Lancaster Farming

Did you know: Milk drinks have been around as long as someone could settle a cow long enough to milk it, but the term milkshake did not emerge until 1885!

Conservation and quality are one and the same for Ralph Frye. And it’s the neighborly thing to do.

Happy Earth Day! From all of us at Lancaster Farming, thank you to our farmers for being stewards of the land on Earth Day and every day!

Funding is now available through two new Regional Conservation Partnership Program projects administered by USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service for farmers interested in improving and enhancing natural resources on their agricultural and forest land.

With the advent of tablets, smartphones and point-of-sale software, farms that are direct-marketing have an opportunity to capture detailed data easily and use it to improve their sales performance." - Matt LeRoux, Cornell University

Can elk and cattle co-exist? The story between elk and cattle is actually pretty complex. We know from other studies that elk and cattle can be competitors, but they can also be facilitators. - Lacey Hughey, University of California Santa Barbara.

In this week’s Letters to the Editor, a Lancaster Farming reader argues in favor of gas drilling while another calls for more facts from pro-fracking organizations. Click here to read these and other readers’ opinions in this week’s Letters to the Editor roundup.

Manheim Central High School agriculture students will be selling vegetable starter plants to fund greenhouse updates on 4/30, 5/1, 5/7 and 5/8. Click here to learn more.

It was a restaurant, a bar, a post office, a place for auctioning and boarding livestock, a weighing station, a polling place, a social center and, for most of its history, a provider of lodging. Click here to see photos and learn more about the historic Landis Valley House Hotel.

The Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Board's rule requiring cooperatives to disclose members' cut of the over-order premium has cleared one of its final hurdles.

Owners of Fat Caps Fungi, the Stoltzes have become known for their mushroom jerky, available in creative flavors such as bacon, teriyaki, pepper, sweet heat, sweet balsamic and fig, and zesty Thai.

Submit your photos for Lancaster Farming’s Mother’s Day Celebration!! We’re inviting readers to celebrate their mothers by submitting a photo of moms or grandmothers busy with activities on the farm by noon on 4/30. Click here for more information and to learn how you can submit your photos.

"Scripture helps us to be strong in the faith, and when our faith fails, as it does from time-to-time, we can ask God to help us persevere, to be courageous, to be strong. God never leaves us and is always ready to help." - Rev. Kathy Brumbaugh

I don’t see anything they will not eat, Giamarese said. They’d rather eat a nice head of lettuce in the field than acorns in the woods.

Customers were asking for Frasers, but because of the sandy soil and hot summers, we can’t raise Frasers here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. When those trees arrive, Dad puts them into the handmade troughs he created immediately upon arrival, and he puts a fresh cut on the trunk of the tree so it drinks again.

In 2016, Ed and Matt Fry were approached by a milk company from North Carolina. They were asked if they wanted to convert their 500-head registered Holstein herd in Maryland to organic production. The Frys were interested.

A lot of new varieties, if they don’t have enough production, they don’t make it in the larger chains. Growers liked them but didn’t have enough demand.