Dairy

A glimpse at the next 10 years in U.S. agriculture: Farmland prices will continue to rise, corn will cover more acreage and farmers will earn more profit. These are some of the predictions for the next decade in "Projections to 2016," a USDA report released last week at the department's annual outlook conference in Arlington, Va. For the nation as a whole, the average price of corn jumped 50 percent last year from $2 a bushel to $3, spurred by the production of ethanol as an alternative fuel for automobiles.

Kate Dallam, co-owner of the Broom's Bloom dairy farm and ice cream shop, was getting lunch with her daughter yesterday in Bel Air when a fellow patron asked her if she'd heard the news. "She told me, `Broom's Bloom is on fire, and the cows are still inside,'" Dallam recalled yesterday.

NICKEL MINES, Pa. -- He was a soccer dad and a quiet, hard-working, churchgoing family man who didn't flinch at changing diapers. So those who knew Charlie Roberts were in a state of shock yesterday when authorities named him as the suicidal gunman who shot a classroom full of girls, execution-style, in a tiny Amish schoolhouse. "The man who did this today is not the Charlie that I've been married to for almost 10 years," said Marie Roberts, 28, the gunman's widow, in a statement released to the press.

Out here, in the middle of a Gambrills cornfield, getting lost is the point. It's no fair to use a cell phone to seek an escape route. A GPS is out of the question. Raising a red flag -- or more accurately, a red-white-and-blue one -- is a safety hatch, of sorts, for visitors to the corn maze created each fall at the former Horizon Organic Dairy and U.S. Naval Academy dairy farm. MD Sunrise Farm LLC, which now leases the Navy property, has continued the autumn tradition, with the 11-acre labyrinth open to the public Friday through Sunday through Oct. 29. "This is a way to reconnect with nature," said Marian Fry, a partner in MD Sunrise Farm.

A report from the American Academy of Pediatrics says that even children who can't easily digest lactose should have dairy foods to make sure they get enough calcium, vitamin D and other nutrients for growth. "A lot of people say they are lactose-intolerant, so they can't have any dairy products," said Dr. Melvin Heyman, chief of pediatric gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition at University of California, San Francisco Children's Hospital. "But now we know there is a problem with that down the road: osteoporosis," said Heyman, lead author of the report published in the September issue of Pediatrics.

John Henry Will, former owner of a Baltimore dairy, died June 30 of heart disease at his daughter's Kingsville home. He was 90. Born in Baltimore and raised on Eastern Avenue in what was then Baltimore County, he attended city schools and earned a General Educational Development certificate. He began working at his family's Will's Dairy in the 2000 block of Fleet St. about 1930. Mr. Will went on to became president of the business, which he sold in the mid-1960s. He then worked for the old Koontz Creamery, High's Dairy and at the Maryland Cooperative Milk Producers in Woodlawn.

Maryland agriculture officials will be watching Pennsylvania in coming weeks to see whether some of the recent steps taken to preserve the dairy industry there could help farmers here. Last month, Pennsylvania teamed with New York and Vermont in search of ways to boost the profit of dairy farms, increase their share of the U.S. milk market and reverse the trend of farms going out of business. The collaboration comes on the heels of Pennsylvania's implementation of a program to pay farmers in the northeastern part of the state a bonus for increasing their annual milk production.

Customers will tell you that Kilby Cream serves up the best ice cream in Cecil County. And, judges at an international cheese competition say FireFly Farms in Garrett County produces some of the best cheeses in the world. State officials point to Kilby Cream, an on-the-farm ice cream store outside Rising Sun, and FireFly Farms, a tiny operation in Bittinger, as shining examples of dairy operations that are pursuing new revenue by turning their milk into other products. Agricultural officials at the University of Maryland have been encouraging farmers to consider such practices -- called value-added production -- as a way of slowing the loss of dairy farms.

The Maryland Cooperative Extension will hold its annual Dairy Field Days this summer at the Howard County Fairgrounds in West Friendship. Show dates, deadline for registration and contact for each breed are as follows: Ayrshire: July 22, entry by July 7 to Rick Hodiak, 410-313-1912. Brown Swiss: July 22, entry by July 1 to Bonnie Remsberg, 301-371-5498. Guernsey: July 8, entry to Shirley Smith, 301-834-8539. Jersey: July 15, entry by July 1 to Marcia Molesworth, 301-371- 4293. Holstein: July 13 in Frederick and July 17 in Timonium; entry by July 1 to Paul and Susan Harrison at 301-834-5123, and Steve Wilson at 410-666-1022, respectively.