♪ ♪ JOANNE: It's a big, wide agricultural world out there, from the mountains to the shore and everywhere in between.

Did you know, that clean beef means more than just giving your cattle a bath?

That stewardship and soil go hand-in-hand?

That picking berries can make you blue?

Don't go anywhere, stories about the people who work our land and grow our food are coming up next on Maryland Farm and Harvest.

NARRATOR: Major funding for "Maryland Farm and Harvest" is made possible in part by, The Maryland Grain Producers Utilization Board, investing in smarter farming to support safe and affordable food, feed and fuel, and a healthy bay.

Additional funding provided by, Maryland's Best, good for you, good for Maryland.

A grant from the Rural Maryland Council, Maryland Agricultural Education and Rural Development Fund.

MARBIDCO helping to sustain food and fiber enterprise for future generations.

A grant from the Maryland Department of Agriculture, Specialty Crop Block Program.

Farm Credit, lending support to agriculture and rural America.

The Maryland Soy Bean board and Soy Bean Check Off program, progress powered by farmers.

Wegmans Food Markets, healthier, better lives through food.

The Maryland Association of Soil Conservation Districts.

The Maryland Nursery, Landscape and Greenhouse Association.

The Maryland Farm Bureau Incorporated.

The Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment.

Baltimore County Commission on Arts and Sciences.

And by... (theme music playing) ♪ ♪ JOANNE: When we think about the fabric of life in Maryland, what comes to mind?

Hi, I'm Joanne Clendining, welcome to "Maryland Farm and Harvest".

For us, the fabric of life in Maryland lies in its rich agricultural heritage.

We're here at Still Work Farm in Frederick County, it's one of several adjoining farmsteads that make up the designated rural historic district called Peace and Plenty.

These farmsteads, some dating back to the 18th century, embody the importance of history and preservation.

Coming up, we visit a farm that began as a healthy experiment with leafy greens and is now a specialty crop bonanza.

But first, I had the pleasure of visiting a farm that was handed down from one generation to the next, and with it came a clearer understanding of the importance of land stewardship and heritage.

Just east of Easton on Maryland's Eastern Shore is where you'll find Pop's Old Place.

It's been a family farm since 1909.

Inherited from her grandfather 20 years ago, Darlene Goehringer along with her husband Arthur Wilson, transformed produce fields into pasture land for their heritage breed livestock.

DARLENE: Arthur and I raise Randall Lineback Cattle, Mulefoot pigs, the Katahdin sheep, and then we have laying hens out on pasture.

And then we have honeybees if that counts too.

JOANNE: And by the time I caught up with Darlene, Arthur had left for his off-farm job, and she was ready to put me to work.

All right.

DARLENE: So what we'll do, is I will get them some fresh water.

And we'll just give them a couple scoops because they won't eat much.

JOANNE: All right.

DARLENE: Perfect.

JOANNE: All right.

DARLENE: If you want to put it right in that bucket where they are?

JOANNE: Sure.

DARLENE: I'll dump the water.

JOANNE: Hi everybody!

When Mama wants to eat, everybody lets Mama eat.

DARLENE: Yea, she's, she's in charge.

JOANNE: What kind of pigs are these?

Their hooves are different than what I'm used to seeing.

DARLENE: Yeah, so this is a Mulefoot hog, obviously they're named for the fact that they don't have a cloven hoof.

So there are very few of these in the country, it's one of the most rare breed of pigs there are.

They have that black hair, a very thick hide, and those long tails, which they're a little straight and then they curl at the end.

I like it 'cause I think them, you know, wagging the tail, kind of gives me a good idea... JOANNE: They're adorable, yeah.

DARLENE: That they're happy, things are going well.

But they're a really lovely hog.

JOANNE: With the hogs fat and happy, we head to the front pasture to rotate the cattle, again, a heritage breed.

For Darlene, heritage breeds were a conscience choice.

DARLENE: We just went down the rabbit hole of researching taste tests and heritage breeds.

I knew I wanted to go with the heritage breeds, one for the conservation purposes, but two, I really thought that they fit the farmstead environment a little better than some of the commodity-bred breeds.

JOANNE: What does it mean to be a heritage breed?

DARLENE: They've been around for hundreds of years, they're true to their lineage, there's not been any introduction of other breeds, you know, no Angus, no Holstein, the common breeds that we're all aware of and they would have been a homestead cow, they would have been used for milk, meat and oxen, so multi-purpose was a good thing to have when you were a small homestead.

They have very distinct qualities to them.

JOANNE: I love the horns.

DARLENE: I do too.

JOANNE: They are so cool.

DARLENE: So most of the females will have this leer-shaped horn, and the males the horns go out a little straighter.

Mickey Mouse ears, all of them have the black ears, they all have the white stripe.

So they come from a genetic base of forage only, which I do think, I think it's a good thing to have if you're trying to do grass only.

♪ ♪ JOANNE: Darlene's livestock benefit from her commitment to regenerative farming.

Vegetable fields that were once tilled over as a matter of course are now lush grassland.

DARLENE: I think bringing animals back onto the land has a healing effect.

JOANNE: Darlene has seen firsthand how her land has responded to the grazing livestock and that healing effect on the soil is part and parcel to her farming philosophy.

DARLENE: We have, one life, and where we're planted in that life, and I happen to be planted here, there's not unlimited resources, the soil is either going to be depleted or built up, it doesn't usually stay the same and it's important to me that we're constantly improving.

JOANNE: It's no easy job being a farmer.

Spending the day on Pop's Old Place gave me a taste of what life is like for Darlene, 24-7, and why she chose to raise livestock.

Rooster, checking us out.

DARLENE: I like the direct-to-market, direct-to-consumer approach with especially small acreage.

And I can't bring grain in the house and eat it, but I can process beef and process pork and it's something that's grown on our farm and ends up on the table.

JOANNE: After all the animal tending, I got a chance to experience a special benefit to raising livestock.

(lamb crying).

DARLENE: I hear ya little.

JOANNE: Hello!

(lamb crying).

DARLENE: Come here little lambs.

JOANNE: Here we go, here we go.

There you go.

DARLENE: And we're going to hold it upside down, just like it would be on a mama's teat.

And I usually just put it against and then that way.

JOANNE: Whop, she's like, "She doesn't know what she's doing."

DARLENE: Yeah, well she knows you're different and new.

JOANNE: It's ok. DARLENE: We always joke that that's the milk meter.

When that tails going you know that there's milk going in the belly.

(laughs).

JOANNE: Not surprisingly, Darlene responsibility to her animals coincides with that of her land.

DARLENE: I feel very responsible, I mean I was entrusted with this land by my parents, so if I leave it a little better than I found it and the next generation leaves it a little better, so hopefully down the road it'll be much better.

It's the responsible thing to do.

JOANNE: Did you know, heritage livestock breeds are in fact rare breeds?

They once roamed the farm pastures of our forefathers in great herds, but now their numbers are dwindling.

In the last two decades, nearly 200 of these breeds have gone extinct worldwide.

♪ ♪ All right, it's time to put your farm tool thinking cap on, here is our thingamajig for the week.

You think you know what it is?

Well here's a hint, its name is slang for potato, but you'd be half-baked if you built a log house or barn without one.

Stay tuned, and we'll have the answer at the end of the show.

One of the images that stayed with me most while visiting Pop's Old Place was the animals lazily grazing the lush pasture.

We asked to see your fave farm animals.

Take a gander at these glorious grazers.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ When you call yourself a farmer, there's a certain amount of responsibility associated with that title.

First-generation farmer, Emma Jagoz takes the role of stewardship very seriously, but that doesn't stop her from having fun getting her hands dirty.

♪ ♪ EMMA: To be a good farmer you have to be able to have patience, resilience, guts.

Farming is hard but growing food for your community is so deeply rewarding, it's worth it being hard.

JOANNE: Those qualities have helped Frederick farmer Emma Jagoz grow Moon Valley Farm into a year-round CSA that feeds over 600 families.

With more than 100 different varieties of plants, how they grow is just as important as what they grow.

Farming organically and using regenerative agriculture techniques, Moon Valley is growing food that is sustainable into the future.

EMMA: In regenerative agriculture, we know that our topsoil, just the first couple inches of soil in the ground is what's feeding us, what has fed humans for millennia, and what will feed humans in the, in the future, so what regenerative agriculture is saying is we have to protect that topsoil.

JOANNE: To ensure soil health, Moon Valley Farm is employing cover crops to put organic matter back into the soil, crop rotation to reduce inputs.

Insect banks to eliminate non-organic pesticides and green lanes to minimize erosion of the soil.

EMMA: Farmers and stewards of the land, we really need to give back to the soil as well as take.

We can't just prioritize this year's profits, we have to definitely get profits this year, but we also have to put fertility and rest back into the soil.

JOANNE: Commitment to the next generation isn't just a part of the farm's mission, it's at the heart of its origin story.

Before the fields and hoop houses, Moon Valley's first seeds were sowed on an apartment balcony with the hope of feeding someone special.

EMMA: When I was pregnant with my first child, I was really interested in how I could behave to make him a really healthy person.

JOANNE: Like many soon-to-be parents, Emma tore through books about baby health.

She learned about DHA, an Omega-3 fatty acid, vital in promoting a healthy nervous system.

Found in leafy vegetables like Arugula, Emma became a bit of a fan.

EMMA: So I was buying loads of Arugula from the grocery store to make sure that I was getting enough DHA for my baby's brain development and I was buying so much that I really blew my grocery budget and so I was talking with one of my girlfriends about this and she has a horticulture background and she was like, "Why don't you just grow it on your apartment balcony?"

JOANNE: That piece of advice led to a small garden with arugula, peppers, and tomatoes.

But of course, it didn't stop there.

EMMA: I realized that the amount of food that I was growing in this really small space could feed way more than my family.

And so I started giving away this food to my friends, to neighbors, I was the person who left a zucchini on my neighbor's porch.

And so, I realized that on a really small footprint, you can produce a lot of food and that was so exciting to me.

JOANNE: And so Emma crawled into an agricultural rabbit hole that 12 years later, she still hasn't climbed out of.

Growing Moon Valley from a balcony garden to a 70-acre farm and overcoming all of the challenges that first-generation farmers face.

EMMA: Being a self-taught first-generation farmer, I didn't have land, I didn't have equipment, I didn't have the knowledge that I learned growing up about, you know, how to use any of that stuff.

A lot of legacy farmers or multi-generational farmers have access to a lot of things that I just had to figure out on my own.

You know, over the past 12 years I have grown from a one-woman show who's, who's just got kids monkeying around her body all the time, you know, in the beginning, I was breastfeeding while hoeing rows, all of that was so empowering for me.

I started this to raise my kids in a healthy environment and to give them really healthy food that I could trust because I cared that much as a parent and I thought other parents care too and they don't have the capacity to do this, they don't have the land but they are passionate about raising their kids.

SON: Oh, there's something here.

EMMA: Is there?

Is it underneath?

Yea, it's a Japanese beetle alright, I just squashed one.

Our hard work is with hundreds of people across thousands of meals every week.

It's deeply meaningful and knowing that we're also contributing to solving climate change at the same time, I think that farming is hard, of course, and in a world where everything is pretty hard, why not choose something deeply fulfilling and meaningful at the same time?

JOANNE: Emma believes that farming organically and regeneratively is not only healthy for us, but has the power to make a difference in the health of our waterways.

Coming up, Al Spoler's picking and grinning... AL: Wow.

JOANNE: But first, from a founding father's pithy persona to uncanny forecasting, The Farmer's Almanac has been the agricultural bible to countless farmers.

Both then and now.

♪ ♪ Before farmers could search for a scientifically calculated weather forecast electronically, the turned to almanacs to determine their planting schedule.

With long-range weather forecasts, farming tips, tide charts, and health remedies, almanacs were a back pocket essential for colonial-period farmers.

Benjamin Franklin created one of the most well-known American almanacs, Poor Richard's Almanack in 1732.

Poor Richard's use of maxims, proverbs, and poetry, became a colonial must-read.

Of course, Poor Richard's wasn't the only almanac whose pages were peeled by farmers, established in 1792, Robert B. Thomas created The Old Farmer's Almanac and is America's longest-running periodical.

Thomas predicted weather forecasts using a formula based on sunspots and astronomy data.

Thomas' formula is still kept a secret and locked in a box in Dublin, New Hampshire.

Supposedly, Abraham Lincoln used The Old Farmer's Almanac to defend a client against a murder charge.

The almanac's moon phase became a key exhibit to discredit the accuser and the suspect was acquitted.

Today, almanacs do get their share of criticism for their forecast accuracy.

Because of advances in farming technology, and weather forecasting, many farmers no longer plan their crop timing based on the almanac's weather predictions.

But with continued support from gardeners, fans of the witty articles, and people just looking to get their fix of nostalgia, almanacs carry on as connection to America's past.

Not too many things in life are as sweet as berry picking on a summer morning.

On this week's A Local Buy, Al turns blue with delight at a pick-your-own farm in Washington County.

♪ ♪ AL: Few things signal the start of summer better than farm-fresh berries ripe for the picking.

We're here at Frog Eye Farm in Knoxville, Maryland to sample some of the season's tastiest treats.

And on a beautiful day like today, people are coming from all over to get a taste of these delicious blueberries.

ABBLE: I'm from Berkeley Springs.

I come over here, at least, at least two or three times a season.

WOMAN: This is our fifth year.

WOMAN 2: This is our first time.

WOMAN: Mm-hm.

ABBLE: I love this place because they've got such a variety and such an easy picking experience.

I mean you can stand here, I've filled this bucket up in, I don't know, half an hour?

Not more than that and that was eating half of them, so.

(laughs).

WOMAN: Yeah, it's our favorite farm.

It's idyllic with the mountains everywhere and it just focuses on blueberries, so they just keep it simple.

And I love it, it's our favorite part of summer.

AL: Birds chirping and an abundance of berries, beautiful south mountain right over there, I tell ya, it doesn't get any better than this.

You know, I think the Mills family have taken the whole pick-your-own experience to a higher level.

DAN: Would you like one?

Ok. AL: But one thing's for sure, owner Dan Mills never imagined he'd be running a blueberry farm.

DAN: We just bought a place in Spring Ridge in Frederick.

My wife called me and she's like, I want you to come see this place.

And I said to her, "We just bought a place, we're happy."

And she goes, "Just, just come," right?

So we came out.

She had been here two years prior to.

When she was here, she just wanted nothing more than if this place ever came available to be purchased, she would want to do that.

And I came out here and it was, it was incredible.

AL: And just like that, Dan and his family began carrying on the legacy of the original owner Hank Dubin.

DAN: With Hank, who started all this, it wasn't about money to him, he wanted someone to continue it on in the vein that I consider myself a caregiver as well as our family and those few people who work here.

Hank gave me the greatest gift I've ever had in my life and I think for my family.

I don't own anything, my family doesn't own this, to me this is everyone's place because there's something special about this place.

AL: This is the ideal family pastime, isn't it?

I see a lot of kids running around here, they're having a ball.

WOMAN: Alright.

DAN: It's the best thing, the majority of the people who come out are young moms with their kids and they're all having fun.

AL: Now I've seen a lot of these berries look kind of ripe, but others are not, they're much paler, I guess they'll continue to ripen?

DAN: So correct, these are Highbush blueberries, there's Highbush and Lowbush, typically up north and other parts of the country you again have Lowbush, they all ripen at the same time.

So Highbush typically you'll have a set ripen, about a week and half, two weeks later depending upon the weather, another third and then another third, and then that variety is done.

AL: Well that means you can keep the crowds coming.

DAN: We call it a blueberry-picking adventure.

You come out here and like right now you're picking.

AL: Right.

DAN: Are you having fun?

AL: Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Blueberry bushes produce fruit for about 30 years.

Nature's antioxidant, Frog Eye's blueberries were cultivated to ripen on a longer cycle than usual.

Most are only available for two weeks, here, they're ready to pick from June through the beginning of August.

With 2200 bushes and 26 varieties of pesticide-free blueberries, you can bet I had bucket loads of fun, even though my bucket didn't fill up to the top.

♪ ♪ Wow.

DAN: How'd it go, did you have fun?

AL: Yeah, I sure did.

I had a whole bunch.

Dan, um, I got some berries, um, I don't know what happened, uh.

DAN: Really, where did they all go?

AL: There was about this many initially, but um, I think I ate a few.

DAN: That's ok. That's part of the blueberry-picking adventure here, you taste as you go and uh, I'm, I'm not gonna weigh you, all right?

AL: OK.

I do want to take these home, to be honest, I can't eat another berry today, what's the best way for me to keep these?

DAN: The best way is to take them home, let them cool down to room temperature.

AL: Right.

DAN: And you're gonna do a, you know, cookie tray or something like that so they don't fall on the floor and then you just put them in a Ziplock bag and you just put a date on them and they'll be there in the wintertime you know, because the season is short but the berries are sweet.

AL: And you can freeze them I guess, is what you're saying.

DAN: Correct.

AL: Ok gotcha, I gotcha.

Well, if you wanna come out here and pick until you're literally blue in the face, they'd love to see you out here at Frog Eye Farm.

DAN: Indeed.

AL: We're gonna put all the information about the farm on our website at MPT.org/farm so you can look it up and I really hope people come on out here 'cause it's a blast, I gotta tell ya.

For The Local Buy, I'm Al Spoler, Joanne.

♪ ♪ JOANNE: Thanks, Al, be sure to check out MPT.org/farm for all our recipes and resources, plus you can watch all Farm and Harvest episodes there as well.

Also, don't forget to follow us on social media for show updates, pictures, and videos.

Now hold on, we're not done yet.

Remember our thingamajig, did you guess it?

Our hint was, its name is slang for potato, but you'd be half-baked if you built a log house or a barn without one.

This is a spud.

Also known as a bark spud, peeler bar, or peeling spud.

It's used to remove bark from felled timber without damaging the wood.

No self-respecting log builder would be without one.

Congratulations if you got it right.

Join us next week for another thingamajig along with more stories about the diverse passionate people who feed our state.

I'm Joanne Clendining, thanks for watching.

(music plays through credits) NARRATOR: Major funding for "Maryland Farm and Harvest" was made possible in part by, The Maryland Grain Producers Utilization Board, investing in smarter farming to support safe and affordable food, feed and fuel, and a healthy bay.

Additional funding provided by, Maryland's Best, good for you, good for Maryland.

A grant from the Rural Maryland Council, Maryland Agricultural Education and Rural Development Fund.

MARBIDCO helping to sustain food and fiber enterprise for future generations.

A grant from the Maryland Department of Agriculture, Specialty Crop Block Program.

Farm Credit, lending support to agriculture and rural America.

The Maryland Soy Bean board and Soy Bean Check Off Program, progress powered by farmers.

Wegmans Food Markets, healthier, better lives through food.

The Maryland Association of Soil Conservation Districts.

The Maryland Nursery, Landscape and Greenhouse Association.

The Maryland Farm Bureau Incorporated.

The Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment.

Baltimore County Commission on Arts and Sciences.

And by... (cowbell ringing).

(farm animal sounds).