The sign on a friend's refrigerator said, "Eat to Live, Don't Live to Eat." Generally a good rule to live by, but there are those few days in life when I'm so glad that I've lived to that day so I can eat.

The Farm-to-Fork Picnic June 14 at the Breeze Farm in Hurdle Mills on Walnut Grove Church Road in northeast Orange County was one of those days. Over 600 people celebrated local food, its growers and chefs and marked the burgeoning cultural change to re-recognizing, in the words of Barbara Kingsolver," Whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of dirt."

Farm-to-Fork was a foodie's dream where 70 area chefs, restaurants, farmers and artisanal food makers collaborated to show off the latest advances in our region's local farming tradition -- rhubarb beer anyone? This second annual event raised over $14,000 to support local agricultural apprenticeship programs helping grow a new generation of North Carolina farmers. The reason Bon Appetit just named our area "America's Foodiest Small Town" (October 2008) was all on display up there at the W.C. Breeze Family Farm Extension and Research Center, alongside rows of ripening crops. Old Col. Breeze, the benefactor himself, made an appearance. The day's homegrown soundtrack featured an unlikely mix of old time country and klezmer.

Rebekah and I sampled foods from only 17 of the 30 plus items at the feast. I couldn't do more while also tending to the proper sorting of garbage from 400 people in 90 degree heat.

It was a good day not to be kosher. The first thing I ate was a pig's heart from Fickle Creek Farm that had been braised 12 hours in the animal's fat then cooked five more hours and chopped finely to go on a tortilla. Its deep, robust flavor fortified me for the rest of the event. I chased it with a wonderfully non-mayonnaise-based slaw and a potato and onion salad also thankfully free of the white glop. Thanks Brett Jennings and the Perry-winkle farmers. Following that with a roasted beet salad from Lucky 32 it was a shame to recall I used to hate beets.

Not only were pigs and shellfish abundant, but a lot of the cow-based dishes were covered with cheese, violating that other dietary stricture of Leviticus not to see the calf in its mother's milk, thus cutting off the observant from the joy of the cheeseburger even when covered with a delectable local chevre as was the mini-Royale prepared by Ashley Christiansen of Poole's Diner out of Karl Hudson's Rare Earth Farm. These tiny burgers themselves were a perfection of charred exterior and warm pink interior.

Cruising down gustatory lane, I sampled the North Carolina shrimp with bloody mary sauce courtesy of Fred Thompson of Edible Piedmont, the new franchised foodie quarterly out of Raleigh. Following that crustacean delight, I almost had to turn away from the whole roasted ram on a spit paraded in and served head-on by the fine folk from Durham's Piedmont Restaurant. It is good to know your food source, but it was a little hard to look young Ramses in the eye (socket) before devouring a lovely slice of his tenderly marinated flesh. Man it was good. His grisly seared grin is still on my mind. The next day as I placed his carcass in our compost cart, my workmate Muriel and I covered him with flowers and I named him Jimmy.

After that fleshy start punctuated by a perfectly fried slice of yellow squash from The Barbeque Joint, duty called and I took a long turn helping the eager public sort their waste into compostables, recyclables and tiny amounts of "true trash." While I was sweating it out, barking trash sorting orders at the masses, my friend Steve Hessler and my wife took turns supplying cool sweet things to revive me. First came the lemon balm/mint sorbet from the SEEDS project in Durham. It was surpassed only by the Platonic miniature blueberry ice cream cone from Sage and Swift using blueberries from Peregrine Farm. Through my dripping sweat, I spotted snow cones and immediately coveted one. At my next break I finally chased one down and found it doused with an impossibly flavor-saturated fresh strawberry syrup, a lightly candied strawberry and honey marshmallow topping. Thank you Monica Segovia-Welsh and George O'Neal.

Were there only enough time and space in my stomach I would have devoured it all. I barely got to rush through the artisanal foods tent where I saw Rob Nichols, my old catering partner in crime and founder of Weaver Street Market's inimitable bread bakery with his latest crusty and flavorfully burnt wood-fired breads with wild yeasts. I savored a hunk chased by cold rhubarb beer from the nascent Fullsteam Brewery. Sated and out of feeding time, I reluctantly returned to raking the muck. Not all for naught as over 85 percent of the day's waste was recycled or composted.

Contact Blair Pollock at blairlpollock@gmail.com