"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.