farming

In March and April, as the novel coronavirus pandemic took hold of the region, the program Ebony Lunsford-Evans designed to teach gardening to seniors on the North Side of Pittsburgh was shut down. 

Hundreds of high school students, all wearing blue corduroy jackets, packed the main arena at this year’s Pennsylvania Farm Show.

More than 300 farms across the commonwealth have been approved to grow industrial hemp this year, a ten-fold increase from last year.

Spend much time at the Pennsylvania Farm Show, and you might get a feeling that tradition rules the place.

Families tend their animals together. Men in 10-gallon hats still dominate the buyers in the audience at livestock sales. Many of the handmade goods wouldn’t have looked out of place a century or more ago.

But farming is constantly changing.

One way that’s happening? Women are finding their own, nontraditional routes into the business.

On a recent Monday morning, as the rising sun burns off the low-hanging fog and fishermen haul in their morning catches from the Greenbrier River, at Sprouting Farms, the day is well underway.

When you think of a farmer, what comes to mind? Is it a man in his 60s, with a beard, sitting on a tractor? Maybe several years ago you would be right, but the tide is changing, especially in West Virginia.

Wall Street has given the agricultural sector a boost after Trump administration said it is preparing a plan that would send billions in aid to U.S. farmers hurt by tariffs.

CF Industries Holding and Mosaic Company both traded up more than 3 percent earlier in the day but ended Tuesday with more modest gains. CF Industries finished up less than 1 percent, while Mosaic added 2.3 percent.

Deere & Co. ended with a 3.2 percent gain. Shares in Archer-Daniels-Midland and FMC Corp. also rose.

While he was studying political science at West Chester University six years ago, Frank Kurylo pondered some career options. He first considered becoming an environmental law attorney. Later, he briefly worked on a few Pennsylvania political campaigns.

Then Kurylo, now 28, changed course entirely. He became a farmer.

Ohio's governor is calling for regulations on thousands of farms as part of a new strategy to combat the fertilizer and manure that flows into streams and feeds persistent toxic algae blooms in Lake Erie.

Gov. John Kasich signed an executive order Wednesday that signals a more aggressive approach to finding a way to stop the algae from taking over huge swaths of the shallowest of the Great Lakes.

The number of acres permitted to grow industrial hemp in Pennsylvania is going to increase 100-fold in 2018, from less than 50 to possibly more than 5,000.

There, not a dozen yards from the road, was an enormous downed oak tree and, growing from it, about 50 pounds' worth of orange-gold chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms.

It was, she said, the "mother lode." So Bischoff, 42, pulled over and got to work. "I had a pry bar. Some of those sections were like two feet across. They were huge!" It was enough not only to fill her refrigerator but also to sell (for an amount she declined to disclose) to friends, strangers on Facebook, and even a local restaurant.

Authorities say more than 100,000 chickens died in a fire that destroyed a barn at a commercial egg farm in Tyrone Township.

The blaze at Hillandale Farms was reported around 5:45 a.m. Saturday. Tyrone is about 29 miles southwest of Harrisburg.

A Heidlersburg Fire Company captain said flames were visible above the roof of the 600-foot barn by the time fire crews arrived.

Firefighters concentrated on keeping the blaze from spreading to other buildings. Three first responders were treated at the scene, two for dehydration and one for a laceration.

While many of us have been enjoying the mild winter, it has some food producers double checking the calendar. For instance, March is usually prime season for boiling the sap from maple trees down into syrup. But at the farm Nathan Goodell’s family has worked for seven generations in northeastern Ohio, record-high winter temperatures have pushed everything way ahead of schedule.

Syrup producers don’t have as much to celebrate at this year’s Pennsylvania Maple Festival.

Somerset County is the biggest producer of maple syrup in the state and home to the Pennsylvania Maple Festival, celebrating spring maple tapping over the first two weekends of April. Warm weather has meant a lower yield for sap, however.

Farmers, like Jason Blocher who operates Milroy Farms in Salisbury, Somerset County, are feeling the effects. Blocher said his family's been in the sap business a long time.