others, with which I'll make my Green Tomato Ketchup. It'll be good with that Vermont Co-op bacon, and a slice off the five-pound loaf of Very Healthy Bread I bought at the Brattleboro Farmer's Market. And I won't even have to put on makeup or blow dry my hair to be seen eating it.