One day last year, I took my children to visit a friend who raises chickens. She invited the kids to gather eggs, but both instinctively drew back from the coop. "Mom," hissed Anna Claire, 8, "those eggs look dirty. They came out of..." Her mouth twisted in disgust. "They came out of that chicken's butt!" It's worth noting that my daughter and 4-year-old son, Thomas, are far from city slickers—we live in a quiet, little Mississippi town, not Chicago or Manhattan. Plus, country life is in these kids' genes: Their great-grandmother kept chickens in her Alabama backyard. Now her descendants assumed that pristine eggs are laid directly into pastel Styrofoam containers.
In this photo: Corn silos, livestock barns, and some 40 acres of crop land set the scene at Kinnikinnick.
Across the country, farmers are opening up their barn doors to overnight guests. Writer Beth Ann Fennelly spends an idyllic weekend with her family at Illinois's Kinnikinnick Farm, learning where their food really comes from.
