The farm was just like the ones in the storybooks. Once upon a time, the resemblance wouldn’t have been unusual — the tales were based in reality after all — but then farming changed, and storybooks didn’t.

Citing considerations about animal welfare and product quality, six upscale restaurants here signed on as “Certified Humane” establishments. That designation of the national nonprofit organization Humane Farm Animal Care indicates operations that exclusively serve meat, poultry, egg and dairy products from humane-certified suppliers.

Everything went smoothly at last month’s debut of Home Farm, Sandy Lerner’s high-end butcher shop in Middleburg. Lerner, co-founder of Cisco Systems Inc., an animal-rights activist and philanthropist, showcased the cuts of meat from her humanely raised and slaughtered, rare-breed cattle, pigs and poultry that she produces from her 800-acre Ayrshire Farm estate in nearby Upperville.

The man in the boots and cowboy hat looks ready to ride in the county fair parade, but he’s really ready to go to work.  John Chaney is a rancher and a horseman who has spent his life developing his skills in both.

Although vegetables and fruit grown near the city have been the stars of the Greenmarkets for almost 30 years, pork, beef and lamb from local pastures are fast becoming the new darlings of the stands.