Farms In Maryland

The fava bean plants at Beckie and Jack Gurley's tiny farm in Sparks stand only 6 inches tall. The crop won't be ready to harvest for another five weeks, but the bulk of it has already been bought and paid for. It's all part of a different approach to farming known as community-supported agriculture, CSA for short. CSA can be traced to 1960s Japan, and it didn't make its way to this country until a Massachusetts woman tried it in the mid-1980s. CSA works like this: By making an investment of about $450, the consumer buys a share of a CSA farmer's weekly harvest.

ROCKY RIDGE -- The smell from Rodney G. Harbaugh's hog farm hasn't been so bad lately, his neighbors say. But there are good days and bad days, and the bad days are pretty awful. "Sometimes, it's horrible," says Karen Kuhn, whose two-story colonial house is less than a mile from the Frederick County barns that hold Harbaugh's hogs. "It depends on which way the wind blows." Controversy over Harbaugh's hogs combined with growing concerns over large lot feeding operations elsewhere in Maryland and reports of hog-farm related environmental disasters in North Carolina have led to efforts put the brakes on the swine industry here.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening has decided to appoint a task force to study the economic and environmental effects of large, factory-style hog farms in Maryland.Responding to a request from House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr., Glendening said he has directed his secretaries of agriculture and environment to pick "qualified individuals" to conduct the inquiry."We must avoid the well-publicized mistakes that have been made in other states," the governor wrote in a July 6 letter to Taylor. "Ultimately, we want our farmers to have the opportunity to profit from this agricultural enterprise without compromising our commitment to environmental excellence."

Concerned over reports that a large hog farm is being built near a wealthy subdivision northwest of Westminster, the chair of Carroll County's Environmental Affairs Advisory Board said yesterday that the group may schedule a meeting to debate the issue.Kevin E. Dayhoff, a landscape designer who heads the advisory board, said he plans to poll its seven members this week on the need for an extra meeting.The group declined yesterday to address the issue because both sides were not represented at a two-hour meeting.

FREDERICK -- Early Monroe first got into organic farming because his 6-year-old son, Ryan, is allergic to the chemicals and dyes used in many conventional foods."

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.

Maryland officials welcomed yesterday an impending federal crackdown on water pollution from livestock farming, saying it parallels farm-runoff controls adopted by the state earlier this year to combat Pfiesteria-related outbreaks in Chesapeake Bay.But environmentalists and Eastern Shore chicken farmers say the federal move could do more harm than good unless it requires that poultry companies like Perdue Farms Inc. help pay for needed pollution control measures."I...

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.

Farming the land has been an American dream since before the first Thanksgiving.But it is becoming increasingly difficult -- nearly impossible -- for a new generation to earn its living on the farm."

Maryland has lost 30 commercial dairy farms since the first of the year, when a legislative task force began looking into the economic woes of this segment of agriculture, a new survey says.pTC Since 1995, the number of dairy farms in Maryland has declined 7 percent, to 940.The rate of decline is faster in Maryland than for the nation and for the northeastern United States, according to figures compiled by the American Farm Bureau."Not a week goes by that we don't have two or three farms going out of business," said William Zepp, of the state health department's Division of Milk Control.