Fresh, local tomatoes stop D.C. traffic. First Lady Michelle Obama's visits to the Vermont Avenue Farmers Market also helped draw foot traffic and actual sales for the 19 vendors at the seasonal market.
     The market is the fifth in the city run by Freshfarm Markets. The nonprofit group had permission to close off a block of Vermont Avenue in the heart of the city from 1 to 8 p.m. Thursdays. 
     When the market opened for the first time in September, Mrs. Obama addressed the crowd of shoppers and vendors, and told them she had never seen so many people so excited about fruits and vegetables. She didn't say whether or not any of the produce had come from the White House garden. Before heading back home, she filled a basket with local produce, cheese and chocolate milk.
     If you'd like to pick up a few things for your fridge, better hurry. The market closes down for the season tomorrow. To read more, and to see a video of shoppers' reactions, click here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2009/09/17/VI2009091703565.html?sid=ST2009091704578
     

     This delectable confection looks like another inch on the waist, but it's actually a healthy pumpkin-cranberry spice bundt cake made with just a third cup of oil. You'll find the recipe - along with a whole batch of whole-grain recipes - in this coming Saturday's edition of Lancaster Farming. It's in the Food and Family section.



And you think American TV is bad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYXObIS5_AM

You have two cows, one named Madonna and one named H1294. Which will give more milk? Need you ask? According to researchers at Newcastle University in England, Madonna will outmilk H1294 by 68 gallons or 586 pounds a year. At $15 a hundredweight, Madonna outmilks her merely numbered counterpart by $88 a year.

And if Madonna and 99 of her herdmates - Beyonce, Shakira, Alicia, Edna et al - are all named and given the individual attention that named animals routinely receive, the owner of their herd will have an extra $8,800 a year in his or her milk checks. No injections. No special feed. No drugs. Just extra attention.

The researchers believe it's just the socialization that makes the cows more relaxed, and more productive. And rather than telling H1294 to stop some annoying behavior, don't you think you'd get better results if you could say, "Madonna, stop switching your tail in my face!"

To read about the research, click here:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/02/05/cow-milk-name.html

They're tied to the past. But in a nice way. About 100 people turned out for a display of aprons, mostly of the fancy variety, at an early October meeting of the Harford County Maryland Historical Society. A colorful history of all sorts of aprons - in all their crocheted, smocked, scalloped and tattetd glory was presented to the gathered. Lancaster Farming correspondent Linda Sarubin was there to, uh, cover the event. You can read about it in the family features section of our current edition.

That's nice. And very melodic. But they still have pay at the checkout counter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnY59mDJ1gg

If the sheriff's coming up the driveway to collect your cattle, where do you hide them? In the kitchen, natch. At least that's what Leonard Manhart allegedly did with some of his herd of purebred Dexter cattle, one of which, Cletus the bull, is the last descendant of a herd once owned by Bobby Kennedy. Yes, that Bobby Kennedy.

Manhart lives on 36 mostly wooded acres near the village of Mountainhome, of the more picturesque places in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, a mecca for East Coast tourists. Eileen Pasquin, of Pocono Animal Rescue, was following up a tip about Manhart's cattle exploits, and could find only a few animals roaming around the property. Then she spotted hoofprints leading into the house.

"I actually didn't believe I was seeing it," she told Pocono Record reporter David Kidwell. "It didn't make sense, so I just yelled for someone else to come look," she said.

In short order, Barrett Township's police chief, Steve Williams, arrived to take a look for himself, and very soon Manhart's cattle had been moved to nearby farms where, presumably, they are being better cared for. They reportedly looked a little scrawny when they were moved.

Of course, there are two sides to every story. You can read Manhart's side, and watch a video of his explanation here: http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091011/NEWS/910110331

The alleged Dean Foods/DFA connection, and whether it's been good or bad for dairymen in the Northeast, is an issue that's headed to U.S. District Court in Burlington, Vermont. According to an article in this week's Lancaster Farming by correspondent Steve Taylor, the issue will probably take years to settle. You can read more about it here: http://www.lancasterfarming.com/node/2336

Are you sure you wouldn't rather work in an office? I just hope these guys aren't on the public payroll.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3617637/office_rowing/

Wonder what PETA thinks of this. It's a box of honeybees, trapped and caged, laboring under who knows what horrendously cramped confines. The boxes are manufactured by a British company called Inscentenial Technology. They also show customers how to train the bees, using tiny whips and chains and shock collars (or so we've heard).

Bees, according to the company's propaganda, have acute senses of smell, and can be trained in a matter of minutes (Schhewwitt! Schhewwitt! Schhewwitt!) to sniff out such things as explosives, drugs, rotten apples, people with tuberculosis and other people who've had way too many Slim Jims.

If you would like to let this company know exactly what you think of their cruel mistreatment of the humble, hardworking bee, here's their email address

http://www.inscentinel.com

Or better yet, why not just send them a big box of raging hornets. Mark it "Fragile. Pretty things."

An udderly fascinating whodunit is on page A21 of the current edition of Lancaster Farming. It's a tale of laboratory detectives using first-of-its-kind-in-the-U.S. technology to ferret out mastitis with much more accuracy than current testing methods allow. The equipment is now undergoing tests at Lancaster Laboratories, as reported in this story by Chris Torres.

If you like to listen to really good country music while you're sipping that glass of raw milk, you might want to turn on your radio. Just don't go here

http://www.letslegalizeit.com/

Get out those red slippers, Dorothy. Looks like another storm brewing in Kansas. That was my thought when I learned of a $17.4 million USDA loan to the city of Greensburg, Kansas, for a 10-turbine wind farm.

The money is going to Greensburg Wind Farms LLC, a subsidiary of John Deere Renewables. I know it's a loan, and it has to be repaid, and I know John Deere is good for it. At least as good as General Motors was for its...but let's not go there. And if anybody deserves an infusion of jobs and capital, it is Greensburg, Kansas, blown literally apart by a tornado in May of 2007. Ten people died and there was almost nothing left of Greensburg.

The city is rebuilding from the ground up, it's in one of the nation's windiest spots, and it will be supplying good old USA-generated megawatts for Greensburgians and the citizens of surrounding communities. It is an absolutely ideal project. For the Department of Energy.

My question is this - why did the cost of this loan have to come out of the USDA budget when millions of family farmers are facing their own financial storms? For a copy of the news release that seeks to justify the project, click here http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_1OB?contentidonly=true&contentid=2009/10/0503.xml

How would you like to visit one of the most historic hunting lodges in the country? Six presidents have stayed there, it's considered the first presidential retreat (an honor now accorded Camp David) and one of the lodge's founders, Henry Bridges, is credited with help to save the wild turkey from extinction. Well, you can't see it anymore this year. That bus has left. But the Maryland Park Service does open the Woodmont Rod and Gun Club Lodge in Hancock, Md., near Baltimore, twice a year to the general public. The latest tour was last month and the next one will be in the spring. Meanwhile, you can read about the lodge in our current edition. Lancaster Farming correspondent Ayleen Stellhorn took the September tour and writes about her adventure in our current edition.

Charlie's got a biting sense of humor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OBlgSz8sSM

The largest French farmers union, FNSEA, organized a protest earlier today in which farmers spread old tires and hay on the Champs-Elysees and torched them. It was a group of about 150 grain farmers, and they picked one of the world's most famous shopping streets to call attention to the fact that their costs of production are way above the market price of their crops. The grain protest come just a week or so after French and Belgian dairymen were spilling milk onto the fields and streets.

Agriculture is one of the most sheltered industries in the European Union, but the governments of France and the other 26 nations in the EU haven't been able to protect the farmers from the world's economic meltdown.

There's a story about the situation by Associated Press Writer Rachael Kurowski here.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gRRNSX_sgIX_niwsQ4vLEG9ziEKAD9BC5JD80

A couple of dairymen in the Northeast have launched a class action suit against DFA, Dean Foods, Dairy Marketing Services and HP Hood, accusing them of dominating and manipulating the milk marketplace to the detriment of farmers. Associated Press wirter Dave Gram reports on the suit from Montpelier, Vermont. His story is on page one of the Lancaster Farming edition due in your mailbox tomorrow.

Somebody needs to get a life. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1yv0ETlEls

A new Vista for Bill Gates? Okay, that's not nice, but it was irrestible. Bill and Melinda Gates, through their foundation, are determined to work at increasing food production in developing countries, which will indeed open up new vistas for millions of hungry people.

Over the past three years, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed $1.4 billion toward agricultural development, funding projects ranging from breeding higher-yielding plants to helping African farmers find new markets for their crops and assisting Indian women in managing their soil and water.

The Foundation is requiring independent analyses of its agricultural projects, to see which ones work and which ones don't. It was the first major speech on agriculture for Gates, presented at the annual World Food Prize Symposium in Des Moines, Iowa.

The prize was begun by the late Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug, and was presented this year to Dr. Gebisa Ejeta of Ethiopia, whose sorghum hybrids are resistant to drought and the devastating Striga weed. His hybrids have dramatically increased the production and availability of one of the world’s five principal grains, and enhanced the food supply of hundreds of millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa.

A story about Gates's speech is here http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009910150377

And there's a story about Dr. Ejeta here http://www.worldfoodprize.org/press_room/2009/june/ejeta.htm

So, Pennsylvania finally has a budget and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture continues to function, albeit with significantly fewer programs, dollars and people. In spite of having one of the biggest and most expensive legislatures in the country, the Capitol Circus Clowns fooled around for 100 days past their legally mandated deadline for delivering a budget. A significant cut was the ag research budget, which lost half-a-million dollars. Lancaster Farming special sections editor Charlene Shupp-Esbenshade reports on the budget situation from an agricultural point of view on page one of the issue due in your mailbox on Saturday.

It is parrot week here on AgScene. http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1690903558

First came "eat local" now it's "drink local." That's the trend, according to Dave McIntyre, writing in the Washington Post about the burgeoning wine country that is Loudon County, Virginia.

In 1985, there were just a few wineries in the county. Now there are 23. The growth has been fueled by young vintners eager to serve the discriminating palates of the metropolitan Washington, D.C., region. The vineyards serving the wineries are home to an impressive number of grape varieties, and McIntyre is enthusiastic about the quality of both the grapes and the wines that are made from them.

Chefs in the region have long been foraging for local food producers. As the quality of local wines improves, those same chefs and restaurant managers are now shopping for wines made close to home.

McIntyre said he tasted 28 Loudon County wines with Todd Thrasher, sommelier at Restaurant Eve in Old Town Alexandria. Thrasher told McIntyre that he would be pouring only wines from Virginia and Maryland at his annual Farmland Feast, which benefits area farm markets.

McIntyre's article is here http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/13/AR2009101300433.html?hpid=features1&hpv=national

Do you know where your hamburger has been? In an opinion piece in our current edition, Lancaster Farming editor Dave Lefever asks us all how eager we are to eat a burger that contains meat from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and a processor in South America. It's tough, these days, to find a butcher shop where you can actually watch a cut of sirloin being ground into hamburger. And maybe that day will never come around again, but Dave feels there's something seriously amiss with the present system.

So, who's the birdbrain here? http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=funny+parrots&pq=funny+parrot&docid=1190169084086&mid=E3D43CCCC035BFE4C926E3D43CCCC035BFE4C926&FORM=VIVR8

A vegetable grower outstanding in his field could actually benefit from new technology that lets consumers with cell phones scan a bar code at a supermarket produce section and find out exactly where a bag of spinach came from. And by "exactly," I mean which farmer and which field.

Two new companies, YottaMark of Redwood City, California, and FoodLogiq of Durham, North Carolina, have developed sophisticated software for tracing the origin and freshness of food.

YottaMark's traceability label has been applied to almost a billion food items so far, and the company has found that, other factors - price, for example - being equal, consumers would choose a traceable item over an untraceable one by a factor of eight to one.

There's a story in last week's edition of The Economist, which you can read here http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14627082

A one-acre solar panel - aka a field of grass - is a healthy profit center if it is carefully managed to produce animal products. At the second annual Graze-a-Palooza in Canastota, New York, experienced graziers, newbies and wannabes gathered to talk about the practice and philosophy of grazing. It was an interesting convening of common interests reported on by Lancaster Farming central New York correspondent Maegan Crandall. One of the presenters was the Grass Whispered himself, Troy Bishopp, who often shares his thoughts with our readers. Maegan's story in is the Ag Innovations section of our current edition.

Farmers markets are so cool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnplN3jPLKw

Looking ahead to 2050, the world's poorest countries will need $44 billion a year in development assistance if all the world's people are to have enough food. That's according to a story in today's Time Magazine by reporter Ariel David.

David was reporting on a two-day conference of ag experts meeting in R

ome as part of the U.N.'s continuing effort to stay abreast of the changing needs of a

growing world population.

Currently, the amount of development assistance aimed at increasing food production is $7.9 billion, according to the report. World population is expected to rise from the current 6.7 billion people to 9.5 billion by 2050, and the FAO sees a need for a 70 percent increase in food production.

To read more, go here http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1929840,00.html

Agritainment has gone high-tech and high finance, with GPS-guided tractors cutting intricate swaths through coornfields, and data-driven marketing plans designed to get customers into the country. Sue Bowman, Lancaster Farming correspondent for Southeast Pennaylvania, visited Penn State agribusiness graduate Hugh McPerson to find out how he works with his farmer customers in 23 states. to develop fun-filled mazes that are more than a simple stroll through a cornfield. Sue's story is in Section B of our current edition.

So, what are they playing on the field? And who cares? http://www.funnyhub.com/videos/pages/human-jumbotron.html

If you slice a pizza into eight pieces and it's worth $15 (actually, it's worth about a buck-twenty-five if you're just counting ingredients), and then you slice it into sixteen pieces, is the resliced pie worth $30?

No.

Common sense says it's the same pizza. If the world's financial community had suddenly come down with a serious case of common sense a decade or so ago, if the "experts" had discerned that if you divide a pile of a hundred one-dollar bills into two piles of fifty, or fifty piles of two, that you would still have just a hundred dollars. By ignoring common sense, the people charged with operating the economy created a situation where people lost their jobs, businesses shut their doors, homeowners found themselves homeless, banks couldn't make loans, and retirement accounts wouldn't became cruel jokes.

There's an article in today's Economist that talks about the nature of wealth, and how by ignoring the real wealth - which is not money but the tangible assets behind the money - we got ourselves into such a huge mess. The article is here http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14587262

"The EPA has Lancaster County in its crosshairs," Don McNutt told the Lancaster County Chamber of Commerce and Industry's monthly ag issues forum this morning. The agency is particularly concerned about 24 Amish farms in the Watson and Houston watersheds, which flow into the Pequea Creek, which flows into the Susquehanna, and we all know where that goes. McNutt, who is district administrator of the Lancaster County Conservation District, is working day and night - literally - to get the EPA and other agencies to work with the farmers rather than against them. For example, the district has developed a program that encourages farmers to voluntarily fence livestock out of streams flowing through their fields. On their own dime, if necessary. Believe it or not, the program is having some good results. Does McNutt have his work cut out for him? Absolutely. Will we be following this story? You betcha.

But can he do it with a stick? http://www.break.com/index/smart-dog-can-shoot-pool.html

AFBF and EWG are bumping heads over emissions legislation introduced
last week in the Senate. The Environmental Working Group backs a bill aimed
at reducing smokestack emissions by 17 percent from such industries as
manufacturing, oil refining and power generation.

American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman said, "For the
future of the U.S. economy and American agriculture, climate change legislation
must be defeated by Congress."

His reasoning is that the cost of meeting the 17 percent goal by 2020 will
result in higher farm input costs for fuel, fertilizer and pesticides.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack agreed that farm costs would increase,
by 0.3 percent between the years 2012 and 2018, but that the higher costs
would be outweighed by farm income generated by a carbon offset program.

And EWG said any cost increase would be negligible, and far less than the
loss of income caused by droughts, floods, higher temperatures and crop losses
resulting from climate change.

There's always news coming out of Washington, isn't there? What would
really be news is if something happened, or somebody had an idea, and
everybody else agreed that it was good.

More details are in a Washington Post story by Reuters reporter Christopher
Doering. You can read it here
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/07/AR2009100700074.html

Pennsylvania grape growers are looking for volunteers to help them with a sundance. "It's been a hard, difficult vintage, so far," Mark Chien told Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres. The difficult part has been due mostly to the lack of sunshine, which grapes need to produce sugar. Red grapes have especially suffered for the lack of sunny days. Torres's story is in our current edition.

Squawk box? You call this squawking? http://www.break.com/index/nerdy-kid-shreds-on-the-accordion.html

Darrron Joffe is a different sort of farmer. For example, he flies a lot. He is a consultant for individuals and groups interested in biodynamic agriculture, a somewhat metaphysical approach to organic farming that treats the entire farm as a holistic entity, and plants crops according to an astronomical calendar.

Joffe maintains a dairy farm near Atlanta, and has founded a business, Farm D Organics, based on his concepts about composting, planting, pest control and other issues all farmers have to deal with.

He has some interesting conversations with his airline seatmates. One gardener wanted to know why her compost pile wasn't generating any usable material.

Could it have been the plastic bags she was throwing into the pile along with her kitchen scraps, Joffe wondered?

The Farmer D website is here: http://www.farmerd.com/meet_farmerd

To read more about the biodynamic movement, click here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodynamic_agriculture

In case you haven't heard, 16-year-old Krystal Wasson of Centre County was

crowned the new Pennsylvania Pennsylvania Dairy Princess at the annual pageant

in Camp Hill. Anne Harnish, Lancaster Farming food and family features editor

was there to capture the thrills and the drama for a story which appears in our

current edition.

Revenge of the school answering machine. Oh, them Aussies. http://www.break.com/index/hilarious-answering-machine-message.html

Deere & Co. and the United Auto Workers hammered out a labor agreement yesterday that will keep the company's 10,000 union workers on the job at its five Iowa plants, as well as manufacturing sites in Illinois and Kansas, and parts depots in Atlanta and Denver. The previous agreement expired at midnight Wednesday.

The new contract covers about 17% of Deere's more than 56,000 employees. The company is Iowa's largest manufacturing employer. Deere is the world's largest maker of farm equipment, and has been battered by the slumping global economy that depressed sales of its tractors and other farm equipment.

Deere, which also makes construction equipment, has faced dwindling demand for its products as farmers and other customers rein in spending because of tough economic conditions and weaker crop prices. Tight credit markets in some developing countries have made it difficult for potential customers to finance equipment purchases.

There's an AP story about the agreement here: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?

AID=200991001007

A seventh generation farmer was named to the Pennsylvania Livestock Hall of Fame this week at the Keystone International Livestock Expo. Jesse Darlington, a Centre County farmer has served as a KILE ringmaster for the past quarter century. Darlington, his wife, Barbara and their son Jesse breed Percherons, Quarter horses, Welsh ponies and Angus cattle on their 190 acres. There are also two Darlington daughters, Ruth Ann Harpster and Barbara Louise Kelsey.

Water 'n poo. Something to sing about.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?

AID=200991001007

It may look like Hell, but it actually is just turkey manure on fire. The fire is contained within the combustion chamber of a Bio-Fuel tube boiler recently installed on the crop and turkey farm owned by Mack Curtis of Snyder County, Pennsylvania. Curtis hosted a field day for the Snyder County Conservation District yesterday, and yours truly was there. My report on the visit, appears in the Lancaster Farming issue due in your mailbox Saturday.

Climate change could see winners in some parts of the world, losers in others according to a report today in The Economist. A farmer in Northern Bangladesh told the magazine's reporters that he is no longer able to follow the seasonal planting patterns of his forefathers, because he doesn't see seasons anymore. Moderate, temperate seasons are shorter and less predictable, and the rains, when they come, are often violent and destructive. International Food Policy Research Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank, has released a report saying that in parts of the developing world some crop yields in 2050 could be only half of their 2000 levels. Irrigation may not help: climate change will hit irrigated systems harder than rain-fed ones. And the hope that gainers from climate change will outweigh losers looks vain: the damage from higher temperatures and erratic rainfall will be too big.

The IFPRI report focuses on agriculture in the developing world, and says that China and Mexico, for example, may fare better than other regions. South Asia, one of the world's most densely populated areas, could be hit hardest of all. The institute's research and predictions relied heavily upon two climate change models, one run by America’s National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the other by Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

You can find The Economist story here:

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14540051

Uh, Fluffy. Did you ever hear of "Pressing your luck?" http://video.yahoo.com/watch/2957486/8486392