Farm Life

Imagine living in Carroll County 100 years ago - no electricity, no cars or tractors, few indoor bathrooms, no grocery stores with ready-to-cook meats and vegetables, no refrigerators, no computers, no TV. That lifestyle is detailed in a new book by George Grier. "I started noticing as I got older that the older people who remember something about farming back a hundred years ago were sort of fading out of the picture, and that we were going to lose a lot of what we know about what went on at the old family farm," said Grier, 82. So he talked to farmers around the state and searched archives, museums and libraries and asked former farm families for photos of a long-gone way of life.

When Jerry DeWitt paints a barn, there's a bit of the gentle clanging of cowbells mixing in with the watercolors. That sound echoes back to his grandfather's Depression-era farm at the end of a lane in Bedford County, Pa. He was just 2 years old when his father left home for good and the youngster was uprooted from Lansing, Mich., to live with his grandparents. And in between trips to the pasture to the hand-dug well for another bucket of water, or out to the shed for an arm load of firewood, the sights and sounds and smells of farm life wrapped themselves around Jerry's memory, eventually finding their way to paint and paper more than 30 years later.

The door of the milking barn rattles open at dawn, alerting the herd at Rocky Glade Farms.Cows, 160 of them, have gathered outside, languidly chewing on whatever cows chew before breakfast, their breath billowing into the cool spring air.They look like chubby customers waiting for a bank to open. Mothers, daughters and cousins carrying liquid assets.Nevin Hildebrand, 33, peers first at the herd, then at the tree line, as he enjoys the sunrise on his family's 230-acre farm an hour's drive west of Baltimore.

Helen S. Jones, a Howard County farmer and community activist, died Feb. 27 from complications of an infection at Bowling Green, her West Friendship farm. She was 96. Helen Stromberg, the daughter of farmers, was born and raised on a farm in Marriottsville. After graduating from West Friendship High School in 1931, she earned a teaching degree three years later from what was then the Towson Normal School. She married her high school sweetheart, Ridgely Jones, in 1935 and moved to the 320-acre Bowling Green Farm that had been in his family since 1730.

THE FAIR SUNDAY at Hancock's Resolution will be no run-of-the-mill craft show. Instead, the event at the historic farmstead will feature craftsmen and craftswomen demonstrating skills that were part of farm life in the18th century. That includes everything from basket-making to beekeeping to the woodworking techniques used to build the Colonial-era farmhouse at the Pasadena landmark. "We will have something for everyone in the family," said Peggy Hanna, Friends of Hancock's Resolution member and event chair.

In the basement of Heath and Aaron Geiman's house, a tiny black lamb is living in a cardboard box. His cries are like a baby's, but his kick is more powerful."

"On the Land: Three Centuries of American Farm Life" documents five of the oldest family-owned farms in America. The exhibit of Stan Shearer's photographs, with text by Michael Geary, depicts families performing daily tasks that regulate their lives.Shearer's work, which will remain on display at Carroll County Arts Council Gallery in Westminster through Feb. 21, should strike a chord in a community with deep farming roots, said Hilary Hatfield, the arts council's executive director."I think the exhibit talks about the importance of family and how the family unit runs a farm," Hatfield said.

Senior citizens had their day at the Carroll County 4-H Fair yesterday. They cheered at pig races, took in the exhibits and met old friends. A few even shared a tent with a hefty pair of oxen. Corilla Hundertmark, 86, and her 73-year-old sister Lula Morrow wanted to borrow the shade from Homer and Albert, tawny oxen resting comfortably in a spacious pen. Seated beside "huge but gentle beasts," the "former farm girls" said they felt right at home. "We have gone to fairs all our lives," said Hundertmark.

CAMBRIDGE -- Jeff Edgar grew up trapping snapping turtles in the black-tinted water at the edge of his family's more than century-old farm, selling the meat in town for 50 cents a pound. The men in the Edgar family - including 5-year-old Tyler - still go deer and duck hunting together on the marshy cornfields they've farmed for six generations, back to 1885. But now Edgar and other farmers in this scenic landscape near the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge are worried that their rural lifestyles and distinctive Eastern Shore traditions will be destroyed by a proposed $1 billion development.

The popular hands-on farm that was one of the most visible symbols of agriculture in suburban Baltimore - and in its recent demise, a potent reminder of the seeming inevitability of development - is springing back to life eight miles from its origins. In an unexpected twist, the family of former state Sen. James Clark Jr. will announce today that they're bringing in Cider Mill Farm's manager to re-create the agritourism activities on part of their 548-acre Ellicott City cropland. Clark's Elioak Farm is expected to open Sept.

Josephine Webster Dallam, a community volunteer who was named a Harford County Living Treasure, died in her sleep Feb. 14 at Broom's Bloom Farm, where she had lived all her life. She was 95. Born on that farm, she was a 1931 Bel Air High School graduate. Family members said she could recall the end of World War I in 1918 and Armistice bunting draped around the Bel Air courthouse's iron fence. Her home on the farm was called North Point, after the Battle of North Point in which her great-grandfather, John Adams Webster, played a role in defeating the British during the War of 1812.

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.

DELTA, Pa. -- Mark and Diane Thomas were accustomed to farm life when they moved from Maryland into a charming 1830s log home on 19 acres. But in the two years since then - as Diane suffered headaches and a persistent skin infection and her husband and two children struggled with diarrhea and other digestive problems - they began to suspect that their health problems were caused by the hog farm next door. And they grew further alarmed when the farm announced plans this year to expand from 450 pigs to 4,400.

Eight-year-old Jason Vanisko admitted he was a little sad about selling his 1,708-pound steer, Michael, at the 4-H livestock sale at the Howard County Fair. He had raised the animal for more than a year, bottle-feeding it when it was a calf. "I'm sad to let it go," he said. But he was happy to auction his lamb, a 122-pounder named George. "I'm not sad to sell my lamb," said the Ellicott City resident. "It's mean. It head-butts me, and it tries to get away." Jason's emotions about the animals didn't change anything.

The world is as still as the pickets that line a winding path to Mary Kinder's mammoth farm. The two-story Cape Cod is boarded up, the white dairy barn is closed and few cattle remain for the caretaker to watch over. Just off Sudley Road in West River, Henry and Mary Kinder spent a generation raising cattle and growing old together on about 400 acres of rolling fields. All along, they resolved to protect this place at the headwaters of Rockhold Creek, to keep the encroaching hustle and bustle from knocking on their front door.

The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere Debra Marquart Counterpoint / 270 pages / $24 Born and bred in a "small North Dakota town east of the Missouri River," Debra Marquart was the youngest daughter of a farmer father - a pretty blonde with a fine singing voice and a genius for rebellion. Even as a girl, she knew she wanted out of a place that offered little more than "[t]hree blistering months of summer packed between eight bitter months of winter." She knew she despised her chores, pitied the presumed captivity of farmers' wives, wanted not to be what she was supposed to be - a guardian of a swath of land passed down through generations.

The theme for the Christmas show at the U.S. Botanic Garden is holiday dreams. The show is open daily through Jan. 8, including Christmas and New Year's Day, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The display includes more than 1,000 poinsettias, along with other holiday plants, two large topiary bears and toys. The East Gallery features a model train. Free. The garden is at 100 Maryland Ave. S.W. Call (202) 225-7099.*"Farm Day During the Winter" exposes children ages 6 to 12 to farm life during winter months at the Old Maryland Farm in Upper Marlboro Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. The cost is $15 and includes all activities, snacks and lunch cooked over an open fire.

CAMBRIDGE -- Jeff Edgar grew up trapping snapping turtles in the black-tinted water at the edge of his family's more than century-old farm, selling the meat in town for 50 cents a pound. The men in the Edgar family - including 5-year-old Tyler - still go deer and duck hunting together on the marshy cornfields they've farmed for six generations, back to 1885. But now Edgar and other farmers in this scenic landscape near the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge are worried that their rural lifestyles and distinctive Eastern Shore traditions will be destroyed by a proposed $1 billion development.