Dairy

It's tough being a vegan at most Baltimore restaurants. Often, you're relegated to a one- or two-item corner of the menu. Gregory Brown opened The Land of Kush at 840 N. Eutaw St., because, a vegan himself, he wanted a place where his culinary compatriots could eat without worry. The whole menu is theirs. But unlike a lot of omnivore establishments, he doesn't neglect his nontarget market — in this case, meat-eaters. Well, carnivores, think barbecued ribs, curried chicken, turkey and gravy, and sweet 'n' sour seitan.

August Ernest "Bud" Eckels Jr., former president and general manager of a family-owned Baltimore ice cream manufacturing plant, died Thursday of a hemorrhage at a Leesburg, Fla., hospital. He was 88. Mr. Eckels, whose father established Eckels Ice Cream & Dairy Co. in 1918 and whose mother was a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised on Mayfield Avenue in the city's Arcadia neighborhood. He was a 1940 graduate of Polytechnic Institute. His college studies at the University of Maryland were interrupted when he enlisted in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Mr. Eckels, who was trained as a bombardier, flew 50 missions while based in Italy with the 15th Air Force's 464th Bomb Group.

Ron Holter likes to say he's farming as God intended, without pesticides on the grass fields or hormones or antibiotics in the cows. But visitors to his organic dairy farm west of Frederick on Tuesday also heard about how the Earth, animals, consumers - and his pocketbook - are also benefiting. Holter, a fifth-generation farmer at Holterholm Farm in Jefferson, was host to a field day for about 50 farmers to spread the gospel. He's had the tours before, but this year he added speakers on grazing management, farm income and marketing from the day's sponsors at the Maryland Grazer's Network.

Patty Sullivan of Catonsville is stumped by the dairy case. One kind of milk promises to make her children smarter. Another claims to come from healthier cows. Unable to sort all that out, she reaches for good old, conventional Costco milk."I find it very confusing," said Sullivan, who picks up five gallons a week for the Burtonsville preschool she runs. "You need a research degree to find out the differences. And is it really that much better for you?" Not long ago, consumers only had to ponder one thing before hefting a gallon jug into the shopping cart: How much fat did they want?

A man whose efforts to open a creamery at his Long Green Valley dairy farm had been thwarted by a few neighbors emerged victorious Thursday when the Baltimore County Council passed a zoning regulation that will allow him to sell organic products from the milk his cows produce. "This bill will support the county's $300 million agricultural industry, help meet our land preservation goals and help farmers supply fresh local produce to patrons," said Chris McCollum, agriculture liaison for the county's department of economic development.

Mary Paige McGuirk, the mother of 15 children who nurtured others while running a dairy operation, died of heart failure Saturday at her Bel Air farm. She was 88. Mary Paige was born in Bellport, N.Y., and raised in New York City. She was a 1938 Brearley School graduate and attended Bryn Mawr College in suburban Philadelphia. In 1941, she married William E. McGuirk. In 1954, she, her husband and their expanding family moved to Marylea Farm in Bel Air. Mrs. McGuirk raised not only her own 15 children, but also many others.

The Yoder and Prigel families have worked for generations on adjoining dairy farms in northern Baltimore County, their cows sometimes grazing in each other's fields. Now, except for arguments made in legal proceedings, these Long Green neighbors are barely speaking, and the wrangling is taking a financial toll. "When I started this, I budgeted about $500 for legal fees," Bobby Prigel said. "I have spent well over $100,000." Their conflict centers on the creamery that Prigel has built - but has yet to open - at his Bellevale Farm and his plans to sell organic products made from the milk his cows produce.

As his 100 dairy cows lumbered over for their Monday afternoon milking, farmer Eric Foster pondered his sudden misfortune. Those Holsteins and Jerseys, profit machines during a recent milk boom, are now such money losers that he has begun selling part of his herd and fears he might have to quit the business altogether. It is not the cows' fault. The problem is the plummeting wholesale price of milk. It has fallen more than 40 percent in six months, driven down by disparate factors such as better rains in Australia, a tainted-milk scare in China and the global economic slowdown.

BEIJING - A court sentenced two men to death yesterday for their role in a tainted-milk scandal but gave the former chairwoman of China's largest dairy a lesser sentence of life imprisonment, enraging parents of infants who died. Milk adulterated with an industrial chemical killed six infants and left a staggering 296,000 or so sick last year in the largest food-safety scandal in China's recent history. A court in Shijiazhuang, a city in Hebei province that is headquarters for the Sanlu Group, one of the 22 dairies across the nation found to have peddled tainted milk products, issued the sentences in a closed-door hearing.

As the bus lumbered up the snowy road, winding higher and higher toward the top of the mountain, my only thought was, "What has he gotten us into?" "He" was my uncle, and the bus was climbing to the top of Grosse Scheidegg, a 6,434-foot peak in Switzerland, where passengers would hop off the bus and sled back to the bottom of the icy road. At one point, the driver stopped to put chains on the tires before continuing to drive at a steep angle through blind twists and turns, making the idea of sledding back down (and possibly encountering the next bus)