Farms In Maryland

ONE OF the things that was drummed into me as a child was pride in my state. Maryland, with its mountains, bay, ocean, beaches, rivers, low country and rolling countryside, is America in miniature, I was taught. (Well, almost; we have no deserts and no natural lakes.) So it comes as a surprise to see people driving with yellow-orange license plates that have "Our Farms, Our Future" imprinted on them, with a red barn at the bottom. The plates are special order, like the ones with herons and the legend "Treasure the Chesapeake" on them.

John Hutchison grows two things for the holiday season: Christmas trees and a beard. Hutchison, 66, has been growing his long white beard since September and will pair it with a Santa Claus hat today as he starts selling white pines and Douglas firs at Hutchison's Christmas Forest, his farm near Cordova in Talbot County. Like most owners of the cut-your-own tree farms in Maryland, the Hutchison family marks the day after Thanksgiving as the first day of the Christmas tree season. With ample rain and minimal disease, growers said the Christmas tree crop did well this year.

Maryland agriculture received the second show of support from state government in as many weeks, when the Ehrlich administration announced Monday the creation of a panel aimed at helping the dairy farm industry, a segment that has been shrinking rapidly in recent years. Achieving by executive order what state legislators could not accomplish during the General Assembly session, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. established the Maryland Dairy Industry Advisory Council and charged it with looking for ways to boost the viability of dairy farms.

A Pennsylvania company is asking the O'Malley administration for leases in two Western Maryland state forests so it can clear up to 400 mountaintop acres to build about 100 wind turbines. The U.S. Wind Force structures would be about 40 stories tall and visible from some of the region's most popular tourist areas, including Deep Creek Lake and the Savage River Reservoir.

An administrative law judge has rejected the Maryland Department of the Environment's efforts to make poultry processing companies responsible for getting rid of the excess manure generated by their contract chicken growers. The decision by Judge Neile S. Friedman in the so-called "co-permitting" process is being celebrated by the industry in Maryland and elsewhere as an elimination of a serious threat to the poultry business. "It's a victory for family farms in Maryland," said Tita Cherrier, a spokeswoman for Perdue Farms Inc., the giant Salisbury-headquartered poultry company that is supplied by about 500 chicken growers in the state.

When Chris and Virginia White of Crownsville got a call last fall from Horizon Organic Dairy, it was like a dream come true. The dairy wanted their design business, Chris White Design Inc., to create exhibits about organic farming on the newly leased Naval Academy Farm land in Gambrills. For the Whites, who eat organic food, the opportunity was perfect. "It was sort of one of those dream jobs that comes along once in a while that really fits in with what we believe in," Virginia White said.

Archer Daniels Midland Co. said yesterday that it is shifting its grain exports from Baltimore to a terminal operated by Perdue Farms Inc. in Chesapeake, Va. The giant grain processor revealed also that it has broken off negotiations with Maryland to repair the port of Baltimore's only grain export terminal - a facility that once accounted for nearly 20 percent of the port's exports and has been considered critical to the state's farm economy. When the North Locust Point grain elevator was closed by storm damage in June, it marked the first time in more than a century that ships hauling grain did not call at Baltimore.

Data collectors will be knocking on doors across Maryland in coming weeks looking for pigs, goats cows and other animals. Field workers will gather information as part of an annual nationwide survey on land use and agriculture activity. The survey is being conducted for the USDA's National Agriculture Statistics Services, which measures nearly every aspect of farming. Conducted each June, the study "is one of the largest and most comprehensive surveys conducted each year," said Barbara Rater, director of the service's Maryland office, which is based in the state Department of Agriculture building in Annapolis.

Concerned about the future of Maryland's largest industry, the state plans an 18-month study of agriculture as the first step toward developing a strategy to preserve and promote farming, sources said yesterday. The study is in response to a request from Ronald A. Guns, chairman of the House Environmental Matters Committee, who wants the state Agriculture Department to develop a 20-year plan to safeguard Maryland's farm industry. "We want to start the study as quickly as possible, hopefully this summer," said S. Patrick McMillan, a special assistant to state Agriculture Secretary Henry A. Virts.

As lovers and mates offer chocolates and hugs, another ritual of romance begins today on this most amorous of holidays.Valentine's Day is the traditional launch of the horse-breeding season. Beginning today, give or take a few days, randy sires at farms in every corner of the state will be led into barns where mares await a mating. The season traditionally ends July 4 -- presumably with fireworks."People always talk about the races," said Sissy Fisher, office manager of Corbett Farm in Monkton.