We know it’s hip and chic and gives you a wonderfully worn out blue jeany feel to shop locally for foods and produce.  Everybody, it seems, has a row to hoe … from greenness to economics to social concerns.  Our epicurean responsibility allows us to blissfully ignore all of that, while requiring us to only concern ourselves with taste and freshness.  How incredible and exciting to discover that excellence grows just outside of your own backdoor!  Such has been our experience at Natalia’s over the last two years.  Talk is cheap, but the proof is decidedly at the end of a fork … and apparently at the end of a country lane.  We are delighted to use and recommend the following local companies, whose ingredients we use both in our recipes and, I shamelessly admit, as stolen mouthfuls in the afternoon kitchen.  In Macon we’re extremely fortunate to be able to buy directly from, and even visit, these serious, focused and accomplished local farms.  To support our local economy while eating fresher and tastier organic foods is a double harvest.   It’s also the closest I can get to standing on my tiptoes, as a little girl in Italy, and picking a plum from my neighbor’s orchard.