Not surprisingly, most of the people here are vegans, including Ms. Stewart. Jon recently became a vegetarian (cheese and eggs, still O.K.), but “he’s a little afraid to say it out loud,” Ms. Stewart said. “He thinks he’s going to be caught somewhere eating meat.”

“I just keep telling him: ‘Eat a burger. Don’t overthink this.’ ” For the Stewarts it is an ethical decision, not a health one, though it has its health benefits, too. But Ms. Stewart wants to be clear that she is not in every way Nature Girl. “Breast-feeding? I did it for just as long as I felt I had to, and then I stopped,” she said. “It hurt.”

As we walked, the women tried every conceivable way to sell me on the beauty of the nonmeat lifestyle. “See that guy over there?” Ms. Stewart said, pointing out a chiseled Adonis-with-a-bun who looked more suitable for a Tommy Hilfiger ad than a farm. “Vegan.” The more they talked, the more I craved a steak.

“I’ll tell you why vegans are so annoying,” Ms. Stewart said, reading my mind. “Imagine for a second you’ve never spent time with puppies and you’re in this culture where it’s the norm to eat them. One day you bring a puppy home. Then you’re like: ‘Oh, my God, what is everyone doing? They can’t eat puppies!’ That’s what it’s like when you start spending time with farm animals.”

Over dinner (no steak, couldn’t do it), we talked about her husband’s retirement. “He hasn’t quite adjusted to being a stay-at-home dad,” she said. “So he’s appreciating me a lot more now.”

I asked Ms. Stewart what she would most like people to take away from her book.

“I’d like people to start to look at animals as individuals,” she said. “If everyone did a bit more, if they fell in love a little bit more, so much could happen. It doesn’t have to be going vegan. You can advocate for them. You can show tenderness. You can play music for them. I really hope people can connect with animals the way most of us did as children.”

That’s the thing about animals we grow close to, Ms. Stewart added: “We talk about taking in ‘rescue animals.’ But the truth is, just as often, animals rescue us.”