Top Headlines: Alleged Aspen Hill Park Shooter Charged, Bethesda Purple Line Station Renderings Unveiled, More

Catch up on the top news in Montgomery County this week.

Report: Study Shows ICC Speed Limit Can Safely Increase To 60 MPH GAITHERSBURG—An engineering study of the ICC has concluded that the speed of the highway can safely be raised to 60 mph, pending an analysis of crash data. Read more on Gaithersburg Patch. Montgomery Village Man Killed In Gaithersburg Crash GAITHERSBURG—A 21-year-old Montgomery Village man was killed early Sunday in the collision of his Honda Civic and another car on Snouffer School Road in Gaithersburg. Read more at Gaithersburg Patch. New Renderings Unveiled For Bethesda Purple Line Station BETHESDA -- Maryland Transit Administration officials unveiled new renderings Tuesday for the Bethesda station on the planned Purple Line. Funding for the 16-mile light rail line …

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Councilwoman, Lawmakers Want More Money for Free School Breakfast

Montgomery County Councilmember Valerie Ervin led a group of state lawmakers to increase funding for a school breakfast program.

SILVER SPRING — Nearly every student at Roscoe Nix Elementary in Silver Spring eats a free and nutritionally balanced breakfast. Teachers serve hot meals in the classroom before the first bell instead of the usual busy cafeteria. It's an unconventional approach to feeding students, but one that lawmakers from Montgomery County hope will become the norm in more schools. Council member Valerie Ervin (D-Silver Spring) joined students and members of the Maryland General Assembly Wednesday to promote the success of the Maryland Meals for Achievement program at schools like Roscoe Nix. She penned a letter to Gov. Martin O'Malley and State Superintendent of Schools Lillian Lowery that calls for an additional $1.8 million in funding to put the …

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Green Living in Germantown

A Visit to Homestead Farm

There's something both satisfying and primal about picking your own produce.

The trees wore a rainbow of colors — green, yellow, orange, and red — with the ripest berries slightly out of reach. I had just decided that the cherries looked like polka dot party decorations when I noticed him. Tomi Harman was serious about picking cherries. He had brought a ladder. My daughter and I were standing in the middle of an orchard at Homestead Farm, baking in the sweltering heat. We could hear the hum of a tractor, the chattering of birds, lone insect calls and the occasional human voice. Despite the short drive, it was a vastly different array of sounds than we routinely hear in Germantown. Homestead Farm in Poolesville is operated by the Allnutt family. Pick-your-own crops are available to the public throughout the growing …

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Green Living in Germantown

A Greener Easter

Patch columnist Julie Bloss Kelsey shares her experiences with eco-friendly Easter eggs.

This year, in an effort to have a more eco-friendly Easter, I decided to purchase local pasture-raised eggs and color them using fruit and vegetable juices.    To find the eggs, I enlisted the help of Katie McCormick, a Germantown locavore.  On a recent wet April morning, she and I traveled along Maryland Route 28, winding our way through the Montgomery County Agricultural Reserve on a quest to find free-range chickens. Established in 1980 by the Montgomery County Council, the Agricultural Reserve is the largest farmland protection program in the United States.  Roughly 93,000 acres of farmland exists along the northern and western borders of Montgomery County. There are over 500 farms in the Montgomery County Agricultural Reserve.  Many, …

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Tiffany Arnold

11:11 am on Monday, April 25, 2011

Eeeew. I hope you found them all!   more ›