Garret County - Gone To The Hills

   We moved to DC from Vermont - the first time we had a chance for a vacation we headed to the highest point in Maryland figuring it would be somewhat Vermontish.....

Garrett County, Md., beyond Deep Creek Lake

By Ann Cameron Siegal, Published: July 18

After three visits to Maryland’s largest freshwater lake, I have yet to set foot on it or in it. Deep Creek Lake is an enticing destination, for sure, but Garrett County is awash in numerous hidden treasures just beyond the summer sounds of motorboats and jet skis.
As a traveling buddy and I made our first excursion into the county a year ago, I recalled a lesson architect Frank Lloyd Wright learned while traversing a snowy field as a child. Wright’s uncle admonished him to compare the footprints each had left: Wright, his uncle said, had wasted his time meandering left and right while he, the uncle, had proceeded directly to their destination. But Wright, in remembering that conversation, realized that his uncle had missed out on delightfully unexpected finds along their walk.
If you go: Garrett County, Md.
In that vein, I set off with a friend to explore Garrett County’s Barn Quilt Trail — one small link in an art-and-culture-oriented scavenger hunt phenomenon found in 45 states.
These country road treasure hunts are perfect for meandering travelers who want to get off main roads and explore small communities, local markets, cozy inns and down-home restaurants. Our self-guided tour wound past 16 barns, each decorated with an eight-foot-square panel displaying a quilt pattern chosen by the property owners and often painted by community volunteers.
Our route took us along part of the historic National Road — the first highway built by the federal government, in the early 19th century — and through a town curiously named Accident. Apparently, when King George II wanted to pay off a debt with a gift of 600 acres, the intended recipient hired two separate surveyors to scout out the best land. Unbeknownst to one another, they both selected parcels with the same oak tree as a boundary. Thus, the “Accident Tract” was born.
It was certainly no accident that recently brought my family to FireFly Farms Creamery in that same small town. The creamery’s artisan goat cheeses are well known to farmers market aficionados in Dupont Circle and Silver Spring.
You’ll never take cheese for granted after watching the intense, time-consuming and temperature-sensitive hands-on process involved in this craft. For example, one batch of Cabra LaMancha, a mature washed-rind cheese, gives FireFly’s cheesemakers an incredibly physical workout. I watched as Dan Porter briskly and rhythmically ladled curd from the 140-gallon pasteurizing vat to make 24 four-pound wheels. After 10 minutes of gravity settling, each wheel is flipped by hand, then again in three hours, and again the next morning before being stored for aging.
In the meantime, a similar process started in another 140-gallon vat — this time to make Merry Goat Round brie. Stabilizing the milk, cutting and agitating the curd, flipping each of 240 10-ounce rounds and moving all into aging rooms is seamless choreography.
Every step taken and each person involved becomes part of a batch’s written “birth certificate” ensuring product consistency. Even seasonality is a variable in making goat cheese. The deepest part of winter makes for the best goat milk, with the highest protein and fat content, said Dan.
Another “I had no idea” moment came as we visited Husky Power, just 10 minutes south. If you only think Iditarod when you hear “dog-sledding,” Linda and Mike Herdering, owners of what they say is the nation’s southernmost dog-sled touring kennel, will expertly broaden your knowledge through year-round, information-packed two-hour presentations. Husky conditioning, weight training, commands and care are just some of the topics covered during these appointment-only sessions.
“Many people learn about dog sledding through books and movies,” said Linda, which she called “a very incomplete picture.”
We were surprised to learn that many mushers use wheeled carts (gigs) for training, touring and racing. “There are more dry-land mushers in the world than snow mushers,” Linda said. “These dogs are genetically predisposed to pull, and they don’t care what they pull.”
The most important factor in dog sledding is keeping the lines taut by having an alert musher and excellent brakes on one end and a competent lead dog on the other. Slack lines can get tangled, creating a deadly situation, especially for canines.
I was curious about what makes a first-rate lead dog. The selection begins in puppyhood. The dogs are observed while jogging along trails, said Linda. “You look for one that doesn’t wander off — one that keeps going and doesn’t look back.” Sled dogs usually join a team when they turn 2.
The team’s shaded gravel yard is practical, not scenic. Wooden boxes serve as shelters, and each dog is tethered by a precisely measured chain to allow exercise room apart from the others. “They’re happier knowing that they have their own space and no other dog can get into it,” said Linda.
My daughter particularly loved face-to-face time with the most personable Alaskan and Siberian huskies ever. Litters are named in themes, such as Jag and Colt for sports teams, or Slider and BlackBerry for cellphones.
Mike Herdering referred to one dog, Denali, as his “attack licker.” Doffing his cap and revealing a gleaming bald head, he grinned. “She really got me!”
Snow is not required for dog sledding, but temperatures below 60 degrees are, so actually trying the sport on Husky Power’s extensive trail network must wait for the September-to-April running season.
Although we’ve only scratched the surface of Garrett County’s offerings, our list of favorites is growing.
For whitewater fixes, the adventurous are drawn to the Class IV and V rapids of the north-flowing Youghiogheny, Maryland’s wildest river. A 10-mile stretch from Sang Run to Friendsville is particularly popular during scheduled water releases.
For those preferring quiet, upright paddling, New Germany State Park and Broadford Lake beckon. Hikes through the old-growth hemlock forests of Swallow Falls State Park catch mesmerizing views of rushing water — especially as it pours over several falls, including Muddy Creek, the state’s highest single-drop waterfall.
A recently restored 1884 Queen Anne-style B&O train station, now a museum in the very walkable, cute small town of Oakland, is a definite head-turner.
The stately Casselman River Bridge in Grantsville — celebrating its 200th anniversary in September — was the largest single-span stone arch in the nation when constructed in 1813. A walk across it leads to Spruce Forest Artisan Village, where experts in weaving, paper quilling, pottery, metal crafts and more demonstrate and sell their work.
Okay, one day I’ll stop meandering and focus on Deep Creek Lake itself. But first, I must swing by Sugar & Spice Bakery and Cheese, a wee Amish shop on Route 219 just south of Oakland.

Siegal is a freelance writer/photographer in Alexandria.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/garrett-county-md-beyond-deep-creek-lake/2013/07/18/dc32bcf2-ee50-11e2-9008-61e94a7ea20d_story.html

Municipal Compost In Ontario, Canada

February 2011, Vol. 35, No. 2

AgriNews Interactive

www.agrinewsinteractive.com

Urban compost: From fork to field

GREELY — Farmers feed cities, but urbanite table scraps and yard waste are helping return the favour.

Orgaworld Canada LTD’s Hawthorne Rd. facility is the initial destination for all of that biodegradable household waste material collected by the City of Ottawa’s sometimes-controversial green bin program. But after a 31-day composting process inside the $25-million processing plant, the dark and rich-looking material is ultimately destined to fertilize farmland in the region — a fact that hasn’t garnered as many headlines.

The British-owned company intends to ship out all of Ottawa’s municipal green bin compost as a bulk product sold to farmers, with no plans to make the stuff available in smaller, bagged quantities — although it is technically approved for that particular use as well — said Orgaworld’s Travis Woollings.

As the company’s sales and marketing manager, he’s been promoting the compost at local farmers’ meetings, including county soil and crop associations, to get the word out about the product’s availability in the local agricultural community. According to Woollings, relying on farmers to absorb the material has already proven effective in the countryside around London, Ontario, where Orgaworld’s first facility in the province began operations in 2007.

"This compost already gives you $30 per acre in fertilizer value, plus you get all the organic matter," said Woollings at the Ottawa site, where he led a visitor on a tour of the sprawling steel plant building inhabited by large, brightly lit payloaders trundling around through clouds of steamy fog created by the decomposing waste.

A sophisticated fan and ductwork system constantly draws all air from the building through odour-removing equipment, before exhausting up the tall stack that towers over the structure, punctuated by a plume of steam visible on a frigid day.

The material yielded at the end of the carefully controlled, accelerated "in-vessel" composting process undergoes pasteurization as it rots. Within six enclosed concrete bunkers or tunnels — each 30 meters long by about six meters wide and about four meters tall — the compost is remotely monitored and aerated through a series of breathing tubes in the floor to ensure the temperature rises high enough for long enough. "It’s pasteurized because we’re able to manipulate the environment to 55 degrees (C) for 72 hours. Then it’s cured for 21 days," he explained. "And it’s tested every so many tonnes for pathogen levels. This gives them [farmers] a lot of comfort that what they’re putting on the field is free of e-coli."

Wearing a hard hat and bright orange safety coat, Woollings scoops up some of the finished product from a large pile and holds it out in his cupped hands. The material has a trace of a musty odour, similar to old leaves with a whiff of silage.

Two types of compost are available, a regular kind marketed as "Orgapower" and a coarser variety uniquely available from the Ottawa operation — spawned by the city’s insistence on having the facility process leaf and yard waste, unlike the southern Ontario municipalities served by Orgaworld’s London plant.

Last year, when the Ottawa site went on line, the company distributed about 10,000 tonnes of compost to several farmers in the St. Isidore area, according to Woollings. Most of that was purchased and spread in the fall of 2010, so the impact on crop growth won’t be seen until this coming season. But a couple of early birds did take delivery last spring, allowing them to look at results on the field last year.

He said, "You could see the difference in the height and colour" of a crop grown with the product on an Eastern Ontario field last year.

Woollings’s history with the agricultural spreading of Orgaworld compost predates his employment with the company. Running his own equipment and transport business when the London plant opened, Woollings worked with a farmer in that area, John Killins, who bought and applied some of the compost on his fields.

"His yields went up 15 to 20 bushels per acre. The second year was even better and his quality went up," he said.

Especially in southwestern Ontario, where some cash-crop land "hasn’t seen manure in 50 years," the product has proven especially valuable, he said.

"I have farmers in Western Ontario that have completely eliminated chemical fertilizers from their plans. One customer is planting 1,400 acres of corn [in Orgapower] this year."

The product’s features include "disease suppression, building soil structure and moisture retention," he said, adding those attributes should help it compete against the sewage biosolids that the City of Ottawa — ironically — provides at no charge for agricultural spreading in the same region. "All of these things help me demand a premium for this product in an area where biosolids are free."

And being compost, farmers may buy it, stockpile it, and spread it when they wish — another feature in an era of otherwise increasing regulations.

"It’s considered an unrestricted-use product," he explained.

He acknowledged that area farmers "love the concept" of using compost, although the price typically leads to experimental use at first.

Depending on the volume purchased, Orgaworld charges $8 to $10 per tonne for Orgapower and $4 to $5 per tonne for the coarser compost referred to as 10/100. Trucking and spreading is the farmer’s responsibility, although Woollings can put buyers in touch with people in the industry.

In a recent article prepared for the Thames Valley Regional Soil & Crop Improvement Association, Christine Brown, OMAFRA nutrient management specialist, noted green bin compost as having a "good balance of available N-P-K and micronutrients" and easier to apply than most solid manure types. Material analysis showed the product at 47 lbs/ton total nitrogen, 19 lbs/ton in both potash and phosphorus, and 1,002 lbs/ton organic matter, according to the article.

Orgapower compost "meets all the MOE guidelines for finished compost," said OMAFRA environmental management specialist Steve Redmond.

"I’m really supportive of this composting process. It’s such a great way of saving micronutrients and phosphorous," added Redmond.

St. Isidore cash cropper Marc Bercier, one of the only farmers in the area to use Orgapower during 2010 growing season, said he was taking a wait and see approach to the product. He would need two to three years to accurately measure the benefit, he said.

"Right now, on our corn and soybeans, we saw practically no difference, but there was no disadvantage, too," said Bercier, who spread 1,500 tonnes on specific areas of the farm with sandy loam soil. On those particular fields, he also divided the crop — half with compost and half without — to see any difference.

He said he intends to follow up with soil tests to measure increases in organic matter anticipated over the next two to three years.

Gatineau-based crops consultant Bob Dalton, a member of the Agri-Trend Agrology network, said he viewed the compost as a "win-win situation" for city residents and farmers in the region. "Specific fields where nutrients need to be built up, that’s where the focus needs to be, in my opinion," said Dalton.

Based on the current incoming stream of raw material from Ottawa green bin users, the company expects to produce about 50,000 tonnes of compost for farmers in 2011, according to Woollings. But the Ottawa facility could produce up to about 105,000 tonnes of compost, taking into account its current MOE approval to process 150,000 tonnes of raw green bin waste annually minus a 30 per cent weight reduction that occurs after composting. And that figure could theoretically rise even higher if the company has reason to seek MOE approval to take in the 250,000 tonnes of waste the facility is actually built to handle.

The firm is confident it will find farmers to take all of it.

One fly in the ointment is the city’s insistence that residents can’t put their green box contents in tidy and convenient plastic bags, which leads to a lower participation rate, according to company officials.

In fact, the Orgaworld facility serving Ottawa is capable — and does — handle waste arriving in plastic bags. They are shredded and screened out by a machine at the beginning of the composting process.

In London, where plastic bags are openly permitted by the participating municipalities, Orgaworld is about to embark on a trial with St. Mary’s cement. The latter company will use the screened-out plastic scraps as fuel for cement kilns, Woollings said.

Prospective compost buyers may contact Woollings at 519-649-4446 or 519-317-6756 (cell).

http://www.agrinewsinteractive.com/fullstory.htm?ArticleID=11442&ShowSection=AgriFocus

Congresspeople To Eat School Lunch

USDA to offer members of Congress a taste of school lunches

By Jane Black
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 11, 2009; A07

Chicken fajita strips, sliced ham and canned green beans: That's what's for lunch one day next week for some lawmakers and congressional staffers, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The menu offers the same products, known as commodity foods, that the agency provides every day to public schools across the nation.

The goal of next week's tasting is to show lawmakers the improvements the department has made in the nutritional quality -- and taste -- of the $1.2 billion in school commodity foods and to win support to fund further improvements. With one-third of American children overweight or obese, the USDA has been working to cut salt and fat and provide more fruits and vegetables.

"These guys are moving in the right direction," said Tony Geraci, food service director for Baltimore City public schools and a pioneer for healthful foods in schools. "Is it fixed? Hell, no. But at least now we're having conversations about this. Before, it was straight-up stonewalling."

The tasting is also an attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of the commodity foods program, which provides 15 to 20 percent of the food served in U.S. school cafeterias. Officially called USDA Foods, the program has long been perceived as a conflict of interest in the department's mission: to support American farmers and ranchers while overseeing nutrition programs for low-income families and schoolchildren.

Is the program a way to distribute meats, cheeses and other commodities that couldn't find a buyer on the open market? Or is the department really making choices based on public health?

Improving the quality of food provided free to schools is important at a time when school budgets are being squeezed. President Obama has proposed an additional $1 billion for child nutrition programs, including school lunch, in his 2010 budget.

But in the face of a projected federal deficit of $1.3 trillion , even the strongest supporters of school-lunch reform say that Congress is unlikely to approve a substantial funding increase when it takes up the issue next year.

To prepare for the Capitol Hill debut next week, the USDA offered samples to Secretary Tom Vilsack, who tried more than a dozen products, including canned green beans, apple slices and hamburger patties.

On paper, anyway, the green beans looked good. They are formulated to meet USDA specifications and have 64 percent less sodium than commercially available canned beans. For the 2010 school year, the agency has mandated that canned vegetables have no more than 140 milligrams of sodium per serving, 71 percent fewer than in the Food and Drug Administration's "healthy" standard.

The hamburger patties, developed for a pilot program last year to help fight childhood obesity, were 95 percent lean. The most similar commercial beef patty available is 92 percent lean.

The USDA offers more than 180 fresh and processed foods to schools, up from 54 in 1981. The products are provided to schools free, based on the number of students eligible for government assistance. Schools buy the rest of their ingredients from commercial suppliers.

School food directors say the quality of available commodities is excellent -- if schools choose wisely. The USDA offers high-quality dried fruits, nuts, brown rice, legumes and unprocessed meat, among other things.

Last month, the USDA announced that as part of the bonus commodity program, which is part of the commodity foods program and allows the agency to buy surplus food to help support prices for farmers, it would make available $33 million worth of apples, tart cherries and dried plums to schools and other programs. Some of the cherries will be processed into cherry-apple juice, with no artificial colors, flavors or sweeteners, for schools.

At least one challenge remains: persuading schools to embrace the more healthful options. Many schools lack kitchens and are at most capable of reheating prepared items. And many school food service directors do not have nutrition or culinary training.

They also know that they can sell more trays of greasy pizza and french fries to students than fruits and vegetables, a tactic that helps keep tight budgets in line. As food service director Geraci said: "If you have 20,000 lunch ladies that just want to open up a box of chicken nuggets, they're going to keep making them."

To encourage more healthful choices, the USDA is awaiting help from Congress when it takes up the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act next year. As part of the legislation, lawmakers are considering a measure that would allow the department to set strict standards for all food sold in schools, including vending machine fare. They are also considering how much new money to allocate to the $12 billion annual program.

Vilsack said he hopes Congress will make more money available.

"The nutritional value of these foods is going to be a little bit more expensive," said Vilsack, who said that he expects costs will rise as more students are granted access to free or reduced-price meals. "We've been making progress on the food safety side and on the nutrition side. But to take the next steps, it's going to require more resources."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/10/AR2009121001956.html

Fowl Occurances - Chickens in the City

From Washington, DC, channel 5,

DC Family wants to Raise Chickens

• BY BOB BARNARD/myfoxdc
• September 8, 2009
  

CAPITOL HILL - Big cities across the country are re-writing laws regulating the ownership of chickens. Many people want to produce their own food again. But Washington, DC is not one of those cities. Caryn Ernst, her husband Josh Silverman and their young daughters Leah and Ada want to change that.

Their eight hens were recently confiscated by animal control officers and sent back to the northern Virginia farm where the family got a dozen fertilized eggs earlier this year.

The Silverman's built a hen house and chicken coop in their backyard on Capitol Hill. But the law requires any hen house be at least 250 feet from the nearest property line and 50 feet from the nearest dwelling - including the owner of the chickens. On Capitol Hill and in most Washington neighborhoods meeting those requirements would be next to impossible.

That's why the Silverman's say they're working with the office of DC Councilmember Tommy Wells to try to get the law changed.

New Ventures Truck Farms' Online Orders to Town

Ahhh... convenience...... The Haul That Helps the Small New Ventures Truck Farms' Online Orders to Town By Emma Brown Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, July 22, 2009 Twice a month, Laurie Smith and Mark Reinhardt load their refrigerated cargo van with stew beef and steaks, chickens and eggs, honey and salsa. All of it is produced by their Rappahannock and Culpeper County neighbors, and on this particular day all of it is headed to Northern Virginia, where customers who have placed online orders await the van's arrival at one of six scheduled drop-off points. "I don't have to go to the farmers market or the farm anymore," said Mary Malina, whose home on a leafy Annandale lane doubles as a drop-off location. "The food comes to me." Smith and Reinhardt's year-old business, the Local Flavor, is one in a wave of online enterprises cropping up across the country to connect eaters such as Malina, who want local, farm-fresh food without farmers markets' lines and limited hours, with farmers who would rather spend time working their fields than hawking their wares. "Most farmers don't know much and certainly don't care much about marketing," said Cliff Miller, owner of Mount Vernon Farm, whose pastured pork and grass-fed beef and lamb account for the bulk of the Local Flavor's sales. "If somebody can communicate with the customers in urban areas and ideally even come and pick up at the farm and take it to the urban areas, that's a big deal." Locally grown food accounts for less than 1 percent of total U.S. food sales, according to the Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service, which hosted its first conference on local food systems on June 26. But demand is growing. The market research firm Packaged Facts predicts local food sales will rise from $4 billion in 2002 to $7 billion in 2011. According to the USDA, there are 70 percent more farmers markets than there were a decade ago. About 12,500 farms offer community-supported agriculture (CSA) memberships, in which customers buy shares in the farm, assuming some of the farmer's risk and receiving weekly or monthly boxes of produce in return. Demand for local food is growing so fast, in fact, that it exceeds supply, said University of Maryland agricultural economist Jim Hanson. That, he said, is encouraging producers and eaters to seek new channels -- including virtual farmers markets such as the Local Flavor and On the Gourmet, a Vienna business that launched last year -- for getting food from farm to fork. The Local Flavor was born in April 2008 when Miller, who had been taking online orders for four years, handed over his customer list to Smith and Reinhardt, who have so far kept their day jobs as a freelance marketer and Web site developer. They recruited eight other farmers to sell their products, which vary according to the season, through a common Web site. For farmers, filling Web orders is less risky than traveling to a market where they never know what's going to sell, said Joel Salatin of Virginia's storied Polyface Farm, who earns half of his revenue delivering orders made online to the D.C. area. "This way it is nonspeculative," he said. "Everything is presold before we go." Smith and Reinhardt deliver to Warrenton and Fredericksburg in addition to making the Northern Virginia run, which includes stops in Reston, Sterling, Alexandria, Arlington, Annandale and -- as of June -- Fairfax City. More than 1,200 families are on their e-mail list. There is no restriction on how often or how much they buy, and about 100 place orders in any given month, Smith said. Orders average $100, she said, but range from $9 for two dozen eggs to $500 for weeks' worth of beef, chicken and lamb. Meat is by far the biggest draw, and Mount Vernon's thick-cut, uncured bacon -- more sweet than smoky -- is difficult to keep in stock. The Remington Pepper Co.'s salsa has also earned a following; the chipotle variety is made from home-smoked local peppers, the "gourmet" variety from a blend of herbs and spices, including ginger. "I just kind of fell in love," said Vicky Reiner, an Arlington court reporter who buys a half-dozen jars each month. Sarah Fox, who hosts the new Fairfax City drop-off spot, said she spends several hours a day procuring and preparing seasonal, local meals, sometimes wrestling with how to use unusual foods that her husband has a habit of ordering. ("Stew meat, in summer?" she asks.) Echoing arguments articulated by Michael Pollan in his best-selling book "The Omnivore's Dilemma," she said she goes to such lengths because the food is more healthful, is more environmentally friendly and tastes better than food from the grocery store. "Supporting local farmers is an idea that's important to me," said Fox, who grew up on a Virginia farm. There is no agreed-upon definition for "local," but Smith and Reinhardt aim to serve farmers and buyers who live within 100 miles of one another. The two either collect a commission from the participating farmers or buy the products outright and resell them at a markup. Customers pay a flat $4.95 delivery fee, plus a premium for food that's produced with high quality rather than low price in mind, Smith said. A grass-fed porterhouse steak, for example, costs $18 a pound, nearly twice as much as the grain-fed supermarket variety. "It's really worth it," said Cherry Gaffney of Old Town, picking up filet mignon on a quiet residential street in Alexandria to celebrate her husband's return home after a year-long tour of duty in Iraq. "What price," she asked, "do you put on good health?" Similar businesses are taking hold here in the Washington area and across the country, offering fewer choices, perhaps, than traditional food-comes-to-you services such as Peapod and Washington's Green Grocers but a stronger allegiance to local farmers. On the Gourmet, a mobile local- and fine-foods business housed in a 24-foot truck, was started last year by a trio who met while working together at the Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts. Sara Guerre said she and Libby Rector Snipe shared a love of food and were considering starting a catering business when they were inspired by the scads of food trucks popping up across the country, from Austin's mobile creperie to a dessert truck in Manhattan. They bought a 1989 Utilimaster, and Chris Guerre, Sara's husband, joined them in outfitting it with hardwood floors, custom shelves, a refrigerator and a freezer. "We thought we could have everything that the farmers market has, and more, in one truck," said Rector Snipe. A main draw is meat, said Chris Guerre, including Loudoun County lamb and grass-fed bison and beef from Culpeper County's Buffalo Ridge Farm. Ice cream and milk come from a Pennsylvania creamery, and bloody mary mix hails from West Virginia. They sell a little bit of produce: salad greens, okra and peppers from the Guerres' 800-square-foot backyard garden in Vienna. Not all of On the Gourmet's products are local; customers can pick up foie gras and white fig jam from France along with other high-end imports. But the three have found that local food is what customers want, said Rector Snipe, and they have jettisoned foreign products when they found closer-to-home alternatives. Truffle oil from Italy, for example, has been replaced with a North Carolina variety. It has been a successful strategy so far: The trio opened for business in May 2008 at farmers markets in Great Falls and Alexandria, then started offering online ordering and biweekly home delivery to a dozen customers when the markets closed for winter. In August, they plan to make deliveries weekly, hoping to tap customers who are too busy for farmers markets, and to open a storefront in downtown Vienna. In Richmond last November, restaurateur Molly Harris launched Fall Line Farms, a for-profit virtual farmers market. She started with 25 customers, but by December, that had quintupled to 125 families. Now, more than 300 families order food from 40 local producers, who deliver weekly to drop-off spots around town. Michele Credle of Chesapeake, Va., enlisted about 200 customers for her nonprofit buyers' club, Essentially Organic, which took its first orders in May. Georgia entrepreneur Eric Wagoner has licensed Locallygrown.net, the software he wrote for a virtual farmers market in Athens, to about 100 other markets, most in the Southeast and Midwest. Eleven food-buying clubs have launched using open-source software developed by the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, which started in 2003 and now boasts between $70,000 and $90,000 in monthly sales. And in the past year, clubs have started in Cleveland; Des Moines; Lehigh, Pa.; central Massachusetts; and Niagara Falls, Ontario, each with a slightly different business model. The Local Flavor is still young and is not, as Smith put it, "a one-stop shop." So far this year, the selection of produce has been thin because of the unusually rainy spring. In June, the only vegetable for sale was an heirloom variety of cucumber from Whipple Farms in Rixeyville, Va. But July's warm days and clear skies have nudged the growing season along, said Smith, and on their next trip to Northern Virginia, the pair expect to offer locally grown peaches, heirloom tomatoes, zucchini, peppers and potatoes. "This is a seedling," Reinhardt said of the business. "We're cultivating it."

Instead of complaining about the farm smell, the farm could raise property values! NY Times July 1, 2009 Organic Farms as Subdivision Amenities By ALEC APPELBAUM SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. — The bewildered Iowan who converted his farm into a ballpark in "Field of Dreams" in 1989 might reverse the move today. From Vermont to central California, developers are creating subdivisions around organic farms to attract buyers. If you plant it, these developers believe, they will buy. Increasingly, subdivisions, usually master-planned developments at which buyers buy home sites or raw land, have been treating farms as an amenity. "There are currently at least 200 projects that include agriculture as a key community component," said Ed McMahon, a senior fellow with the Urban Land Institute. In 2001, investors in a stalled project with an agriculture component outside Boise, Idaho, recruited Frank Martin to take over their development. Mr. Martin had been a manager at Prairie Crossing, a subdivision built around a working farm in the Chicago suburb of Gray's Lake. By 2008, the 1,756-acre Idaho development had repaid a $12 million loan from the financing arm of General Motors; realized a 61 percent premium on the sale of its sites, compared with similar parcels with no farm nearby; and claimed a $2.8 million pretax profit by selling 785 of 800 lots, while keeping 1,000 acres open. The success of the two developments proved the concept, and like-minded developers around the country are trying it on inactive farmland and even on formerly industrial land. "Open space improves the return for a developer," Mr. McMahon said. "We have 16,000 subdivisions around golf courses, where developers found they could charge a lot premium of 25 to 50 percent over comparable tract subdivision. But most people who live on golf courses do not play golf." The latest variation on this is blending in working agriculture, Mr. McMahon said. Living with a farm, he noted, can bring a buyer permanent views, wholesome activities for children, access to walking and riding trails and inclusion in an epicurean club. Here in South Burlington, David Scheuer, a developer, runs a firm called Retrovest that specializes in pedestrian-friendly subdivisions. He is adapting the Prairie Crossing model with a 220-acre project called South Village, where he eventually hopes to sell 334 homes at prices of $200,000 to nearly $700,000. A 16-acre segment of the property, which was not previously used for farming, is now producing lettuce, garlic and other crops, which are harvested for sale to homeowners and others from the area who have joined a local community-supported agriculture group. "Agriculture can be the caboose on the train," Mr. Scheuer said, "and housing can be the engine." Once he is selling 20 homes a year, he said, he hopes to pay the salary of a full-time farmer. At the 220-home Serenbe project near Atlanta's airport, the cachet of local produce has been added to retiree-friendly businesses, including galleries, a bed-and-breakfast and three restaurants. Steve Nygren, an Atlanta restaurant impresario, started the project on his 900-acre farm. "We preserved forest and pasture, and there were 20 acres left for an organic farm, and we also have a large wildflower meadow," Mr. Nygren said. "We've set up the design so 90 percent of the houses back up to one of those natural amenities. We are selling our lots at a premium that's probably three times what the raw lot is." Mr. Nygren has focused Serenbe's second phase on "edible landscaping," he said. "At street corners there are blueberry bushes, fig bushes, peach trees and spotted apple trees." And in more rural areas, developers are buying big tracts of ranchland and selling small lots to buyers. David Hamilton, a principal in Qroe Farm Preservation Development, is pursuing this approach at the sprawling Bundoran Farm subdivision outside Charlottesville, Va. "We go through a mapping process to see functional agricultural units, if they are good for apples or cattle or whatever, then see where they go together. Qroe (pronounced "crow") leases some of the land to cattle ranchers and orchard managers. A buyer of a home site hires a builder from a developer-approved list. Qroe is marketing lots of under four acres for less than $400,000, Mr. Hamilton said. "You're buying two acres but access to 2,000 acres," he said. Grady Lewis, a Virginia native who closed on his 2.67-acre lot in 2007 and moved into his 1,800-square-foot house at Bundoran with his wife, Diane, this spring, responded to Qroe's idea of preserving "rural quality." When all the house lots have been sold, the rental income from the farmers, which currently goes to the developer, will go to the homeowners' association. "Beyond it being great to see 300 head of Angus scattered across the acres," Mr. Lewis said, "it's a cash-flow issue." Farm-focused developers must juggle financing a few houses at a time with cultivating crops on a yearly cycle, so many rent farmland to professionals. Mr. Scheuer hired David Miskell, a veteran Vermont organic farmer with a white beard, to help convert the property's damaged soil. Working organically, which Mr. Miskell translates to "a lot of manure," he and two hired farmers replenished the soil with enough nitrogen to grow greens, root crops and sunflowers this year. "Upfront costs are high to build fertility, but I doubt they are any higher than any golf course," Mr. Miskell said. "Mainly, we are growing healthy organic food for healthy homeowners." Gus Burti, who lives with his wife, Maggie, at South Village, says the farm helped clinch their purchase after a two-year search of the area. "We used to live on a golf course in North Carolina and wanted to come back to Vermont," he said. "My wife loves to cook, and we like that it's organic." Because a farm's open space takes land from the tax rolls, a developer often donates some land for public use. Hidden Springs sold a parcel to the local school district for $10,000, and Retrovest deeded South Burlington some land with road frontage for a soccer field and playground. But developers stress that their housing units should stand on their own for the idea of the farm-as-amenity to click. Mr. Scheuer, driving around a competing subdivision with nondescript open space, is convinced that despite the work that goes into a farm, it adds real value to a development. Scoffing at the look of the traditional development, he said, "If I have to do this to make money, I'll find some other way to spend my time." Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company