* Recognition of FireFly Farm, a tiny goat farm outside the tiny Garrett County town of Bittinger, as a producer of some of the finest goat cheese in the world. Some of its cheeses were picked over those produced in England, France and Italy at the London World Cheese Awards.
* Farmers, rural bankers, businessmen and total strangers coming to the aid of a Garrett County family that had lost its barn during a tornado.
Nobody asked for help, but a convoy of vehicles - mostly pickup trucks - arrived the morning after the storm. An army of men, women and children brought tools and food and began rebuilding the barn. It said a lot about life in rural Maryland.
* A report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1998, pointing out that agriculture - including all phases of the production of food and fiber - was a $17.8 billion-a-year business, employing more than 400,000 people, in Maryland. It surprised a lot of people that farming was Maryland's biggest business.
* During an era when big farms kept getting bigger as a means of survival, Jack Gurley and his wife, Beckie, showed the country that it was possible to make a comfortable living on a 6-acre Baltimore County vegetable farm.
They grew organic vegetables and sold directly to consumers through a system called community-supported agriculture. Consumers invest in the farm and pick up weekly supplies of produce during the growing season. Their farm was considered one of only a few of its type in the country. State and federal agriculture organizations held a field day at the farm so that others could learn farming from the Gurleys.
* Myron Wilhide's crusade to save Maryland's rapidly disappearing dairy industry. The Carroll County dairy farmer was the driving force behind the Maryland Dairy Industry Association.
* Randy Sowers turning his back on conventional dairy farming and taking the big financial risk of setting up his on-the-farm milk processing plant and offering home delivery.
The Frederick County farmer's move is still being watched by University of Maryland officials and other farmers as a possible way of saving the state's dairy industry.
* The near-demise of Maryland's more than 350-year-old tobacco industry as a result of a tobacco farmer buyout plan presented by Gov. Parris N. Glendening.
