JOANNE CLENDINING: It's a big, wide agricultural world from the shore to the mountains, and all points in between.

Did you know that livestock farming and sustainability go hand in hand?

Hemp is grown to make products other than rope?

And a Baltimore County vineyard is celebrating a milestone?

Don't go anywhere.

Stories about the people who work the land and feed our state, plus "The Local Buy," 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 Soybean Board and Soybean Checkoff Program.

Progress Powered by Farmers.

The Maryland Nursery Landscape and Greenhouse Association, the Maryland Association of Soil Conservation Districts.

The Maryland Farm Bureau Incorporated, the Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment.

The Maryland Agricultural Education Foundation.

Promoting the importance of agriculture in our daily lives.

The Maryland Pork Producers Association proudly works to educate consumers and advocate for farmers.

Taste what pork can do.

♪ (theme music plays) ♪ (bird chirping).

JOANNE: When we think of Maryland farms, what images come to mind?

Hi, I'm Joanne Clendining.

Welcome to "Maryland Farm and Harvest."

Sure, rolling fields of wheat and corn waving in the soft breeze, iconic barns and silos silhouetted against a bright blue sky.

Of course, Angus beef lazily grazing in the pasture.

Yep, absolutely.

That last image is a daily sight here at Liberty Delight Farms in Reisterstown, where cattle roam freely on their 200-acre farmstead.

Coming up, I bet the image of hemp fields probably didn't come to mind when thinking of Maryland farms, but this crop is making a surprising comeback.

But first, visiting Liberty Delight Farms prompted us to take a closer look at a day in the life of livestock farmer Shane Hughes.

(tractor engine).

(dogs barking).

SHANE HUGHES: Hey!

JOANNE: At Liberty Delight Farms... SHANE: Good morning, girls.

JOANNE: ... the day begins early.

(dogs barking).

SHANE: Come here, baby dolls.

Kept the coyotes away last night?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hey, Pudge.

JOANNE: Long before most people wake up, Shane Hughes begins his day checking on the animals that depend on him.

SHANE: What you doing, little lady, huh?

Where is everybody, huh?

Kinda like, you know, you don't need an alarm clock when you, you, when you have animals.

Yeah.

What's going on, kids, hmm?

Easy, easy, easy, easy, easy.

Start the day with feeding the cattle, uh, checking on the pigs, fire up the tractors.

So what we're doing here is gonna make up, uh, our cow feed.

JOANNE: Shane feeds his livestock a blend of grains and fermented grass called haylage.

SHANE: We'll put about two ton of product in the, uh, pento there, the TMR machine.

It's like a big blender.

It's got a big auger in there; it just stirs it all up.

You know, they'll out on pasture, free range, come and go in the barns.

Um, and they'll come up as they wanna get breakfast, and have access to it all day, and, uh, then the cows will be happy for the day.

This group of, uh, 21 in here right now, they were born April this year.

They're April calves.

Uh, we're, we just weaned them off their moms last week.

Uh, yeah, so I can tell you all the history on all these animals right here, just by their tag number.

Hey, you girls gonna go outside and play, girls and boys?

Yeah, yeah.

Good baby dolls.

Mornings like this, it's, it's, I, I don't wanna be anywhere else.

You know, cool, brisk autumn morning, I mean, there's nothing better.

Uh, you know, being outside with nature and the animals, and just seeing them react, and knowing that you're responsible and taking care of them, and providing them an excellent life, a healthy life, a happy life.

JOANNE: Shane raises nearly 200 head of cattle at any given time, and they're the bulk of his operation.

SHANE: All right, piggy, piggy, piggy, let's see what's going on with you all.

JOANNE: But he also raises a small number of hogs.

SHANE: Piggies!

Piggies.

Piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy, piggies.

These are Berkshire Mangalica, uh, crosses.

All right, oh, you ladies woke up for this, huh?

Yeah.

Pick a sow or two out of here, uh, keep her for breeding, but mostly, uh, these will all get raised for, uh, for markets.

These pigs are in the barn here.

They'll spend probably most of the winter in here, uh, especially when they start to farrow.

Um, you know, you need them in a warmer environment.

JOANNE: For Shane, the fundamentals of animal husbandry were ingrained in him at an early age.

SHANE: My grandfather, I always remember this from when I was a little kid up, I was a little tot, and I told him, I said I wanted to take care of a steer, and, you know, he spit his tobacco out and took his hat off, and he's like, "Boy, if you're gonna take care of something, you better take care of it the way you want to be taken care of."

So that philosophy has stuck with me to, to today, raising animals.

I like to be warm, I like to be comfortable, cool, I like to be fed.

Don't like to be hungry.

So that's how I treat my animals, and, um, you know, give them a good, healthy, happy life.

I mean, being outside, same thing, taking care of the land that God's given us to raise these animals on and, and given us healthy animals.

JOANNE: That ethos of caring for his animals and the land they graze is crucial to protecting the nearby water resource.

SHANE: Our farm here is unique, I guess, in that, you know, we border up to Liberty Reservoir, and we've, uh, have adopted several practices over the years as the cattle herd has grown.

JOANNE: Best management practices include things like covered manure sheds.

SHANE: In this building here, uh, this is one of our, uh, manure storage area with a roof over top.

JOANNE: Storing manure through the frozen winter months when spreading is prohibited is key to preventing nutrient runoff.

Further, Shane has built concrete stream crossings so his cattle can roam freely without eroding the stream bed, and he also fenced off the stream itself, keeping the cows out and creating a natural buffer zone.

SHANE: The cattle still get good, clean drinking water.

Um, the environment wins because the stream stays stable and not eroded.

JOANNE: Through thoughtful stewardship, protecting soil and water, treating animals humanely... SHANE: There you go, bud.

JOANNE: ...and managing the environment wisely, Shane Hughes ensures his work sustains both today's needs and those of future generations.

SHANE: As, uh, Paul Harvey said in his quote, you know, "On the eighth day, God needed a caretaker, so he made a farmer."

So I live by that motto.

I always get emotional, but being in a unique position where it's, it's a little piece of land that I can take care of and, and take care of the, the land, the land's gonna take care of us, take care of the animals, and it's just nice to know that I'm playing my part in that, and thank God every day to have that opportunity.

What's up, kiddos?

JOANNE: For Shane, the responsibility he feels for his animals, his land, and the environment is an ethos that he lives by day in and day out.

♪ ♪ All right, it's time to test your agricultural know-how.

Here is our thingamajig for the week.

You think you know what it is?

Well, here's a hint: If you're looking to give your animals a spa day, this tool will come in handy.

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

While an exact number of orchards in Maryland is not known, there are dozens that we know of, and the fruit they bear is pretty as a picture.

Enjoy!

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ JOANNE: Most crops in Maryland have a connection to the past, not unlike the crop in our next story, industrial hemp.

It fell out of favor due to the connection to its cousin, marijuana, but now it's back.

(tractor engine).

ANDY BENNETT: It is something that I do see as the future.

It's kind of back to the future again, right?

Where we're bringing something back that was once a staple in this country.

JOANNE: Andy Bennett stands before a field of hemp, also known as Cannabis sativa, a crop known for its rapid growth and fibrous strength.

It's also often confused for marijuana.

ANDY: One of the first things we said when we started is, "This is going to be an education for folks," uh, because people do just that.

They say, "Yeah, you're growing that wa, Andy's growing that wacky weed up the road there," that kind of thing, and you're going, "No, just, just come see," so that we can teach these folks that, no, this is an agronomic crop that we cut with a sickle bar mower, and we rake it, and we windrow it, and we bale it, and we put it in the barn.

JOANNE: Hemp and marijuana both derive from the cannabis plant.

The key difference between the two is their levels of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the chemical compound known to produce a psychoactive high.

Whereas marijuana could contain THC as high as 25% by dry weight, hemp, by legal definition, contains less than 0.03%.

ANDY: Nothing we grow goes in your body, and we're growing this for the stalk.

The top part of this plant doesn't matter to us.

If you snap this, when this comes off, this is what's called the bast fiber, okay, on the outside.

This outer layer here, stronger than steel from a tensile strength standpoint, and it's 100% natural.

The inside of this plant here, this inner kind of pithy piece, if you will, is what's called the hurd.

And that's really what we're using most of this plant for right now.

And see, I can kind of break it up, and, you know, you'll see a lot of this in your tractor supplies or your local farmer's co-op, and that kind of thing, for animal bedding.

And so a lot of this will get processed also for, for hempcrete, for drywall, for fiberboard, that kind of thing.

That's what we're using our stuff for.

If we can just have the mindset that this is not something that is intoxicating, there's a myriad of different uses for this plant.

JOANNE In fact, hemp is one of the oldest cultivated crops, with historians estimating it was first turned into fiber 8,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia.

Egyptian, Chinese, and Roman cultures used the crop for textiles, rope, and sailing.

But in the United States, hemp was more than just a commodity.

The very threads of the American Revolution were stitched with the crop.

The Declaration of Independence drafts were written on hemp paper, and Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag with the fiber.

ANDY: Back when this country was being settled, you had to grow hemp.

JOANNE: And in World War II, farmers grew hemp for uniforms, naval rigging, and even parachutes for the brave men landing in dangerous territory.

It was vital to the effort, but then the industry faded.

ANDY: Uh, there was a movement in 1937 to abolish marijuana, and so the federal government did the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act that said, "You know, this is going out," and in doing so, hemp went with that.

JOANNE: The tax was lifted briefly for the war effort before production was completely banned in 1970.

However, in the 2018 Farm Bill, the door to hemp cultivation was reopened, with a caveat.

ANDY: Industrial hemp folks are still beholden to the same rigors as if we were growing marijuana or CBD.

And what I mean by that is I still have to be fingerprinted, background checked, anointed worthy by the FBI every single year to grow this.

That's one of the things that hinders the ability to kind of scale this.

JOANNE: While others see red tape, Andy sees the potential reward, and he's joined by others, such as Mark Wo of JJ Innovations, a company focused on developing environmentally friendly construction materials.

MARK WO: Nowadays, we learn how to make all these amazing plastics and petroleum products, and realize how that's not so great for the environment, not very, not so great for our health.

But hemp is quite amazing.

Grows very fast.

It sequesters tons of carbon out of the atmosphere, so we can heal the environment instead of hurting it, and it's naturally resistant to most things like mold, moisture, pest, fire, which is great for us.

JOANNE: After the harvest, Andy will process the hemp according to the needs of offtake partners like Mark, who's researching ways to turn it into materials such as drywall and tiles.

MARK: We mix a lot of very specific plants and rock with the appropriate binders together, where we can build out a, a copy of existing, uh, construction material products.

JOANNE: Considering that nearly 40% of global carbon emissions come from the construction sector, hemp could be a game-changer.

It's Andy's hope that in time, hemp will be an American staple crop, as it once was.

ANDY: I'm cautiously optimistic.

We'll see.

MARK: Better that way than the other way, huh?

ANDY: Yes, sir, you got it.

JOANNE: As hemp production across the world begins to grow, Andy believes that cultivating the crop in Maryland is a risk worth taking.

Coming up, Al raises a glass to a vineyard's milestone celebration.

But first, the Chesapeake Bay is well known for the oysters harvested each season.

We dive into the precarious history of these tasty filter feeders on this week's "Then and Now."

♪ ♪ For centuries, the Chesapeake Bay has been shaped by the oyster, a small creature with a mighty legacy.

Indigenous people were the first to harvest oysters here, long before European settlers arrived.

They gathered them by hand, leaving behind vast shell middens, ancient reminders of sustainable harvests.

By the 1800s, oysters became big business.

At its peak, the Bay supplied nearly half of the world's oysters.

Cities like Baltimore and Norfolk thrived on the white gold pulled from the water.

Oystermen sailed skipjacks, rugged sailboats built for the job, but the race for profit came at a price.

Overharvesting, habitat destruction, and pollution devastated oyster populations through the 20th century.

Disease struck, and the once thriving reefs dwindled to a fraction of their former size.

Today, the story is turning.

Scientists, watermen, and communities are working together to rebuild the reefs, restoring oysters, not just as a fishery, but as nature's water filters and habitat builders.

The oyster's legacy endures, a symbol of resilience and the hope of a cleaner, thriving Chesapeake Bay.

♪ ♪ It all started 80 years ago.

Located in Baltimore County's Long Green Valley is a winery that has stood the test of time.

From vine to vat, Al celebrates the legacy of this family vineyard on this week's "The Local Buy," Al?

♪ ♪ AL SPOLER: In the rolling hills of Baltimore County, there's an estate where innovation and tradition share the same glass.

We're here at Boordy Vineyards, Maryland's oldest winery, and it's one of the prettiest farms I've ever laid eyes on.

And this week, I had a chance to celebrate Boordy's 80th anniversary with a tour of the vineyard and a delicious glass of wine.

But places like this aren't beautiful by accident, and their wine isn't this good by coincidence.

DAN SKIDMORE: Uh, well, vinifera is a bit complicated in our state, just because of the amount of humidity, moisture, and rain that we get.

AL: Ultimately, it's the human eye and hand that define the quality of this estate's wine.

DAN: Those are too much.

AL: A judgment made first in the field, grape by grape.

DAN: There's a bunch of different molds and mildews that grapes can get.

One of the big one is, uh, a botrytis infection, which causes like a, a gray mold to grow on the outside of the berry, and it can spoil the wine.

AL: And it's this attention to detail from Dan Skidmore and the rest of his team that carries from the vineyard... to the sorting table.

PHINEAS DEFORD: All we're looking for are little bits of stem.

AL: Mm-hmm.

PHINEAS: Any bugs that have made it through, any pink berries.

AL: Mm-hmm.

PHINEAS: Anything that's not a perfectly ripe red berry.

Basically, we want everything to look about like that.

AL: Right.

PHINEAS: And, you know, if you get something a little pinker, that maybe has a little more acid to it, we're gonna get that out of there.

AL: So even after the harvest, as Boordy's Phin DeFord showed me, the work is still hands-on.

Do, do a lot of the wineries do this?

PHINEAS: I don't know how many are still doing it.

I mean, you can see it takes a lot of labor.

It's pretty slow.

But really, when the focus is quality, I feel this is still a very necessary step.

AL: So this is gonna be top-quality wine.

PHINEAS: The best thing to do, Al, at the end of the day, is to look down in the bin where all this stuff is going, and tell me if you would want that in your red wine.

AL: Very good point.

Around the world, from France to California, alternative methods are utilized, including using laser sensors to detect inconsistencies in grapes.

But according to Phin... PHINEAS: They do a nice job, but they don't do as good a job as this crew does.

AL: Mm-hmm.

PHINEAS: Our attention to detail is really what has led to, um, a tremendous increase in the quality of our wines over the last 15, 20 years.

We farm over 50 acres of grapes in Maryland, in two distinct microclimates.

Every one of our 75,000 grapevines is touched by one of our hands eight to 10 times throughout the season.

AL: And this crew's attention to detail shows in the final step.

After being cooled with dry ice, these grapes are hoisted by hand, not plastic hoses.

PHINEAS: We do not want to use pumps in our red wine-making process, so we use gravity as our friend.

Um, when red grapes are pushed through pumps, the pump impellers can mash up the skins and the seeds, and impart bitter flavors in the wine.

AL: This attention to detail has defined Boordy for 80 years and earned it a place in the Maryland Agricultural Hall of Fame.

But this legacy stretches beyond the vineyard and into the estate itself.

PHINEAS: So the oldest house on this farm dates back to the late 1700s.

So the winery we built in, uh, 2013, but we really wanted it to fit in with the historic buildings here.

So we, we knew that was our opportunity to bring in modern technologies, you know, kind of blend the old with the new, if you will.

AL: And how does this blending show up in the wine?

BOTH: Cheers.

AL: Well... My goodness, that's very nice, and it's quite young.

PHINEAS: It is.

It's got a long ways to go.

AL: It really does.

PHINEAS: Yeah.

AL: Um, right now, I'm getting tremendous acidity in it, but there's also a lot of balancing fruit, which I think is gonna change its character and emerge even more.

PHINEAS: Yeah.

AL: And what I know about Boordy wines is the reds really blossom after about five years in the cellar.

PHINEAS: That's right.

The focus is absolutely on quality.

Our vineyard manager, Ron Waits, is as meticulous as it gets, and every step from there, the sorting, the de-stemming, um, every little, you know, using the dry ice, everything to protect the fruit until it gets in the tank, the focus is on quality.

AL: Well, you really got the quality in the glass, and I was glad I was able to help today.

PHINEAS: That was great, Al.

AL: Sometime down the line, you'll have a bottle with my name on it.

Thank you so much, Phin.

It's always a pleasure coming out here to Boordy.

We'd like to put information about Boordy Vineyards on our website at mpt.org/farm.

Check it out, and you can plan a visit if you like.

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, if you're looking to give your animals a spa day, this tool will come in handy.

This is a hoof trimmer.

Primarily used for horses, this tool would trim the hooves of farm animals.

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 Soybean Board and Soybean Checkoff Program.

Progress Powered by Farmers.

The Maryland Nursery Landscape and Greenhouse Association, the Maryland Association of Soil Conservation Districts.

The Maryland Farm Bureau Incorporated, the Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment.

The Maryland Agricultural Education Foundation.

Promoting the importance of agriculture in our daily lives.

The Maryland Pork Producers Association proudly works to educate consumers and advocate for farmers.

Taste what pork can do.

(bird chirping).