Farm Animals

AS THE SCHOOL year raced to an early close, there was a mad scramble by classrooms to get out on the long-planned spring field trip. The weather mostly cooperated, never so generously as in mid-May.And so I joined my first-grader and her classmates last month on a trip to Carroll County's premier attraction, the Farm Museum, south of Westminster.It may be old hat to local residents, but the living 19th-century farm (formerly the county almshouse) was exciting in the extreme to these 6-year-olds, who favored the splendor in the grass outside to the informative narrated tour of the main farmhouse.

It's a jungle out there in Harford County.The rolling hills usually reserved for cows and sheep are home to exotic animals such as zebras, llamas and bison -- some as pets, others as part of an evolving agricultural community struggling to hang on amid housing developments and businesses."

It's a jungle out there in Harford County.The rolling hills usually reserved for cows and sheep are home to exotic animals such as zebras, llamas and bison -- some as pets, others as part of an evolving agricultural community struggling to hang on amid housing developments and businesses."

Mission: To foster the preservation and appreciation of Carroll County's rural culture and to educate the public about the life of the 19th-century farm family through exhibitions, demonstrations, living history camps and guided tours of a family farmhouse, a one-room schoolhouse, a springhouse and flower garden. The museum also features a buggy collection, one of the first rural mail wagons, a fish pond fed by a working windmill, farm tools and machinery, and farm animals. The museum is home to the annual Maryland Wine Festival.

Carrie Jaeger has barely a week to get her gaggle of farm animals -- 70 rabbits, 65 chickens, 14 ducks and three pigs -- ready for shows at the 52nd annual Howard County Fair."

THE ANNOUNCEMENT in the church newsletter celebrated a new purchase by the congregation. A caravan.Not a motor vehicle, but a procession of creatures great and small. Water buffalo, sheep, goats and llamas. Heifers and chicks, rabbits and hives of honey bees.There's no problem of where to put them. They'll be headed for welcome homes all over the world -- Africa, Asia, South America and even the United States. Providing food and clothing for needy families, beginning a new cycle of independence and of sharing.

Havre de Grace. -- The old dog was obviously in distress. He had wandered into our barn from the nearby house where he lived, and lay on the floor breathing heavily. He was so shaky on his hind legs he could barely stand.We knew him, liked him. Knew his owners and liked them. We knew he was about 14 years old, as old as most dogs get.His prospects didn't seem good, and when we looked him over carefully they seemed a lot worse. Under his fur we found a gaping wound above his backbone. It was festering, rotten and alive with maggots.

Within the next week, please send old photos of kids with farm animals to Way Back When, Sun Magazine, 501 N. Calvert St., Baltimoire, Md. 21278. You must include caption information and your daytime phone number. Also, enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope if you'd like your photo returned. If your photo is your only copy, please send a good-quality duplicate, not the origional. No faxes or newspaper clippings, please.

Student's TV script is most wanted by Fox showMartin Brandwin will get more than just an "A" on his class assignment. He will get his chance at stardom on network television.The Fox network (WBFF -- Channel 45) will use Mr. Brandwin's script for an episode of "America's Most Wanted" scheduled to air July 15.Mr. Brandwin and his 14 classmates at American University were assigned to develop two parts of a three-part script highlighting an actual crime that had been researched by a reporter for the show.

For the fearful flier, these are trying times indeed. Not only does every other plane seem to be making an unscheduled landing into somebody's living room, but now the airlines are engaged in another fierce price war.Southwest has announced some sort of buy-one, get-one-free ticket policy. Continental lets you fly for peanuts. USAir practically says: "Look, we'll fly you anywhere in the world for 20 bucks. What day is good for you?"While the rest of the flying public reacts enthusiastically to these price wars, the fearful flier does not.Because the fearful flier thinks: "OK, they're cutting the cost of a ticket.

The Maryland State Fair is on, which means it's almost time for Audrey Bennett to say goodbye to her goat, Meatball. She hates these partings. To keep some emotional distance, she usually doesn't name her market-bound goats and lambs. That helps, a bit. Even so, it's natural for an 11-year-old girl to bond with the creatures she has fed, exercised and groomed in the long run-up to the annual fair. And, really, who would want her to remain dry-eyed when the livestock - her animals, after all - are led off to meet the butcher's blade?

The miracle drugs of the 20th century are under threat. Doctors are frustrated by rising numbers of illnesses resistant to their arsenal of antibiotics. When these medicines don't work, patients suffer or even die, and our nation's health tab ratchets upward. Drugs such as penicillin and tetracycline, used routinely to treat respiratory disease and heart infections in humans, are also fed routinely to farm animals - not to treat diagnosed disease but to promote growth and to compensate for the overcrowded, stressful, unsanitary conditions on factory farms.

Judith Horn Harlan, a teacher and co-owner of a Harford County farm she opened to students and families, died of cancer Saturday at Stella Maris Hospice. The Fallston resident was 64. Born Judith Horn in Louisville, Ky., she earned a bachelor's degree in education at the University of Louisville and taught in that city for 16 years. In 1983, after her 1979 marriage to Bill Harlan, she moved to Fallston's Belvedere Farm, a 100-acre vegetable and grain operation that his family had owned since the 1820s.

After four weeks of summer school at Running Brook Elementary, nearby residents were used to the steady flow of students at the newly renovated facility. But the sight of two fully grown cattle outside the school's front entrance Friday was a surprise. The two steers - Michael and Angelo - were at the school as part of a challenge issued by Assistant Principals Troy Todd and Brian Vanisko. Todd, who oversaw the 46 students from Running Brook Elementary, and Vanisko, who oversaw the 71 students from nearby Stevens Forest Elementary, joined forces to encourage their students to keep up their attendance at the Running Brook summer school program.

As rescue workers saw during Hurricane Katrina, the bond between people and their pets can be a powerful one. In many cases, people refused to be rescued from their homes and taken out of harm's way if it meant leaving their cat, dog or herd of farm animals behind. Avoiding that scenario in the future was the impetus behind federal legislation signed this month by President Bush requiring states to establish plans for the evacuation of pets and farm animals as part of their emergency response procedures.

Barnyard stars a bunch of farm animals that look like those cheap plastic toys you can buy for a buck at any neighborhood convenience store, trinkets that will at least keep the kids amused for a few minutes. How appropriate, for that's about the best that can be said about this movie. It includes a few moments that might make the kids chuckle, but, for the most part, it's uninspired, not much to look at and laugh-free - as though the creators dreamed up the film's tagline, "The original party animals," and figured that was enough.

You say the cat's gone missing, and your nights are haunted by eerie yips and howls? Could be coyotes, pardner. Eastern coyotes - descendants of familiar Western varmints who picked up some weight and wolf genes on their century-long trot eastward - have become a growing nuisance in Maryland. Truth be told, coyotes have been here for more than two decades. But their range and numbers are increasing. They're active in every Maryland county now, especially Washington's suburbs. They've settled Rock Creek National Park and roam nearby streets in the capital itself.

The turkeys at Springfield Farm in Sparks roost occasionally in trees surrounding their grassy enclosure, or hop the low electrical fence and walk that edge of the wide world, sampling freedom. Something always brings them back, though. Perhaps it's the steady feed, or the domestic fowl's genetic pull toward home. "I guess they kind of like it here," says David Smith, who owns the farm and raises free-range, pastured turkeys, chickens, pigs, cattle, sheep and other animals. In the universe of turkeys bred for holiday tables, Smith's birds may be considered lottery winners.

When the animal-rights activist formerly known as Karin Robertson arrives at the airline check-in counter, the conversation goes something like this: "What is your name?" "GoVeg.com." "Is that your first name or your last name?" "It's just GoVeg.com." "Let's take a look at your I.D." In March, Robertson, 23, of Norfolk, Va., legally changed her name to that of a vegetarian Web site, a move that she hopes will draw attention to the plight of farm animals that she says are raised in cramped quarters and subjected to painful procedures.

Stacked rows of metal cages, each crammed with eight hens, extend longer than a football field in the chicken sheds at Westminster's County Fair Farms. The birds peck at one another. They live suspended above pits of their own waste, shut off from sunlight and fresh air. The conditions, which allow a half-million hens to produce millions of eggs a year, meet all legal and industry standards, say those who run the farm. But their henhouse was recently the site of a covert operation in which a group of animal activists known as Compassion Over Killing shot video and still pictures and abducted several birds for delivery to a veterinarian.