LEON ’66 and ELAINE ’66 GOOD live at Sparkling Waters Farm in Lititz, Pennsylvania, where Leon grew up. For years, the couple has been improving a ¾-mile stretch of Hammer Creek that flows through the farm. They’ve planted trees, built erosion control features along the bank and allowed vegetation to grow up beside the stream, where it filters runoff from the farm fields. Hammer Creek today is much deeper, cooler, faster and healthier than it was when Leon was a boy. Sparkling Waters’ fields are contoured to minimize runoff, and crops are grown with no-till practices that control erosion.
CLOSE TO THE SOIL Eight Links to Earth’s Bounty These eight examples in three states show the range of agricultural work in which alumni are engaged – greenhouse operations, raising meat and poultry, dairy farming, marketing of produce, working the land as a form of rehabilitation. Dawn ’91 and Troy (class of ’92) Alderfer raise corn, soybeans and wheat, dairy heifers and about 56,000 chickens on a 380-acre farm in Berks County, Pennsylvania. To minimize erosion and improve soil fertility, the Alderfers have used no-till practices on their fields since 1996, and are experimenting with winter cover crops. They also follow a voluntary nutrient management plan to control manure runoff, have planted trees around the chicken houses to act as odor buffers, and built fences along streams to keep their cattle from eroding the banks and polluting the water. In recognition of this work, the Alderfers have twice received the Tyson Foods Poultry Environmental Stewardship Award, been named Berks County Conservation District Outstanding Farmer of Year, and twice have been named runner-up for the US Poultry and Egg
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Association Family Farm Environmental Excellence Award. Another poultry-farming couple, Linwood ’88 and Radella ’92 Vrolijk of Hinton, Virginia, has also been recognized for their farm’s environmental stewardship. The Vrolijks, who raise turkeys for the Virginia Poultry Growers Cooperative, received the 2009 Family Farm Stewardship Award from the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Chamber of Commerce. The 2010 edition of that same award went to Philip ’94 and Terry ’94 Witmer, owners of Grazeland Dairy, a certified organic grazing dairy in Ottobine, Virginia. The Witmers, who have participated in several state and federal programs to encourage good environmental practices on their farm, also won a Clean Water Farm Award in 2006 from the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. Two of Philip’s cousins are currently managing the farm, as the Witmers began a two-year service term in the fall of 2010 with Mennonite Mission Network and Virginia Mennonite Missions in La Mesa, Colombia. At Tussock Sedge Farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Henry ’70 and Charlotte ’65 Rosenberger have used conservation easements to preserve more than 420 acres of their land. The Rosenbergers, who raise grass-fed Red Angus beef cattle on terraced fields with no pesticides, herbicides or chemical fertilizers, earned the Heritage Conservancy’s 2010 Business Leader Conservation Award.