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.