Features (All)

Article - Good Living; by Karen Rust - 11/3/11

Bring on the Grapes

If you’ve got five acres, you’ve got a ready market and help starting out

Southern Maryland takes a step closer to becoming the California — at least the Virginia — of the Atlantic Coast, this fall, with a new grant encouraging farmers to plant vineyards. While Maryland wineries have burgeoned, Maryland grapes have lagged behind. In the first decade of the new millennium, Maryland wineries grew from a handful to 42. Eleven of those new wineries have grown up in Southern Maryland. Calvert County, one of the fastest-...

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 10/27/11

This Week’s Creature Feature ... The Northern...

This invader transforms from trick to treat

Since 2002, when the northern snakehead made its Chesapeake debut in a Crofton pond, it has been nothing but trouble. The pond was poisoned and drained. The species set up housekeeping in the Potomac and its tidal tributaries, whence it could eventually migrate to the Bay. After all that trickery, who’d expect the snakehead to turn into a treat? Yet the snakehead now is attracting fishermen, chefs, seafood marketers and gourmets. ...

Article - News; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 10/27/11

Aliens Among Us

It’s harvest time for Genetically-Modified Organisms

This isn’t the movies. It’s real life. Surrounding you left and right. But you don’t see it — any more than Dr. Kate Lloyd and her team of Norwegian expeditionaries recognize The Thing. Through October, the local aliens have gilded the countryside, improving your vista as you travel Maryland highways. Lately, the gold has been fading to sere brown. In the last days of October, farmers will drive their combines into the fields, harvesting soybeans that...

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 10/20/11

This Week’s Creature Feature ... A Happy Cow Is a...

Maryland Grazers hope to clean up the Bay getting cattle farmers to switch feed from corn to grass

Cows in the Bay watershed will live happier lives grazing at their whim in green pastures rather than confined in cells and fed a diet of corn. Their comfort is so good for the Bay and for farmers that it has earned the Chesapeake Bay Foundation a $200,000 grant to extend its three-year-old Maryland Grazers Network to more farmers in more places. The Grazers Network is one of 55 bright ideas on reducing pollution to local waterways and the Chesapeake Bay...

Article - News; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 10/20/11

Greening the U.S. Boat Shows

From 800 pounds of trash rise the prospect of ‘an entirely green event’

Beneath the marketplace of dreams that is the U.S. Boat Shows runs a stream of waste. That’s the conclusion of the first ever audit of the waste produced by one of the shows, this year’s Sail Boat Show. While you were slipping off your shoes, stepping aboard sleek sailboats and sipping Pusser’s Painkillers, a pair of sustainability managers from the environmental strategies firm WasteStrategies were sorting through 800...

Article - Green Living; by Margaret Tearman - 10/20/11

Working the Land for a 21st Century Market

At Spider Hall, education and old-fashioned fun help keep the family farm in business

Squeals rise from deep inside the eight-acre corn maze. Families hitch a ride atop bales of hay. Kids scour the pumpkin patch in search of the perfect gourd. Shoppers mull over crisp apples and Maryland meat, cheese and ice cream in the farm market. Susan and Catherine Cox — mother and daughter proprietors of Calvert County’s Spider Hall Farm — lure people to their fields with fun — hoping they leave with good memories and newfound respect for farming...

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Oliveti Martin - 10/13/11

This Week’s Creature Feature ... God Blesses All His...

Blessing of the animals draws friends furry and feathered

Companion dogs and cats were this year’s dominant species among those receiving blessings at All Hallows Parish’s traditional Blessing of the Animals. Joining them were four exotics: Moonshine, a blue-and-gold macaw; Iggy, a four-foot iguana, and two baby potbelly pigs. “They were all very well behaved,” said the Rev. Alistair So, rector of the historic Episcopal parish and companion to two dogs, a Siberian husky and a husky-Doberman mix. ...

Article - News; by Karen Rust - 10/13/11

Sign Posters Beware

Roadside advertising now brings a fine of $25 a sign

Winterizing! We come to your boat! must not have heard. Free advertising space is no longer free. Starting October 1, invasive signs posted along Maryland state highways were not only illegal but also fineable. Starting January 1, posters of invasive signs face a fine of $25 for each sign The targeted signs are mostly commercial ones, said Valerie Burnette Edgar of the State Highway Administration. “Placing signs in our right-of-way is not...

Article - Bay Weekly Interviews; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 10/13/11

Working with a View

Tim O’Neill talks with Bay Weekly about the restoration of Annapolis’ Capitol dome

Tim O’Neill of Severna Park is project manager for Power Component Systems out of Hanover. One of several subcontractors restoring the dome of Maryland’s State House — built between 1784 and 1787 as the second dome to top the 1772 Capitol — Power Component Systems has the job of stripping the top layers of paint from the Capitol’s dome. Bay Weekly What’s it like up there? Tim O’Neill I’ve been above the acorn...

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 10/6/11

This Week’s Creature Feature … Aquatic Invaders Alert

You can run, but you can’t hide

Invading aquatic species will have to speed up their evolutionary development of evasive strategies to outsmart the newest addition to the University of Maryland Environmental Science research fleet. The 155-foot barge, known as the Mobile Test Platform, has the job of testing the array of new ballast-water treatment technologies developed in hopes of keeping invaders out of Chesapeake Bay. “This new testing platform will serve to evaluate emerging treatment...