Dairy Farm

Panel to meet on plans for dairy farm An advisory committee plans to begin work tonight on recommendations for using the dairy farm Anne Arundel County is leasing from the Naval Academy. County Executive John R. Leopold announced yesterday that the panel, made up of residents neighboring the farm and representatives of various civic groups, would hold its first meeting at 7 p.m. at 2664 Riva Road to develop a proposed master plan for the farm. A formal display garden has already been proposed as a centerpiece of the dairy farm, which the county is leasing for 30 years.

THE ISSUE: Annapolis officials are trying to persuade Maryland to locate a new horse park on 2,000 acres of public land in Crownsville, outside the city limits. The city is vying with Cecil County for the park, which will feature a 5,000-seat arena, an outdoor amphitheater and a museum. The Anne Arundel site includes the shuttered Crownsville Hospital Center complex, the reservoir at the old Annapolis waterworks and the nearby U.S. Naval Academy dairy farm. Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens has expressed concern that the former mental hospital site lacks the infrastructure to support the horse park.

Eva E. Ehrhardt, who co-owned a dairy farm and helped manage it, died Dec. 20 of congestive heart failure at her Baldwin home. She was 91. Born Eva James in Baltimore and raised in the Belair Road section of Northeast Baltimore, she attended city public schools. She and her husband of 62 years, Clarence E. Ehrhardt, who died in 1998, owned a dairy farm in the Upper Crossroads section of Harford County. Family members said she was an active participant in the farm and seasonally canned 150 dozen ears of corn.

The U.S. Naval Academy dairy farm, termed "cost-effective" by the academy, has been milking taxpayers for several decades. Recent documents show the academy could save as much as $340,000 annually by using a private dairy.But academy foot dragging, congressional interference and neighborhood pressures have prevented repeated attempts to close the 862-acre Gambrills farm, dispose of the land and switch to a less costly provider of milk, cream and fruit drinks for the 4,200 midshipmen.In 1966, Congress balked at a recommendation from the General Accounting Office to close the farm.

Horizon Organic Holding Corp., which operates a large dairy farm on Maryland's Eastern Shore and leases the Naval Academy dairy farm in Gambrills, reported a sharp drop in first-quarter earnings yesterday despite a big jump in sales. Net income for the Boulder, Colo.-based company for the three months that ended March 31 was $307,000, or 3 cents a share. For the corresponding quarter of last year, the company posted a profit of $502,000, equal to 5 cents a share. Sales rose 60.4 percent to $26.3 million, from $16.4 million.

Dozens of soldiers, firefighters and police officers searched the woods near Gambrills last night and rescued several parachutists from a U.S. Army Reserve unit who had floated off course in a practice drop.One parachutist was missing for nearly 90 minutes before apparently finding his way out of the woods, and Army searchers rescued at least two others who were caught in trees in the vicinity of the U.S. Naval Academy Dairy Farm off Annapolis Road, officials said.Battalion Chief Gary Sheckells, an Anne Arundel County Fire Department spokesman, said no injuries were reported.

Academy animals, Part 1WITHOUT SAYING a word, the Naval Academy's spokesman -- Cmdr. Mike Brady -- showed reporters why the Navy doesn't need to be in the dairy farm business.During a recent tour of the 865-acre farm in Gambrills, which the academy said will no longer be used to supply milk to midshipmen, Brady stepped very tentatively around cow manure and through muddy stalls.Brady was wearing his bright-white summer uniform and later joked that he'd be spending the rest of his afternoon polishing cow poop off his shoes.

Strong gusts of wind were to blame when several U.S. Army and Naval Academy parachutists missed a drop zone at the academy's dairy farm in Gambrills Wednesday night, authorities said yesterday.Authorities at the scene Wednesday night said one parachutist had been reported missing for 90 minutes before he showed up at a command center, but Army officials said yesterday the man was accounted for all along and no official search was undertaken.Lt. Col. George Brown of the 11th Special Forces Group, an Army Reserve command based at Fort Meade, said at least one Army jumper and several Naval Academy midshipmen became entangled in trees at the edge of the drop zone during one of several daytime and nighttime jumps from a CH-47 airplane.

CHESTERTOWN -- A Colorado company is betting more than $2 million that it can make money milking cows in Maryland where so many others have failed.As its name implies, Horizon Organic Dairy Inc., of Boulder, is taking a slightly different approach to the dairy business."