Farm Life

Kevin Hickey revealed last night that he had accepted the Orioles' offer to pitch for their Double A Hagerstown farm club.The 35-year-old lefthander, who was bitter after being released a week ago, decided to go to Hagerstown after passing through waivers and getting no other big-league offers."

Joan and David Hagan photograph our yesterdays before they vanish completely into the past. The farms and the countryside are slipping from view. The real estate developers pave over paradise and put up the future.In "The Farm: An American Living Portrait," the Hagans have put a hold on time. Slipping their cameras across the countrysides of several states, their book of photos captures not only wintry farmhouses whose creaky bones you can hear moaning up from the pages, but faces out of Norman Rockwell and landscapes that look like symphonies set to color.

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."

CECILTON -- For a few moments, the old horse must have thought he was back at Belmont Park.He was being brushed like a stakes horse, getting "buffed up" for the cameras.Only this time, Three Engines, a graded stakes winner of $265,000 and a onetime Triple Crown hopeful, was not in a winner's circle.He was being used as a sort of poster horse for Greener Pastures, Maryland's first full-fledged retirement home for racehorses.In horse racing, one misstep in one stretch run can turn a fine athlete in the bloom of health to a hopeless has-been with a broken leg.If the animal survives such a breakdown, he is still usually discarded or destroyed.