Normally, I hate froufrou precious expensive yuppie purist food fetishism. But I prefer organic meat--not because I feel all special and righteous when I buy it necessarily, but because it tastes incredibly much better.

Fortunately, where I live, you can buy free-range chicken and grass-fed beef from local farmers. You can see the faces of the people who raise your food and if you really wanted to, could look your food right in the eye before you ate it.

There is a down side to this, of course, for the average contemporary American. Meat is messy. It's bloody and animals are killed to produce it and we really don't want to think too hard about that fact.

Going to Freeman's Farm makes me think about it a little differently. They're cheerful. They love what they do, and they deeply believe in it: participating in a local economy and raising food under the best, healthiest and most natural conditions. And what they do is, well, kinda messy. What struck me first, when they proudly chose a fat, freshly-killed chicken for me from the tub of cold brine they'd been soaking in, was the literally visceral smell that hovered over the yard. Everything about the property is exquisitely clean--it has to be--but if you don't get your meat sanitized in plastic and grocery freezers, there's really no masking the blood-smell of freshly-killed animals.

Gazing, mesmerized at the hundreds of chicken siblings to my new meal bobbing in the brine, I said, stupidly, "wow. There must have been a lot of blood."

They grinned, rather patiently I thought, trying their best not to roll their eyes. "Yes, it was!" Mr Freeman said, beaming. And we put the blood into our compost, along with the heads and guts. Feathers too! It goes right back to the land and makes great fertilizer!

I told a friend of mine, farm girl born and bred, 4-H prizes for her apple pies and everything, about the lamish thing I said and the rather wonderful response. She said: "for people like them, whose business is organic meat and who believe in what they do, blood and guts are protein--just another form of energy. It's important, and it's a natural part of the life cycle.

Today, when I went to pick up some eggs, I noticed the blood-smell again. It was subtly different--deeper. The calves are old enough and it's beef season now.

It smelled strange. But sweet. Very sweet. Life at its most vividly tangible.