A local farmer, restaurant owner and grocer each received recognition at the Calvert County Board of County Commissioners’ meeting on Tuesday during the second annual Sustainability Awards ceremony, and this year, two local meat producers and a sustainable builder were added to the list of honorees.

Calvert County Rural Planner Veronica Cristo of the Sustainable Agricultural Workgroup and Deputy Director of Public Works Enterprise Operations Mark Willis, representing the Calvert County Green Team, presented the awards of Sustainable Farmer, Buy Local Restaurant, Green Grocer, and newly added Sustainable Meat Producer and Sustainable Builder.

“The Sustainable Agriculture Workgroup wanted to encourage the growing interest in local meat and keep building the momentum in the county,” Cristo wrote in an email about new initiatives to help local meat producers maintain a sustainable business. Two designated freezer display cases from the Southern Maryland Agricultural Development Commission filled with Southern Maryland meats and stored at Chesapeake’s Bounty and Spider Hall Farm, along with a freezer trailer available for rent to transport meat and the new licensing standards allowing for poultry to be processed on farms and then resold, are “all significant game changers that will hopefully make it easier to sell and consume local meat in Calvert,” she said.

The first-ever Sustainable Meat Producer award was a tie, Cristo said at the ceremony, and went to two Sunderland families, Dale and Debbie Jones of Windy Willow Farm and Chris and Bryan Dowell of Crooked Branch Farm, both of whom have a nutrient management plan and soil conservation plan, implement best management practices to minimize discharges to local waters, treat their animals humanely without feeding them animal by-products or using growth implants and are members of Southern Maryland Meats.

The Joneses raise beef, lamb and goat and have bred a beef cross between a limousine bull with red angus heifers to produce cattle that thrive on a 100-percent grass diet, Cristo said, which results in a leaner, more flavorful meat. They have more than 30 regular buyers who buy directly from the farm, often sell out at the North Beach Farmers Market, provide beef for community venues like the county’s Green Expo and provide beef for Dream Weaver Events and Catering.

The Dowells’ beef operation feeds primarily grass and hay with a grain finish, Cristo said. Cattle are moved between 45 acres of summer and winter pastures to allow the land to rest and grass to recover between grazing, all hay for the winter is produced on-site and they sell custom-butchered beef in which a local butcher cuts the meat to a customer’s specifications.

While Chris Dowell, who accepted the award, declined to speak at the ceremony, Dale Jones said he attributes his operation’s sustainability to selling directly from his farm.

“That has increased our sales exponentially,” Jones said. “When you show up at the farm you’ll see [the animals] there. ... They’re born there, they’re raised there and then they’re brought back there for sale.

“It’s just a healthier product when it’s grass-fed.”

Wayne Tabor, owner and president of Absolute Quality Contractors in Prince Frederick, took home the first Sustainable Builder award for recent efforts to “provide a ‘green’ approach to building,” Willis said. “They’re living it.”

For the past five years, AQC has incorporated environmentally friendly building practices into its development projects, and its current project on Ball Road is the development of Calvert’s first completely “green” structure, a “straw bale” home with radiant floor heating and solar-generated light and hot water, Willis said. They specialize in photovoltaic solar, thermal solar, straw bale home construction, radiant heat, metal roofs and rain barrel installation.

“It’ll be interesting when it’s all done,” Willis said of the straw bale home project, classifying it as 100-percent “green.”

“The straw home has been a unique house to build,” Tabor said, adding that contrary to what many people think of when they learn that a house is being built out of straw, “it’s just gonna be a normal house out there. Don’t think of a straw house as what the Big Bad Wolf blew down” in the story of the “Three Little Pigs.”

Jim and Patty Bourne of The Lamb’s Quarter in Owings won this year’s Sustainable Farmer award.

“Good stewardship and a love of the land runs in their blood,” Cristo said, as the farm has been in the family since 1690.

The Bournes have a soil conservation plan and nutrient management plan, employ best practices to control runoff and minimize plowing or soil disturbance, follow mostly organic practices with limited use of herbicides and pesticides and started a Community Supported Agriculture program four years ago in which 90 shareholders bought a share of this year’s produce before it was grown, according to the presentation. Shareholders received boxes of dozens of vegetables on a weekly basis and are given the opportunity to purchase eggs, beef, pork, chickens and lamb fresh from the farm.

In addition, Commissioners’ President Susan Shaw (R) said Patty Bourne provides recipes to go along with some of the farm’s products.

This year’s Green Grocer is William Kreamer of Chesapeake’s Bounty in St. Leonard, which sells local produce, seafood, meat, baked goods, canned goods, dairy, honey, nursery plants, Christmas trees and firewood and gives buying preference to Southern Maryland first, then Maryland and then adjoining states, Cristo said. Kreamer also runs a pick-your-own strawberry patch, grows some produce on-site and hosted a small-scale CSA where shareholders selected crops they wanted Chesapeake’s Bounty to grow in their rented raised bed and then the shareholders harvested the crops themselves.

The 2011 Buy Local Restaurant went to Hardesty Haven Catering of Prince Frederick, owned by Dee and Rick Hardesty.

The business started five years ago and since has added a mobile farm kitchen and catering trailer that allows on-site cooking and immediate service, Cristo said. The 4-H “Dirt to Dinner” group uses the mobile kitchen as a way to see farm products turned into meals. Dishes often feature food produced on Dee Hardesty’s small-scale farm and produce purchased from Southern Maryland farms.

mrussell@somdnews.com