As readers of "Diary Of A Fat Man" know, my struggle all along has been balancing intake with exercise. I've resigned myself to the fact that I'm an occasional gourmand, given to overindulgence at times on weekends but well-behaved (in a dietary sense, at least) during the week.

Thus, when the invitation to a cattle drive at Spring House Meats came across my desk, I was intrigued. I'd get to go to Asheville, N.C., one of my favorite cities on the planet, get some serious exercise driving the herd four miles to the top of a mountain and then eat a catered dinner.

Spring House Meats is owned by Jamie and Amy Ager, part of a classic farm family that's been farming the area for four generations. Along with their toddler son, Cyrus, who's a charming fellow, they raise grassfed beef and lamb and pastured pork and chicken. For those of you unfamiliar with these products, ask your grandparents. Grassfed beef, as I've written about before, is to regular beef as filet mignon is to round steak. It's a denser, more flavorful beef that takes flavors well, but also stands on its own as a meaty masterpiece. Pastured pork, similar to what's known as Berkshire pork around the country, is pork the way it used to be. It has a bit of fat marbling and cooks up more tender and flavorful than the stuff you buy at the grocer. Pastured pork butts in a barbecue pit will produce pulled pork 'cue the likes of which you've never tasted, and the chops will flat spoil you for any others. This weekend, I'll be cooking some of the baby back ribs, and you'll be reading about that next week.

After a fortifying lunch at the Moose Cafe (more on that another time), I set off for the farm. Arriving, I quickly noticed something: My fellow hikers were a pretty aggressively fit bunch. I'm no slouch, but one look at me and you can tell I'm not so much into the marathon running, etc. Most of these folks looked like they could run the Boston Marathon in the morning, then take in a triathlon in the afternoon to wind down. But was I intimidated? Well, yes, I was. But I wasn't about to bail out now ... like the stick in front of the mule, dinner on top of a mountain was an irresistible lure.

Very soon, we all had our party favors (handmade leather bags with a nifty bandanna and homemade beef jerky), a couple of fresh apples and our marching orders. The cows were released, and off we went up a trail that looked suspiciously like it had a tendency to go sharply upward.

Silly me. Dinner on top of a mountain meant climbing up. Way up. Up in big chunks all at once. I could do four miles on the treadmill at the gym and still do a full workout, but the treadmill at its most fiendish only achieves a modest elevation, not the knee-popping steps I found along the trail.

The first challenge came a short distance in, when the trail headed straight for the highway, then curved sharply away. Have you ever tried to convince a cow, who would much prefer to keep traveling in a straight line, that she needs to redirect? No small amount of shouting and gesticulating was involved, at times making it look as if the cows were being herded by a very loud troupe of acrobats.

Up and up we went, over roots, across small streams, and through the kind of beautiful tree-shaded terrain that is making such places all too rare as developers move into the mountains. I had settled into a rhythm, mostly consisting of trying madly to stay ahead of the cows while trying not to drink all the water in my backpack at once.

When we reached the halfway point, the offer was made of a "sag wagon" to the top. As much as I had wanted to make the full four miles, a quick consultation with my thigh and calf muscles revealed that if I did choose to attempt the rest of the hike, chances were better than even I'd be one of those poor sods getting helicoptered off the side of the mountain after overextending himself.

The ride up to the mountaintop, in a four-wheel-drive SUV driven by a farmhand who obviously knew the terrain, was a real wonder. We'd go down a paved road, then onto a gravel road, then onto a dirt road, then onto what appeared to be a footpath. We drove past wild-growing apple trees so close we reached out the window to pluck the fruit, and saw the kinds of vistas one only sees when well away from paved roads.

As we topped a rise not far from our destination, I saw something that had me (unsuccessfully) fumbling for my camera: not 50 yards ahead was a group of wild turkeys, any one of them big enough for a Thanksgiving table. They seemed completely unconcerned with the approaching vehicle, and ambled into the brush, melting away as only such wily birds can. By the time I got my camera ready (and quit hitting the power button instead of the shutter button), they were invisible.

Happily munching apples, we arrived at the mountaintop meadow. Feeling guilty for not doing my part on the cattle drive, I pitched in by making the campfire. As the smoke rose, I looked at the surrounding peaks, for a moment imagining I was lighting one of Gondor's signal fires and waiting for the next one down the line to light. It's flights of fancy like that which keep me from holding public office.

Very soon after, the caterer arrived, and I realized the true reason I'd taken the sag wagon up the mountain: to make biscuits. Amy Ager had asked the caterer to make Dutch oven biscuits, and while she had some wicked good biscuit dough made, she'd never actually made them in a Dutch oven on a campfire before. One of my pals back in my Houston days was a highly skilled camp cook, and I had learned the basics of this old-style art from him. We were lacking a few tools (no shovel, short tongs, two welder's gloves ... both left), but in a short time we'd turned out a basket full of biscuits that vanished almost as soon as they hit the buffet table.

And what a buffet it was! After an appetizer spread that included organically grown vegetables and an assortment of dips, along with deviled eggs made from fresh farm eggs washed down with a mint limeade that I could have drunk by the gallon, the main dishes hit the table. There were green beans of a type called "greasy" beans, which looked like flat Italian beans and tasted like heaven, a squash salad made with what looked like a dozen different kinds of squash, potato salad, tabouli salad and, the crowning glory, roast beef made from Spring House's grassfed beef with a horseradish sauce that I'd eat on corn flakes.

For dessert? Fresh berry and fresh peach cobblers with hand-cranked ice cream. I'm getting hungry just remembering it.

Oh, and over dinner I learned a bit about Slow Food from Bob Bowles, who's involved in the thriving Asheville slow food community. If you are at all concerned about the invasion of convenience foods into our culture, and if you want to explore the world beyond fast food and megamart foods, you truly need to check these folks out.

If you're anywhere within driving distance of Asheville, I strongly recommend you pay a visit to Spring House Meats at Hickory Nut Gap Farm. If you're not nearby, don't despair. Family farms operations like the Agers' are an endangered species, but they're by no means extinct. Check with your local county extension service or, better yet, ask around at your local farmer's market. These people are doing it the right way, and supporting them is the right thing to do.

Got a question? Comment? Topic you'd like to see covered? Drop me a line, anytime!