JOANNE CLENDINING: From the coastal plain to the Appalachian highlands, Maryland agriculture is on full display.

Did you know animal feed is a mix of science and know-how?

That a brewery is mixing science with art?

And a late winter festival mixes sweetness and pancakes?

Don't go anywhere, stories about the people who work the land and feed our state 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 playing).

(bird chirping).

JOANNE: For many Maryland farmers, finding a niche can make all the difference in the world.

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

This week's episode highlights farmers who saw an opportunity to try something different, took it, and never looked back.

That determination to forge ahead is at the heart of the dairy farm we're fortunate to visit here in Howard County.

Maple Dell Farm is a fourth-generation dairy and row crop operation that has weathered the changing dairy landscape and continues to thrive in spite of the challenges.

Coming up, a farm brewery that takes flavored beer to a new level.

But first, over a decade ago, a young farmer realized he needed a path around the status quo of grain commodity pricing and started an animal feed venture that is growing by leaps and bounds.

(tractor engine).

10 years ago, when we first visited Western Maryland's Ernst Grain and Livestock, we met Josh Ernst and his younger brother Micah, who had their hands full.

JOSH ERNST: So, we're we're bagging uh, broiler feed.

It's probably the feed that I sell the most.

JOANNE: The year before he started a non-GMO livestock feed business with one main goal.

JOSH: After I graduated college, I was part-time off the farm, and I wanted to be able to be here full-time on the farm.

I kind of made a website and made a Facebook page, and started the GMO-free feed thing, and it just kind of took off 'cause there was a pretty big demand for it, especially being close enough to the metropolitan area.

JOANNE: The Ernst family had generations of experience making their own feed.

JOSH: It's our goal to like produce a feed like that we would feed to our animals, and usually, my customers are very happy with the performance that they're getting, and that's because we're selling them something that we would use ourselves.

And, and it was easy for us to go into that because we already had the grinder mixer and the grain storage here on site, 'cause we've always made feed for our own animals.

So basically, I just kind of had to figure out what the customer wanted.

JOANNE: A year in business was brisk, and Josh was full-time on the farm.

JOSH: I didn't realize there was as much of a demand for GMO-free feeds as there is.

We find that our customers are driving an hour to two hours, sometimes three hours to uh, get their feed from us.

When we first started out, that was our goal, was to sell everything that we produced.

So now I'm gonna have to come up with new goals.

JOANNE: That was 10 years ago.

Today, we're back at Ernst Grain and Livestock to see if Josh's goals have come to harvest.

Yep, this is the same bagging area from 2016.

JOSH: So, 10 years ago, this was all gravel floors.

JOANNE: Since 2016, a lot of concrete's been poured.

JOSH: I remember that year, after we poured concrete and started using the whole building, we actually put doors on the building; it was just an open shed.

(beeping).

We actually have forklifts to move our pallets around.

(beeping).

That's a huge, uh, upgrade, so I no longer have to stack all the bags.

JOANNE: Which is a blessing, since the business is 20 times larger than when he was bagging in 2016.

♪ ♪ JOSH: The process of making feed here is relatively the same, right?

We grow the grain, we store it in the bins, we mill it, we pack it, and then we sell it to the customer.

We just farm a lot more acres than we used to.

JOANNE: In 2016, they farmed 500 acres of grain stored in small bins, milled in grandpa's barn, and sold to locals.

Today, they're farming 1100 acres of grain stored in 50 bins.

And in 2020, started selling products on Amazon, requiring regular shipping to Amazon warehouses, in Hagerstown, St.

Louis, and Reno.

DRIVER: Off to Amazon.

JOANNE: Giving them two-day shipping within the lower 48 states.

JOSH: And we have delivery routes all throughout Maryland, we're in Northern Virginia, some of Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

JOANNE: More sales meant more storage for both grain and bagged product.

JOSH: In addition to this building in 2022, we added a 60 x 120-foot structure here.

Uh, so this building is 24 feet, uh, tall.

The Amish guys who built it for us is actually the tallest pole building that they ever built.

In 2023, we added another building back behind for storage.

So, we built this building two years ago, thinking that it was massive and we'd be able to store a lot of product, but we've, uh, already outgrown it and are making plans to make room for more.

JOANNE: Same goes for their grain bins, 50 bins holding nearly 200,000 bushels of various grains that's automated.

JOSH: So, I actually control it all with, with this my phone, so we uh, we can remote control anything that's happening in the facility.

Of everything that we built out there, we built in-house, we bought a lot of it used our Facebook marketplace.

So, this will, uh, basically make so we don't have to make feed in the barn anymore.

The grain comes in through the roof; it can get cleaned.

These roller mills actually crack the grain.

This weighs out the batch, and then it drops into our mixer for mixing.

And then when finished, it'll head that way to be packaged.

JOANNE: With that goal complete, does Josh have any goals for the next 10 years?

JOSH: I don't know how to answer that question because I mean, I've got some ideas and goals, but I guess the sky's kind of the limit, yeah.

If you had asked me 10 years ago where we're at today, I probably would not have told you where we're currently at.

JOANNE: Luckily, we did ask Josh that question 10 years ago, and it holds true for the next 10.

JOSH: And if I can stay on top of the trends and what's going on in the culture, then if there's a new demand and I can capitalize on that, then they're gonna come to me, and I'll be able to have a, a living.

Josh is not slowing down.

He spent this past Labor Day weekend in Ohio dismantling five grain bins he purchased and trucking them back home.

And did, you know, according to a 2023 industry report, livestock and pet feed is a $267 billion industry with over 5,600 manufacturers in the U.S.

(bird chirping).

♪ ♪ All right, it's time to test your inner agronomist.

Here is our thingamajig for the week?

Do you think you know what it is?

Well, here's a hint: this simple tool uses football terminology to describe what it is.

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

So, there are about 7,000 farms in Maryland raising livestock, cattle, hogs, chickens, goats, you name it.

You "herd" our call for picks and flocked to the occasion.

Enjoy.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ JOANNE: Maryland established a farm brewing license back in 2012, and the only stipulation was that one of the ingredients must be grown on the farm, and at Farmacy Brewing, that one ingredient is anything but hops.

(tractor engine).

♪ ♪ JOANNE: Pumpkins, peppers, and watermelons might sound like something you'd find at your local produce stand and probably not what you would expect to taste in your beer, but that's exactly what you can experience at Farmacy Brewing, where Justin Harrison is filling boozy prescriptions with crops he's cultivating on the farm.

JUSTIN HARRISON: This is real.

We're using actual ingredients coming off the farm, and hopefully, we're using them in ways that not a lot of other people are thinking of.

And that's putting a smile on the customer's face when they come in here.

JOANNE: Farmacy rests on the land known as Willowdale Farm, where Justin's family runs an equine operation.

JUSTIN: We're also one of the last farms that has a fouling operation, pregnant mares come to us, and it's usually myself and my sister that are up in the middle of the night.

We do the delivery.

There's fewer and fewer farms like that.

JOANNE: Once the horses were taken care of, Justin was experimenting with craft brewing, and after farm breweries were legalized, he knew he wanted to give it a shot.

While most are growing barley or hops, Justin had something different in mind.

JUSTIN: We already had the infrastructure in place here.

We had a, a variety of crops that we were doing at farmer's markets or we had a CSA shares at the time, carrots, beets, onions, you name it and then as the brewery kind of evolved and the idea and the business plan were kind of worked out, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel and say, okay, scrap all of that, we're planting hops, we're gonna have grain, we're gonna go right to beer production, let's try to incorporate some of these other ingredients, um, without having to upend everything that we already had established in the garden.

JOANNE: Justin sources grain and hops locally, but by adding in crops he's cultivated, he can create dynamic flavor profiles.

One of the most popular beers at Farmacy is their Alpha Carotene hazy IPA.

A tasting experience that even Bugs Bunny would love.

JUSTIN: We planted carrots, we're gonna run these through the juicer, and we'll use this in in a beer that's coming up, this is our second batch today.

So, this is a beer called Alpha Carotene.

What we found was the, the carrot juice, the color, the flavor, everything else will actually work really well with hazy IPA.

JOANNE: Extracting the fermentable sugars from garden crops does require a slightly different brewing process.

JUSTIN: It's a lot of trial and error, have variations of the same beer early on, smaller batches, test batches that we try to figure out, um, is this gonna be good?

Is it what we want?

Sometimes we'll zero in, and you just nail it, and it's what you want.

Sometimes it comes out, and you're like, let's not do that again.

JOANNE: Justin is never far from the fields to gather the crops for the next pour.

Today, he's harvesting potatoes, not for vodka, but a dark Czech-style lager.

JUSTIN: So, we're gonna actually roast these, we have a, a propane oven, we'll roast them, and then we'll add them into the mash as part of the fermentable sugar food here.

JOANNE: To harvest the crop, Justin will use a PTO driven potato digger.

JUSTIN: As we go down the row, we've got two coulter disks, so they cut down along the side.

They keep everything running nice and straight.

JOANNE: A plow share will go underneath the bed and scoop potatoes and soil out of the ground.

JUSTIN: It's gonna make its way into this sieve area, this is the shaker.

So, this part will kind of be moving back and forth, and it's shaking all the dirt.

And then as you're going along, the potatoes will work their way up the side, and they get dropped off in a nice, neat row for harvest.

JOANNE: The fields are Justin's laboratories to discover the next innovative pint.

JUSTIN: We do a lot of trialing with different varieties, the challenge with that is that you're, you're not 100% sure what you're gonna get, but you get to learn a lot.

And that's kind of the beauty of brewing.

But if we try it, it's one batch of beer.

It's not the end of the world.

Uh, if it's a big hit, I know what we're doing next year.

JOANNE: And if the loyal customer base is any indication, Justin's already brewed quite a few hits.

LINSEY NEEDHAM: Everything is very original here.

They have beers that you will not find anywhere else.

TONY MAY: Justin puts; he puts 100% effort into making some of the best beer that you could possibly come out and enjoy.

ADAM GUTMAN: You can taste each and every one of the ingredients that is grown out, out, back up on the hill, in each and every one of the beers.

Everything that is produced here is produced with love and care.

JOANNE: Through it all, Justin maintains perspective.

JUSTIN: The thing that I'm most grateful for is the fact that I'm here on the farm.

I get to be creative, or I can be on a tractor working in the garden with my hands and knees in the dirt and resting on things that I learned from my family, my mom in particular.

And I have two little girls at home, so they get to come here, and I get to teach them, and that's pretty special.

JOANNE: Justin first started brewing with fruits and vegetables as a homebrew experiment, but that type of brewing didn't become common in the U.S.

until home brewing was legalized in the 1980s.

And did you know at last count, there are over 30 farm breweries in Maryland?

So, there's ample opportunity to wet your whistle.

(bird chirping).

Coming up, Al taps his sweet tooth among other things.

But first, Emma Jagoz gives us the inside scoop on how she tackles those six-legged crop critters on this week's "Ask A Farmer How It Works."

♪ ♪ EMMA Hi, my name is Emma Jagoz, owner and farmer here at Moon Valley Farm.

As an organic vegetable farm, I'm often asked how do I deal with pests?

Growing over 40 different varieties, it's not a one-size-all approach.

We utilize many different strategies to mitigate pests from damaging our crops.

One of the strategies we employ on the farm is planting beneficial insect strips to help do our job for us.

In this case, here is bronze fennel, which attracts the Braconidae wasp, a key predator to the tomato hornworm, one of our biggest problems in our tomato patch.

How it works is the Braconidae wasp is attracted to this plant, and then it goes over to the tomatoes and lays its eggs on the tomato hornworm.

When the larvae hatch, they eat the hornworm from the inside out, effectively killing it in the process of growing.

♪ ♪ Another way we mitigate pest damage on the farm is through strategic crop timing.

In this case, in our potato fields, we actually waited three weeks to plant these potatoes.

When the Colorado potato beetle emerges, it looks around for potato plants to eat.

When it doesn't find any, it moves on or dies.

At that point, we plant our potatoes, and there's no pests to be found.

JOANNE: When the season brings cold nights and warm days, it's the perfect weather to harvest nature's nectar.

On this week's "The Local Buy," Al visits a maple syrup festival and taps into a sweet treat, Al?

♪ ♪ AL SPOLER: You know, as the ice thaws and the first signs of spring begin to emerge, Cunningham Falls State Park is a perfect place to shake off cabin fever.

These trails offer more than just pretty views in leisurely hiking because hidden among these trees is a sweet Maryland treasure just waiting to be tapped.

And the key to unlocking this seasonal sweetness just comes down to the right weather.

TRAVIS ANTHONY: What you're looking for as far as your sap production, warmer days into colder nights, which typically for us in Maryland is say Valentine's Day until about early March.

AL: While not a requisite skill for park rangers, Travis Anthony of Cunningham Falls State Park has picked up the art of making maple syrup.

And today he shared with me the simple magic of tapping a tree, but not just any tree will do; we need to identify a red maple.

Travis, this is kind of like an Easter egg hunt.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

AL: Looking for the goodies out here.

You See anything?

TRAVIS: Well, so we got a good one right over here.

AL: These three trees over here.

TRAVIS: Yeah, it's a little bit more difficult, especially since you don't have leaves on the tree.

AL: Yeah.

TRAVIS: But you have your smooth gray bark here, and this'll be a perfect start for us.

AL: Huh.

TRAVIS: So.

AL: And to tap this red maple, all it takes is a drill.

TRAVIS: To make sure to not hurt the tree, we're only gonna go two inches, about two inches into the tree.

AL: Gotcha.

(drilling).

And a spile.

Okay.

TRAVIS: So.

AL: Where, where do I hit it?

TRAVIS: And then here's your trusty hammer.

AL: So, you can tap it right there.

AL: Right there, okay, got it.

(hammering).

While it's not magic, it sure feels like it when the first drops start to fall.

Hey, there.

TRAVIS: Not bad, not bad at all.

AL: That that place good on my pancakes.

TRAVIS: Well, so I wish it only, it was only this much that you needed in order to make maple syrup.

But really, it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon maple syrup.

AL: Are you serious?

TRAVIS: Oh yeah.

That's why you know it costs as much as it does.

AL: That's hundreds of trees, hundreds.

TRAVIS: Oh yeah.

AL: Hundreds.

TRAVIS: Oh yeah.

AL: You heard that right, and with a full bucket of sap, we'd be lucky to get four tablespoons of maple syrup.

Turns out sap is mostly water.

So, if you want syrup, you'll have to boil it a while.

And we're gonna cook it for 11 hours until it gets reduced that really nice sugary base that becomes a maple syrup.

But the results of this 11-hour process will make a sweet addition to the festivities at the Cunningham Falls annual Maple Syrup Festival.

A tradition that draws big crowds who wanna learn a bit more about making maple syrup.

RANGER: If you guys want to take a look here, you see this white looks like water, that is actually the tree sap.

This is a demonstration of what's happening as we are going down with it.

We are boiling all the water out, and we are going down to just this sugar that is gonna be maple syrup for us.

AL: And the larger crowd formed in even longer lines to enjoy the sweet results.

Like boiling up a new batch of maple syrup, the annual Cunningham Falls Maple Syrup Festival is well worth the wait.

COOK: Yes, sir, I'm working on it.

TRAVIS: This is the perfect weather, you know, we're coming out of winter.

I mean, we also have activities for everyone to check out, you know, pancake breakfast for everyone to enjoy.

AL: And if you want to leave with a sweet treat, one of these stalls may just have something for you.

I've been watching you all day long; you're doing a lot of business here.

MIKE IRONS: Oh, we've been very busy.

AL: People must really like this.

MIKE: Yeah, well, we've been doing it up here 50 years.

AL: No kidding?

MIKE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We sure have.

AL: Now people can get pancakes here up at the store.

MIKE: Yes, yes.

AL: But this is the real thing.

MIKE: It's the real deal.

AL: It's worth it.

MIKE: It's the real deal, yes, indeedy.

AL: And according to visitors, this festival was the real deal as well.

MAN: We just, I actually just started tapping my own maple trees last year, so I thought I'm kind of still new at it, so I thought maybe I might learn something by coming here.

So, so come and take a gander.

WOMAN: We are loving the festival, this is our fifth year in a row, so we love coming.

AL: I think it's a lot better than the pancake syrup you get to the store.

MAN: First time I, uh, first time I ever had actual maple syrup was like the first time I heard The Beatles.

It was like, just eye-opening.

WOMAN: Who needs Vermont when you have the best maple syrup right here?

AL: But after all this talk, I figured I had to give my own maple syrup a try, which had just finished boiling.

Oh my gosh, Travis, it's well worth the wait, isn't it?

TRAVIS: Oh, definitely.

I mean, it's definitely worth the wait.

AL: Uh, I saw a lot of people in line waiting today for their pancakes.

I saw a lot of people in line waiting for syrup.

What do you think people get out of coming here?

TRAVIS: Honestly, just the education of it all.

I mean, the ability to come and just learn how simple the process is to make maple syrup, and how they can do it at home.

Um, I think it's something that will be, you know, worth it to everybody when they come out.

AL: That's right.

Well, let me tell you what we're gonna do, we're gonna put information on our website at mpt.org/farm so people can learn all about the festival, maybe make plans to come out next year.

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 this simple tool uses football terminology to describe what it is.

This is a single block barn pulley.

A rope goes over, and through it, and when you pull down on one end of the rope, the pulley redirects the force lifting the object it's attached to.

It's used to lift anything from hay bales to farm equipment, and when coupled together with multiple pulleys and ropes, it's called a block and tackle.

Hence the football reference.

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).

♪ ♪