Lancaster Farming contributor Troy Bishopp, "The Grass Whisperer," was out and about on a recent wintry morn in New York, took this photo and sent it in to grace the front page of our North edition.

     The Hendricks family could buy flowers from anywhere in the world, but they prefer to pick them in their own backyard. Their backyard is a 26-acre tract of land surrounded by the town of Lititz, Pa. Their fourth-generation retail florist business thrives with attention to detail, creative arrangements, science (Sue Ellen, one of the Hendricks family owners, has a masters degree in soil chemistry), and an excellent reputation for quality and service.  Lancaster Farming reporter Lou Ann Good toured the business, talked to the people who make it work and wrote a story for our current edition.     


     EPA inspections of farms in Lancaster County, the Delmarva Peninsula and the Shenandoah Valley began last week to determine if those farms have drawn up conservation and manure management plans. The inspections are part of a push by the Obama administration aimed at cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Lancaster Farming reporter Chris Torres looked into the issue and found out that the EPA was sticking to its guns with respect to a December 31, 2010, deadline for farms to have conservation and manure managment plans in place. His story is in our current edition, which you can see at lancasterfarming.com.


     In another TMDL story, Torres reports on a recent teleconference by ag industry groups who want the EPA to delay their TMDL requirements. In part, it's because the two lead agencies in the watershed cleanup effort - the USDA and EPA - use significantly different numbers in their calculations of just how much sediment and nutrients are carried into the Chesapeake from farmland.

What the real Farmville looks like.

     Will the real Farmville please stand out? The Facebook version was created in 2007 and has a gazillion visitors/players every day. A real live Farmville has existed in Prince Edward County, Va., since 1798. It has actual people, streets, businesses and buildings, and if you want a cup of coffee and a piece of pie you pay with actual money. Denise Watson Batts and Jim Hall, reporters for The Virginian-Pilot, recently visited the physical Farmville and noted their impressions of the differences between the real and the virtual town. The AP picked up their story and it is reprinted in our current southern edition. One gets the idea that the Hall and Batts team preferred the real to the imaginary.  A hearty second to that notion.

  

An example of Suzanne Wainwright-Evans' sweet handiwork.

     It's very clear that Suzanne Wainright-Evans is serious about her candy-making hobby. Clear toy candy was a Christmas treat for Colonial-era yougsters, and Wainright-Evans is a stickler for historical accuracy when it comes to making her modern-day versions. She eschews refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup, for example, in favor of organic sugar which she grinds by hand with a mortar and pestle. An entomologist by trade, she makes clear toy as a Christmas fund-raiser for the Upper Lehigh Historical Society in Schnecksville, Pa. Lancaster Farming reporter Lou Ann Good called on the bug lady/candy maker and wrote of her visit in our current edition, which you can see online at Lancaster Farming.com. For more information on Wainright-Evans, check out her website at BugladyConsulting.com.

Attendees at a Lancaster conference
 on manure digesters.

     Manure digesters are a hot topic these days, and are considered part of the answer to cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay watershed. And while large-scale on-farm and regional digesters costing many thousands of dollars are a focal point, small-scale digesters have been in use around the world for a hundred years or more. Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres attended an anaerobic digester conference recently in Lancaster and discovered that Chinese farmers alone have 37 million small-scale digesters. They don't work as well as the scientifically designed and professionaly installed digesters on 500-cow U.S. dairy farms, but they provide biogas for heating and cooking. The story starts on page one of our current edition.


     Who gets the margin? If a consumer pays $3.20 for a gallon of milk, and the dairy farmer who produced it gets $1.20, what happens to the $2 that the farmer doesn't get? The U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Justice have held joint meetings meetings in Alabama, Colorado, Wisconsion, Iowa and D.C. to help farmers - and not just dairymen - answer that question about milk and other food commodities. Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres attended the Washington meeting and wrote about it in our current edition.


     Curious what we learned from the 2010 corn crop? Greg Roth, a Penn State agronomy professor active with the Pennsylvania Corn Growers Association, shares his thoughts about the subject in Corn Talk and Foraging Around, a special section in this week's Lancaster Farming.

A quarter-mile of cow munchies, captured by staff photographer
Stan Hall lining a farm lane near Ephrata, Pa.

 

     "Stay the course" was the message Pennsylvania farm organizations and dairy coops gave to the Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Board last week in Harrisburg. The groups were unanimous in their request to have the PMMB maintain an over-order premium of $2.15 per hundredweight on the milk produced by dairymen, as well as a fuel adjuster to run into the first half of 2011. Lancaster Farming special sections editor Charlene M. Shupp Espenshade covered the meeting and reported on it on page one of our current edition.

Visitors size up the displays at this
year's Cherry Valley Farm Toy Show.

     Farm toys are for kids, right? Well, some kids. But if you visited this year's Farm Toy Show put on by the Cherry Valley, N.Y., Fire Dept., you'd have seen a lot of big kids, more than a few of them with a streak or two of gray in their hair. Actually, the Cherry Valley show history began with a high school fundraiser in 1995. It was run by students until 2008, when no one wanted to get things organized. That's when Dave Cornelia stepped in. Cornelia's kids had been instrumental in many of the annual events, and he and they wanted to see the show continue. This year's show attracted 11 vendors, saw 74 table-top displays and drew more than 200 paying visitors. Lancaster Farming correspondent Marjorie Struckle was one of those who visited. Her report appears in page B17 of our current edition.

Adopt an Acre co-founder Sheila Miller
standing on the organization's first
farmland preservation success story.

     Farmland preservation efforts usually focus on working farms with 50 or more acres. Smaller landowners, like Dean and Brenda Tice, with 16.6 acres in Wernersville, Pa., can be overlooked. The Tice's wanted to put their farm into a preservation program, but the bank holding the mortgage on their property balked because they feared a drop in property value would put their interest at risk. Adopt an Acre, a new Berks County organization focusing on of 20 acres or less, helped the Tices get their preservation easement. It was the first Adopt an Acre success story. Lancaster Farming correspondent Sue Bowman reports on that success on page B6 of our current edition.

Peace Tree Farm employee Stephanie Barlow shows off a opiary poinsettia

    Peace Tree Farm is the largest certified organic transplant grower in the USA, and recently opened their greenhouse doors to people who may want to compete for their business.  Greenhouse owner Lloyd Traven, a self-styled "hippie garden geek," started a conventional greenhouse business in 1983. A decade ago, he watched a customer tear a basil leaf off a plant in his greenhouse - a leaf recently drenched in pesticide - and decided to go organic. It was a good move. His business is wholesale only to smaller retailers, and he's developed niche markets for heirloom varieties, topiary plants and a recently developed table-top tomato plant that bears fruit for the Christmas season. Lancaster Farming reporter Lou Ann Good visited Peace Tree Farm, wrote a story and took a few photos for our current edition.

Hundreds of buyers vied for thousands and thousands of trees.

     Oh, Christmas tree, Oh, Christmas...OH! What's billed as the nation's largest Christmas tree auction - 70,000 trees, thousands of wreaths, countless holiday decorations - took place this year as in years past at the Buffalo Valley Produce Auction in Mifflinburg, Pa. Some 300 to 400 buyers from all over the East descended on Miflinburg and drove home with truckloads of trees. Lancaster Farming correspondent Liza Z. Leighton was on hand to witness the action and prepared a report for our current print edition. You can also catch it online at lancasterfarming.com

1959 Case 800 diesel from State College, Pa.

     Do you like old tractors? On the fourth Saturday of every month, we feature reader-submitted photos of old iron. They come in all colors and sizes, and from all over our readership area. For the 20 stars of our November Classic Tractor Gallery, check out page A52 or our print edition, or catch it online in the e-edition.

Roger Hoy checks out tractors at the Nebraska Test Laboratory. 

     Speaking of tractors, here's the buzz on newer models. You're  going to pay more but you're going to get more, at least in the way of pollution control Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres called on Roger Hoy, director of the Nebraska Test Laboratory, while he was in Lititz, Pa., to talk to the annual Binkley and Hurst customer classic bash. New technology, according to Hoy, will mean that anyone driving a tractor through smoggy Los Angeles will find that his exhaust pipe is putting out air that's cleaner than the air going into the engine. Of course, if you see a guy driving a tractor on a Los Angeles freeway, you might wonder what he's mixing with the air that's going into his lungs.

One of 122 creches on display in New Haven, Conn.

     Creches in a dizzying array of styles from 22 different countries are on display in the Knights of Columbus Museum in New Haven, Conn. The exhibit of 122 different creches was organized and curated by the museum director, Lawrence Sowinski. The nativity sets are made from a wide variety of materials - cinnamon paste, for example, from Singapore, rolled newspaper from the Philippines, a Madonna and child of gold from Thailand. Lancaster Farming correspondent Suzanne Stahl paid a call on Sowinski and wrote a story for the food and family section of our current edition.

     What do YOU think about carbon credit trading? If you're like most of the 90 people who responded to a Lancaster Farming on-line poll, you're not too optimistic. Just about 80 percent of the respondents said they don't think the concept is ever going to be profitable. Less than 15 percent think it will be and about 7 percent can't make up their minds. (These figures add up to more than 100 percent because I never was real good at math. English came hard, too.) You can keep tabs on our latest polls - and even participate if you're so inclined - by checking out our home page. You can see the carbon credit poll full graphic here: http://www.lancasterfarming.com/Polls/Results/Carbon-Credit-poll

Lancaster Farming's Melissa Mazzocca
interviews Ken Diller  for Ag Vids.

     Also new on the website this week is the first in a series of Ag Vids, brief videos featuring the businesses and the support staff behind that guy or gal who drives down your lane every so often to check on how you're doing and to find out if you're in the market for seed, parts or a new combine. The first Ag Vid focuses on the well-known Hoober Inc. enterprise. You can check it out here: http://www.lancasterfarming.com/video/agvids/agvid-hoober

     Jaindl Farms is to turkeys as the Susquehanna is to your average trout stream. Jaindl is big, marketing some 750,000 turkeys a year in the Northeast, including one special bird headed for the White House kitchen every Thanksgiving. The 12,000-acre Jaindal operation is by far the largest ag enterprise in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley. Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres visited owner David Jaindl - a third-generation turkey man - to talk about the operation. One of the things he learned is that the whole enterprise started when Jaindl's grandfather bought five poults - for a buck apiece - from a neighbor in 1935. Check out the story in our current print addition or online at LancasterFarming.com.

     Ed Hall heard cows mooing one evening while he was eating dinner with his family in their South Philly row home. It was 1968, he was in the eighth grade, and he was fascinated with animals. He lept from the table, caught the end of a TV news report about cows and heard the words "...a high school with cows." That scrap of information led him to Philadelphia's Saul High School, from which he graduated in 1973, then to Penn State for an ag degree, back to Saul as a teacher, and today as a sales rep for a meat company. Today, Hall and his wife, Patti, own a 13-acre mini-farm a few miles from Philadelphia, and they grow, among other things, turkeys. Every year, they invite 40-50 friends and family to their place to prep the turkeys for everybody's Thanksgiving tables, and to bake pies. Lancaster Farming food and family features editor Anne Harnish talked to the Halls about their turkey tradition and prepared a report for our current edition.

     Let's say you had an impulse to throw a pumpkin...oh, say, 500 feet down the line. You're not going to do that with your arm obviously, so you might want to confer with Dr. David Drummer and his physics students at Kutztown High School in Kutztown, Pa. The Doc and two of his students, senior Andrew Dietrich and junior Dustin Hoffman (No, not THAT Dustin Hoffman) built a trebuchet (TREB you shet) with the ability to hurl a pumpkin farther that you'd ever thought you'd want to see a pumpkin go. Their goal was to set a new world record at the annual Punkin Chunkin (PUNkin CHUNkin) contest in Bridgeville, Del. They didn't set a new world record, but their team, Stomach Virus, came in second with a toss of 653 feet, besting such teams as the fearsome Siege of Condor and the Wascaly Wabbits. There's a story about their efforts in the Kids Korner on page B10 or our November 13 edition. That's Dr. Drummer himself in the photo watching a test shot back in Kutztown.

Greengrow's co-manager Nina Berryman looks over
some of the CSA's late summer offerings

     Start with a two-acre patch of concrete, truck in some topsoil, and you've got a farm in downtown Philly. The patch of ground, site of a former steel mill, is home to a 400-member CSA (community supported agriculture) group called Greengrow. Lancaster Farming correspondent Kristen Devlin and reporter Michelle Kunjapu joined a recent tour of Greengrow and two other urban ag facilities in and around Philadelphia. They wrote about the experience for the Rural Ventures section in our current edition.

Jim Hershey addresses a no-till tour.

     No-till practices have taken root in Pennsylvania. Some 60 percent of the state's tillable acres are planted in no-till cover crops, reducing nutrient and sediment runoff and saving on fertilizer costs. But there's another reason for farmers to consider no-till practices, and that is the cash that might be generated with carbon credits. With cap-and-trade all but dead, there's still a chance that farmers could profit from the carbon captured in the soil with no-till, according to Jim Hershey, with the Pennsylvania No-till Alliance. Hershey hosted a field day on his Lancaster County farm recently to explain the benefits of the practice and the potential bonus from carbon credit training. Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres was there and reported on the event in our November 13 edition.

     Take it for granted, a few western Pennsylvania farmers are investing for the future with grain-drying equipment that cuts fuel costs. Jesse Powell, a former steelworker, left his job in a mill to work fulltime at a 2,000-acre grain operation. With the help of USDA grants - obtained with the help of a professional grant writer - he installed his new equipment in time for this year's harvest. Lancaster Farming correspondent Carol Ann Gregg called on Powell and a few others in the area to find out more about their new equipment and the grants that funded the ventures. Her story is on page one of our current edition.

     Manure injection is another process that's getting a lot of attention from farmers who want to preserve the soil nutrients in the inevitable byproduct of livestock farming. With surface application, much of manure's fertilizer value is lost to the air. At his annual cover crop field day, Lancaster County farmer Steve Groff invited LehmanAgService owner Steve Lehman to demonstrate his huge six-injector rig to the dozens of curious who turned out for the day. Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres was there, and wrote a couple of reports for our November 6 edition.

     "You gonna horn in on me?" "No, I'm gonna horn in on you!" The George family - Dolly, Lloyd and Jared - see a lot of this kind of action on their Catawissa, Pa., farm this time of year, which is breeding season for deer. For the past dozen years or so the Georges been operating a 160-acre red deer farm that today is home to more than 450 of this elk-like species. They are prized for their lean meat and impressive antlers. English royalty were so protective of their private stock that at one time a commoner faced a death penalty for killing a red deer. Lancaster Farming correspondent Sue Bowman paid a recent visit to the Georges' Rolling Hills Red Deer Farm and prepared a report for the food and family section of our current edition.

     Cutie-pie kitties on this old Lotto game could be worth $40 to $50 dollars at auction, according to a story by Lancaster Farming correspondent Linda Sarubin. The story in this week's edition - just after the Mailbox Markets section - delves into the history of board games, and how they became popular during the Great Depression, when people stayed home because they couldn't afford to go out. Hmmm...anybody for a game of Monopoly?

 

Ann Adams operating a lightweight wheel hoe.

     A woman's touch...isn't the same as a man's touch. Liz Brensinger, with a master's degree in nursing, and her friend Ann Adams, whose master's is in public health, had a wealth of professional knowledge about the physiological differences between men and women. When they started to grow vegetables for Adams' son, a gourmet chef, they went looking for the best farm tools they could find that were designed for use by women and they found...none. Zip. Zero. Nada. So they designed their own. And started a business. Lancaster Farming Regional Editor Margaret Gates interviewed the partners and wrote about them for our October 30 edition. It's in the food and family features section.

 

Some of the research apparatus
at the Stroud Water Research Center.



     After more than 20 years of study into the effect of trees on streams, scientists at the Stroud Water Research Center in Avondale, Pa., can say that trees play an important role in maintaining a healthy and stable ecosystem. A riparian (fancy word for "streambank") buffer zone of 100 feet or so, whether it's covered with grass or trees, can help reduce erosion, sedimentation, and nutrient flow into streams. But trees work best, a fact staff writer Chris Torres learned on a recent tour of the Stroud Center which was sponsored by a couple of environmental groups. His report starts on page one of our current edition.



     And now for a pop quiz...Why did 18th century Felix de Azara think popcorn tasted like hair? And what kind of guy was Azara, anyway, and what's the real reason he went to Paraguay? You'l find a whole page of fascinating popcorn history, science and lore on page B10 of this week's Lancaster Farming.

  

Ron Bingaman shows his granddaughter
Avery a restored IH tractor.



     The thing about tractor people is some like red ones, some favor green, or yellow, or blue. But if a John Deere guy needed to borrow a wrench from an IH guy, the JD guy would have his wrench, with maybe a sly comment or two about why he needed a wrench in the first place. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all get along like that? Using our differences to build bridges instead of walls? That's the way the tractor community operates. You can get a look at the IH side of that community in Millville, Pa., where the local chapter of the International Harvesters Collector Club bought an IH dealership that it hopes to turn into a museum. Stay tuned to the IH collectors website (nationalihcollectors.com) for the grand opening in a year or so. And if you do make it to the museum, you might want to leave that green cap - you know the one we mean - in the truck. Lancaster Farming correspondent Lisa Z. Leighton paid a visit to the Millville IH folks when they celebrated the purchase of the dealership. Her report is on page B23 of this week's edition.







     Check out these news items and many more in our October 23 print edition, or online at lancasterfarming.com.



Bobby Prigel at his on-farm creamery.



     Here's a new item to add to your list of farming hazards - lawsuits. Bobby Prigel, a fourth-generation dairyman from Glen Arm, Maryland, tends to a herd of 180 Jerseys. He and his family decided a few years ago that they'd like to develop a creamery and ice cream business on a patch of their preserved farmland. After they secured all the required permits, the lawsuits began. Was the operation permitted on preserved land? Did state health officials properly evaluate the creamery before issuing a license? Is their roadside stand legal? Prigel figures the family's $200,00-and-still-growing legal bill has paid off in publicity. Some 400 people showed up for opening day in September. Lancaster Farming reporter Chris Torres called on the Prigels to see how they're making out.

     Chris Torres also attended a recent meeting in Lancaster, Pa., where the federal Environmental Protection Agency told an audience that included farmers and officials from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection that their proposed steps to limit the state's flow of pollution to the Chesapeake Bay were not enough. It was, nevertheless, a quiet meeting, according to Torres.

     Pennsylvania lost 14 percent of its dairy farmers between 2006 and 2009, according to a page one report byJames Haggerty, who writes for the Scranton Times Tribune. That means that about one in every seven dairy families emptied their bulk tanks for good in just a three-year period. The flight was thanks mostly, but not entirely, to a drop in the on-farm milk price from $20.26 in November, 2008, to $12.90 in June, 2009.

     October, you probably already know, is National Pork Month. This week's Home on the Range page features a recipe for happy pork chops, and an easy pulled pork recipe that goes into the slow cooker. And eight other recipes sure to tempt the palate.

     Writing from Moneta, Virginia, Lancaster Farming correspondent Jenneifer Merritt shares her own experience with bringing farmers, parents and school administrators together for a farm-to-school program. She was eager to see her sons, both students at Moneta Elementary, and their classmates eating cafeteria food grown on local farms. The good thing about local food is that it's fresh and flavorful. And, unlike some other cafeteria fare, you can always tell what it is.

     A hearing room packed with raw milk producers and a few of their customers listened to Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture officials propose an overhaul of the state’s milk regulations on Thursday, Oct. 7.
Five PDA officials presented their case to the Pennsylvania Independent Regulatory Review Commission, a five-member group charged with ensuring that new regulations are both legal and effective. In the end, after nearly 4-and-a-half hours of testimony and questions, the IRRC commissioners voted 3-2 to disapprove the PDA’s proposed rule change.
     Commission Chairman Arthur Coccodrilli, a businessman from Peckville, asked the department to try again. The proposed regulations are designed to bring the commonwealth’s rules in sync with those of the majority of other states, a move that one PDA official said was 25 years overdue. Read more at http://www.lancasterfarming.com/1016-Milk-hearing




     The director of the only tractor test lab in the Western Hemisphere will be talking tractor testing at Binkley and Hurst’s annual Customer Classic next 
month. Roger Hoy, director of the Nebraska Tractor Test Laboratory, will be making two one-hour presentations each day of the Customer Classic, 
which is being held Nov. 17 and 18 from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the dealership in Lititz, Pa.
     The test lab is the country’s only officially designated tractor testing station. Tractors are tested according to the codes of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Twenty-nine other countries adhere to these codes. 
     The lab was started in 1920 after a disgruntled Nebraska farmer found that three tractors he bought did not perform as advertised. According to Hoy, the farmer’s efforts led to the enactment of a state law requiring all tractors be tested on their performance before being sold. Early testing focused on the tractor competing against horse-drawn implements. Things have changed since then. Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres prepared a report on the upcoming event for our print edition or the website at http://www.lancasterfarming.com/Tractor-Test-Lab-to-be-Featured-at-Dealer-Event


     Members of the Berks County Livestock Clubs exhibited and sold their 4-H projects at the 2010 Annual Roundup at the Reading Fairgrounds the end 
of September. The sale featured 104 project animals grossed $77,225. For more details and photos check out our print edition or online at 
lancasterfarming.com.  http://www.lancasterfarming.com/Livestock-Sale-Grosses-More-Than--77-000-for-Berks-4-H-Youth


     When Russell Shaw started a small apple orchard 10 feet north of the Mason-Dixon Line in 1909, he had no idea it would still be there 100 years in 
the future. The story of how that initial enterprise grew into a century-old agricultural enterprise is recounted in our current edition by Lancaster Farming correspondent Linda Sarubin. To read the story and see the photos, click here: http://www.lancasterfarming.com/Family-Roots-Run-Deep-at-Shaw-Orchards



     Two Pennsylvania cows were named grand champions of their breed recently at the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wis. Tex-Star Othello Peri, exhibited by Springville Farm and Fisher of New Enterprise, Pa., took grand champion and best uddered at the International Milking Shorthorn Show and also won the aged cow class. Hard Core Farms of New Enterprise was named premier breeder and premier exhibitor at the Milking Shorthorn show. For the story and photos, see http://www.lancasterfarming.com/Pa--Cows-Take-Honors-at-World-Dairy-Expo

     Would you like to supersize that? These young french-fry cutters sliced their way through a ton of poataoes during a recent fund-raising auction for the Clinic for Special Children in Strasburg, Pa. The non-profit insitution focuses on children with metabolic disorders, and gets a funding boost from its annual auction. This year 1,700 registered bidders competed for, among many other items, 79 donated quilts. Lancaster Farming reporter Michelle Kunjapu attended the auction, ate a few fries and took this photo, which appears in our current edition.


     All dried up...that's a good thing. Food and Family Features Editor Anne Harnish spent a few hours recently in the kitchen of Janice Bowermaster, who has been putting up dried fruits and vegetables for more than 40 years. She's done everything from apples to zucchinis (although she's not quite happy with her zucchini efforts) until, has won blue ribbons at local fairs and state competitions, and plans to keep her dehydrators running for the foreseeable future. Anne's story on the master dehydrator is in this week's Section B.
     

     A gourd-ious time of year. Do our headline writers have a sense of humor? What do you think. Check out the photo of gourds and men on page one, then go to the Home on the Range feature for wealth of seasonally appropriate squash and pumpkin recipes.
     
     Also worth reading: Chris Torres' story on the impact of funding cuts on Pennsylvania's animal lab system; Andrew Jenner's take on an EPA TMDL hearing at James Madison University; and Charlene Shupp's story on the poultry industry's search for alternatives to antibiotics. See our print edition, or go to http://lancasterfarming.com.

Growers look over samples of dozens of peach varieties at a fruit research open house held at Penn State's Fruit Research and Estensiion Center in Biglerville. 

     Peach growers left their tractors behind last week for a trip to Penn State's Research and Extension Center at Biglerville. Jerry Frecon, a Rutgers extension agent from Gloucester County, New Jersey, was on hand to share some of his knowledge and insights with the growers. He said Jersey's peach harvest is 10 days ahead of schedule. And he talked about the increasing role robotics is playing in the mechnization of fruit harvesting in general. Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres attended the meeting and prepared a report for this week's print edition. Or you can read it online here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://lfg.live.mediaspanonline.com/assets/5051117/A01LFWE-
091110_1.pdf

     Check out the latest farm market news every week in Lancaster Farming.

If you pull something like this from
between your corn rows, keep it.

     Take care of your soil and it will take care of you. Especially around Hiddenite, North Carolina. Ninety-year-old Renn Adams and his siblings own a farm there where every once in awhile you might plow up an emerald or two. There was a time when the Adams family charged folks $3 a day to wield their shovels and take away any green goodies they might find. Terry Ledford, described in newspaper reports as a family partner, pulled an emerald out of the dirt a few years ago, and he could tell right away it was none of those run-of-the-mill emeralds, fit more for show-and-tell than a jewler's setting. Ledford's stone was big and dark and, well...big. After some cutting and polishing, processes that removed more than four-fifths of the stone's weight, the end product was a 65-carat gem about as big as a quarter and as heavy as a AA battery. It was cut to resemble a similarly sized emerald once owned by Catherine the Great, empress of Russia. That stone sold at Christies in New York this past April for a cool $1.65 million, which even if the Adamses and Ledford split it a few ways, is a sight better than 300-bushel corn. So, next time you're picking rocks, you might want to look down now and then to be sure it's not just a chunk of flint in your hand. AP writer Emery P. Dalesio wrote a gem of a story about the find, which you can read here: http://www.seattlepi.com/national/1110ap_us_carolina_emerald.html

Lyle Klingaman talks to visitors about
his high density grazing methods.

     High density grazing cuts feed costs and boosts profits for a Pa. cattleman with a herd of 20 Angus cows. By moving his animals from pasture to pasture, sometimes as often as twice a day, healthier grass, healthier cattle and a healthier bank account he told a group of about 25 curious farmers who turned out for a field day at his Mainville farm. The farmer, Lyle Klingaman, along with the Columbia County Extension Service and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service hosted the field day. Lancaster Farming correspondent Lisa Leighton covered the event and prepared a report which you can read in our current edition. Or check it out online at our website here: http://www.lancasterfarming.com/High-Density-Grazing-Taking-Smaller-Bite-of-Farmer-s-Profits


     If I ever get old, I want to be like Mary Maxwell. http://www.caregiverstress.com/2010/07/a-reminder-that-laughter-is-the-best-medicine/

Infrared photo by Dick Wanner

     Visit this tree if you ever get to Penn State's Southeast Area Research Center near Landisville. This wounded locust is beautifully isolated and hard to miss.

    Speaking of Landisville, the center hosted a mini-field day this morning devoted to the subject of nitrogen management. How to keep it in your soil, how to get the most value from it, how to measure the effectiveness of your N application, whether in the form of manure, granules or liquid.  A surprise to me was that manure loses 20% its nitrogen in the first hour after it's spread on the surface. Also news to me was the value of aerial photography as a tool for nutrient management. There'll be a story about the event in the September 3 (September? Already?) edition of Lancaster Farming, both in print and online.

     Why I'll always be careful where I pitch my tent. Or maybe I'll just stay in the lodge. http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/brown-bear-attack/269tm7de

    

     American-style farming techniques are threatening to revolutionize the British dairy industry, and not everybody's happy about it. Nocton Dairies is seeking approval for an 8,100-cow facility near the village of Nocton in Lincolnshire. Nocton's owners say they will keep pollution out of their watershed, and they'll keep the cows clean and happy. (Britons are especially sensitive to animal comfort. PETA, the Humane League, et al are pretty much minor league players compared to British animal rights activists.) Nocton says they'll be adding 85 jobs to the local economy - which could use the jobs - and they'll be using manure digester technology to generate electricity to run the farm with enough left over to sell to the national grid. It would be the biggest of the UK's 13,500 dairy farmers, where the average herd numbers 114. Only 94 of the current dairy operations have more than 500 cows. There's a story in The Economist about the stir the plans are causing, and you can read it here: http://www.economist.com/node/16793059?story_id=16793059


     Using antibiotics to not just cure but to prevent livestock disease is a perennial hot button topic. at last week's Penn State Ag Progress Days, Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres sat in on a session with Penn State Extension veterinarian David Wolfgang as he explained what he feels are the pluses and minuses - mostly pluses - of treating sick animals and also of treating animals with subtherapeutic doses to keep them from getting sick. You can read the report in our current print edition, or check it out at our new website, which is here: http://lfg.live.mediaspanonline.com/assets/4940567/A01LFWE-082110_1.pdf

     Hoops at the White House. (Not what you think.) Saw this first on our new website: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07vtMJgp0no

AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili

Camelicious Dairy camels await their turn
in the milking parlor in Dubai, Saudi Arabia.

     A California camel dairy made AgScene about a month ago, notable because the sale of camel milk in this country is illegal, but if it were legal would sell for around $200 a gallon or $1,720 a hundredweight. That is, until all the neighbors started buying their own bactrians and dromedaries. Which may be somewhere on the distant horizon. Last month, European Union health regulators approved the importation of powdered camel milk from the United Arab Emirates. Ulrich Wernery, a veterinarian who works in Dubai, has been touting camels and camel milk for a decade. In 2003, with the backing of Dubai's ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Wernery started his Camelicious dairy enterprise, which today numbers 700 milking camels, producing 5,000 liters of milk per day, or about 105 cwt. Camelicious products, both in liquid and powdered form have been selling in the UAE for about the last four years and now, Wernery says, they're ready to expand into the 27-nation EU. And then maybe Asia and America. AP writer Brian Murphy paid a call on the Camelicious beauties. You can read his report here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/08/21/2417350/dubais-ruler-hopes-to-expand-popularity.html 

Lancaster Farming photo by Anne Harnish

Crowds found plenty to see and do at Penn State's Ag Progress Days.

     Lancaster Farming staffers spent much of last week at Penn State's Ag Progress Days in Rock Springs. The event never fails to entertain and educate. Food and Family Editor Anne Harnish spent a day there, trolling for story ideas and pointing her camera every which way. For the usual generous helping of recipes and more of Anne's Ag Progress Days' photos, see our current print edition, our check out our new web offering here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://lfg.live.mediaspanonline.com/assets/4940613/B03LFWE-082110_1.pdf


     No matter how famous this blog may make me, I will never submit to a Steven Colbert interview. 
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/350636/august-17-2010/better-know-a-lobby---american-meat-institute

Recalled.

     Do you buy eggs? Do you buy them one at a time? Does half-a-billion eggs sound scary? It sounds like all the eggs in the world to me and then some. This morning on the Today Show, Matt Lauer said the current egg recall involved nearly half a billion eggs, "...that's 'Billion' with a 'B'," he stressed, implying that absolutely the eggs in your fridge must be poison. In my opinion, the news reports are accurate, but they are overstating the case.
     The odds of getting sick from eating eggs are small, but make no mistake - this is a serious health issue and it's a serious challenge for the egg industry. A few bad apples, from what I've read, have put not only their customers, but their industry in peril. Did I say bad apples? I should have said "dirty, rotten crooks." 
     I did some marketing work for an egg company a while back - a way while back, actually - at a time when the industry was struggling with S. enteriditis. I can tell you that the people I worked with had their hearts in the right place - it was food safety first and profits later. And I think they are the kind of people who dominate the egg industry. 
     Collectively, they and their colleagues produce about 215 million eggs a day, or more than a billion eggs every five days. That's "Billion" with a "B." Or to put it another way, a way that is more understandable to the people who buy eggs, 18 million dozen eggs a day. About 41.7 million dozen eggs have been recalled so far, which is less than three days of the total national production. Those eggs were linked to 1,300 cases of salmonellosis, a disease that can make you sick and miserable. Or it can kill you. 
     The FDA, the USDA and the CDC are working overtime to measure the danger and get it under control. The feds are looking for more staff, more money and more control to deal with and prevent future outbreaks of food-borne illness, and I hope they get it. 
     But I think the industry needs to crack down on its own bad actors. The locavore movement has gained momentum because consumers want to know where their food comes from and who's producing it. They would not want to deal with Jack DeCoster, who runs Wright County Eggs in Galt, Iowa, and is believed to be the man behind the salmonella outbreak. 
     He's the sixth-largest egg producer in the U.S., and has a history of paying fines for tainted product, pollution, and animal cruelty. His enterprise has also paid fines for sexual harassment of female employees. He's a bad egg, a black eye and a liability for the industry, yet restaurants, grocery chains and food manufacturers keep buying his product. 
     If locavore consumers can be educated, and/or self-educated enough to check out their food sources, it seems to me that businesses, large and small, who are paying thousands and millions of dollars a year for eggs can check out their suppliers. If you are one of those buyers and a guy like Jack DeCoster comes knocking on your door, just say "No." Get rid of his market and you get rid of him. 
     I believe government oversight is always going to be with us because there will always be bad actors in the marketplace. I also believe that a self-aware and self-regulated market can be much more than a mechanism for profit, and much more effective than all the government controls in the world. Honest people in a well-run industry can also be a tremendous force for good. 
     I've seen it happen.      

     Locavores are self-indulgent, self-defeating, dogmatic do-gooders who may or may not have jumped the sustainably raised organic-chub-fed shark. Whoa! Where did that come from? Was that Glenn Beck? A Sara Palin Rant? No, actually. The self-indulgent part came from Stepen Budiansky, an op-ed contributor to yesterday's New York Times and the author of a blog called liberalcurmudgeon.com. Budiansky, of Leesburg, Va., grows a lot of stuff in his backyard garden which is about as local as you can get. Just 42 steps from his back door and he's got a handful of spinach. He's annoyed that New Yorkers consider it a sin to buy a California tomato, but it's okay to buy one from a lavishly heated greenhouse in the Hudson Valley. He has no problem with the locavores' sentiments. He just wants them to get their math straight. He gives some examples, and you can read them here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/opinion/20budiansky.html?th&emc=th. The jump-the-shark goodie came from here: http://jcarrot.org/has-locavore-jumped-the-sustainably-raised-organic-chub-fed-shark. The jcarrot.org blogger was astounded when he read in yet another New York Times story that a company in San Francisco will actually come to your house to plant and tend to your garden throughout the growing season. The writer comments that "locavore" was named Word of the Year for 2007 by the Oxford New American Dictionary. His pick for the next word of the year? "Lazyvore." 

Don McNutt, of the Lancaster
County Conservation
 District, addresses
the hearing in Rock Springs.

     Can farmers dodge the EPA hammer? Matt Ehrhart, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation Pennsylvania office told a meeting Wednesday that his state's farmers have made tremendous strides in reducing the amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus entering the Chesapeake Bay watershed. He said the agency should not be treating every cleanup effort like a nail that needs to be hammered equally, and that agriculture has already taken more than its share of pounding. Pennsylvania ag sent a lot of its biggest guns to Ag Progress Days at Rock Springs for a joint hearing of the State House and Senate Agriculture and Rural Affairs committees. Ag Secretary Russell Redding testified on behalf of farmers, as did Penn State Dean of Agriculture Bruce McPheron. They were joined by other commentators. Lancaster Farming special sections editor Charlene Shupp Espenshade attended the hearing and wrote a report that will show up with your paper in the mailbox tomorrow. Or you can read it now in our online edition: http://www.lancasterfarming.com/APD-heading


     The thing that puzzles me is: Why are numbers 43 and 44 smiling? http://www.flixxy.com/presidents-morphing.htm