Farms In Maryland

With ominous global warming accelerating year after year, why can't Maryland construct a single clean-energy wind farm within its borders? Gov. Martin O'Malley's blue-ribbon commission says we must get off fossil fuel very soon. But our state - one of the most vulnerable in America to global warming and one of the most politically liberal - can't achieve even the baby step of a single commercial wind farm. What's the problem? West Virginia has dozens of wind turbines; Pennsylvania even more.

Beginning next month, Maryland farmers who suffered serious drought damage to their crops last year can apply for federal disaster relief, a U.S. Department of Agriculture official said yesterday. Nearly $2.4 billion in emergency aid has been set aside for the nation's farmers, "and a fair number of state farmers will qualify for relief," said James M. Voss, executive director of Maryland's Farm Service Agency office in Columbia, which administers USDA policy in the state. The money will be provided to farmers across the country who suffered heavy losses.

FOR SALE: Horse farm. 3 houses, 237 acres. Convenient to I-83. 8 miles of white fence just painted. Owner moving to town. Must see. Under $6 million.Eleanor R. Sparenberg says there's no truth to gossip that rap star Hammer and actor Sylvester Stallone have expressed interest in buying her spectacular horse farm just south of Hereford."

FREDERICK -- It was July 1864, and the enemy was marching south out of Frederick toward Washington. Along the banks of the Monocacy River, the federals dug in and tried to halt the advance.They failed. But the battle delayed Confederate Gen. Jubal Early and his troops for a day, giving Ulysses S. Grant time to rush Union reinforcements to Washington to repel the Confederates.Now, 129 years later, another skirmish looms at the Monocacy National Battlefield, this one over the federal government's purchase of Best Farm, where some of the fighting occurred.

GORMAN -- In a scene that recalls images from a Li'l Abner cartoon, a cloud of steam -- rich with the fragrance of maple water -- drifts from the aged shack with the weathered board siding and sheet-metal roof perched on the side of a hill.It's maple syrup production time, and a new generation of the Steyer family is busy keeping up a tradition that dates back more than 100 years."My daddy used to say he could go up on the top of this hill and see the steam rising from 19 or 20 sugar maple camps and a like number of moonshine operations," Michael Steyer said as he stirred a boiling tank of "maple water," or sap, slowly being transformed into syrup.

In the past four years, the state of Maryland has worked to ease itself out of the cigarette business by buying out nearly all of the farmers who grow tobacco. But the success of the program has endangered more than the brown leaf grown in the southern part of the state since the 17th century. The buyout, along with suburban sprawl into farmland, has endangered the wood-framed tobacco barns used to dry the crop, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Yesterday, the trust included tobacco barns of Southern Maryland on this year's list of America's Most Endangered Historic Places.

Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative Association Inc., the largest dairy cooperative serving the state's farmers, announced yesterday that it plans to merge with a competitor serving six Southern states.The proposed consolidation with Carolina Virginia Milk Producers Association would create a business that serves more than 1,550 dairy farmers in 11 states and markets about 3 billion pounds of milk a year.Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative, based in Reston, Va., serves about 1,150 farms in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and Delaware.

As one of the owners of H&S Bakery, which employs hundreds of Marylanders, I was disappointed that your May 21 article, "Policy pits candy against sugar," did not mention how the federal sugar subsidy program negatively affects bakeries in our state. There are nearly 11,000 Marylanders employed in the baking industry, which generates more than $1.3 billion in state economic growth. The sugar program puts those jobs and growth at risk by imposing an up to $3.5 billion hidden tax annually on businesses and consumers nationwide - all to provide a special interest subsidy to sugar producers.

Saying he is concerned about the effects of big agricultural corporations on the state's family farmers, House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr. has asked Gov. Parris N. Glendening to study the economic conditions for farmers in Maryland who raise hogs and poultry for large companies.Taylor's request followed a three-part series in The Sun that chronicled the plight of the nation's contract chicken farmers, who increasingly find themselves deep in debt, their fortunes dependent on a group of large, powerful poultry companies that set the pay and the rules.

One Straw Farm , one of the biggest independent farms in Maryland and a familiar presence at farmers' markets across the Baltimore region, is on a quest to build two iPhone apps that will help modernize its business and better connect with its customers. Joan and Drew Norman, the owners of the farm, have gotten hooked on the iPhone and believe they can use it to make their work on the farm more efficient and better share and connect their customers. They've been farming since 1983 and grow on 175 acres.