Photo Description: Orchard Point Oyster Company founder Scott Budden (right) and members of his team at work on the Chester River. Photo Credit: Maryland Public Television's Maryland Farm & Harvest

ANNAPOLIS, MD – Maryland Public Television's (MPT) popular original series Maryland Farm & Harvest, now in its eighth season, will feature farms and locations in Baltimore, Caroline, and Queen Anne's counties during a new episode airing on Tuesday, February 23 at 7 p.m.

Maryland Farm & Harvest has been taking viewers on journeys across the state since 2013, telling hundreds of stories about the farms, people, and technology required to sustain and grow agriculture in Maryland, the state's number one commercial industry.

Maryland Farm & Harvest's February 23 episode features the following segments:

• Horse Therapy Changes Lives (Baltimore County). The episode starts with a visit to Wellspring of Life Farm in Monkton, where people of all ages come for healing. Founder Dawn Leung offers equine and canine therapeutic activities to help individuals dealing with physical, emotional, and cognitive challenges. Brain Silva has been coming to the farm for more than a year following a devastating car accident. He looks forward to the support and companionship that Magic, a four-year-old horse, provides. The farm serves all ages, and one of its eldest participants is 99-year-old veteran Orville Hughes, who enjoys grooming the horses.
  
  
• The Environmental Benefit of Raising Oysters (Queen Anne's County). At Orchard Point Oyster Company in Stevensville, founder Scott Budden and his team manage the roughly six million oysters they grow on a float lease on the Chester River. While the COVID-19 pandemic has hurt sales, there is good news for the industry. The new Water Quality Trading Program enables organizations to buy and sell nutrient credits. This means organizations who discharge nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, like a wastewater treatment plant, can trade credits with Orchard Point, whose oysters help remove these nutrients. This program helps improve the Chesapeake Bay's water quality and encourages the growth of oyster aquaculture.
  
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• Ask a Farmer: What's your favorite job on the farm? In this new segment, Maryland Farm & Harvest producers interview farmers from across the state on a variety of topics – this time it's about their favorite farm jobs. Viewers meet farmers from White Hall, Westminster, and Eden.
  
  
• The Local Buy: From Dairy Farmer to Berry Farmer (Caroline County). Prior to the pandemic, segment host Al Spoler visited Jack King at Kings Organic Farm in Ridgely. For 35 years Jack raised and bred cattle and he now works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But, his retirement plan includes a six-acre farm filled with organic blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries. Al tours the farm and learns how Jack uses compost to fertilize his plants. Then, Al heads into the kitchen with Jack's wife Vicky King, who shares a delicious recipe for blackberry cobbler. The recipe will be available at mpt.org/farm.

New episodes of Maryland Farm & Harvest air on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. on MPT-HD and are live-streamed on MPT's website. Encore broadcasts are available on MPT-HD Thursdays at 11 p.m. and Sundays at 6 a.m. Each episode also airs on MPT2/Create® on Fridays at 7:30 p.m.

All past episodes can be viewed at MPT's website. Specific segments can be found on Maryland Farm & Harvest's YouTube channel.

Series host Joanne Clendining, who recently earned her second Emmy® award from the National Capital Chesapeake Bay Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for her work on Maryland Farm & Harvest, returns for season eight. She is joined by Al Spoler who handles duties for each episode's The Local Buy segment.

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Ten million viewers have tuned in to Maryland Farm & Harvest since its 2013 debut. The series has taken MPT viewers to more than 400 farms, fisheries, and other agriculture-related locations, covering every Maryland county, as well as Baltimore City and Washington, D.C.

The Maryland Department of Agriculture is MPT's co-production partner for Maryland Farm & Harvest. Major funding is provided by the Maryland Grain Producers Utilization Board.

Additional funding is provided by Maryland's Best, Maryland Agricultural Resource-Based Industry Development Corporation (MARBIDCO), MidAtlantic Farm Credit, Rural Maryland Council, Maryland Agricultural Education and Rural Development Assistance Fund (MAERDAF), Maryland Soybean Board, Maryland Association of Soil Conservation Districts, Wegmans Food Markets, Maryland Nursery, Landscape & Greenhouse Association, Seafood Marketing Advisory Commission, Maryland Farm Bureau, and The Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment.

Other support comes from the Mar-Del Watermelon Association, Eddie Mercer Agri-Services, Inc., and the Maryland Agricultural Education Foundation (MAEF).

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Follow Maryland Department of Agriculture on Twitter @MdAgDept

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