Nonpartisan and Education-based News for Centreville
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With a new name, an exclusive VIP Experience, and a brewery tour, Maryland Crafted: Centreville offers guests over 40 great ways to kick off June. Now in its eighth year, Maryland Crafted: Centreville – formerly known as DrinkMaryland: Centreville – will be held on Saturday, June 7 from 12 to 5 p.m., on Lawyers Row and Broadway.
Hosted by the Town of Centreville and the Maryland Wineries Association, the free event offers guests an opportunity to meet over 40 Maryland makers and experience some of the state’s finest craft beverages, artisan crafts, festival food, and live music with laid-back Eastern Shore hospitality.
Attendees age 21+ with proper ID can purchase tasting passes for $25 in advance and $30 on-site (at the Broadway and N. Commerce Street check-in tent) to sample wine, beer, mead, and spirits, purchase by the glass, or buy bottles to enjoy at home.
“Our new Maryland Crafted name reflects how this event continues to evolve and offer our guests some of the best craft beverages, food and artisan wares Maryland offers. We look forward to this being our best year yet,” said Carol D’Agostino, Centreville Main Street manager.
New behind-the-scenes VIP Experience
New this year is a pre-event VIP Experience at the Bull & Goat Brewery, just step away from the main event. Jake Heimbuch, left, the Bull, and Jeff Putman, the Goat, will host a behind the scenes brewery tour, followed by four guided tastings with food pairings.
New this year is an exclusive pre-event VIP Experience featuring a behind-the-scenes brewery tour at Centreville’s Bull & Goat Brewery by owners Jake Heimbuch and Jeff Putman. The experience also includes a guided tasting of four craft beverages with food pairings, led by Laurie Forster, The Wine Coach, event emcee, and one of America’s leading wine experts.
To maximize the experience, only 30 VIP tickets are available to those 21+ with proper ID. VIP Experience tickets are $60 per person and must be purchased in advance, and include tasting passes for the main event. For more information and updates, visit Maryland Crafted: Centreville on Facebook. Tasting passes and VIP Experience tickets are on sale now at marylandcrafted.com.
“We’re thrilled to again partner with the Town of Centreville on this eighth event,” said Janna Howley, Executive Director of the Maryland Wineries Association. “We always enjoy showcasing the range of products that our participating beer, wine, spirits, and mead producers have to offer, and helping Centreville host a vibrant community gathering.”
Craft beverage participants
At press time, this year’s craft alcohol producers include: 1623 Brewing, Baltimore Spirits Co., Butterfly Spirits, Bull & Goat Brewery, Checkerspot Brewing, Chesapeake Manor Vineyard, Clear Skies Meadery, Clyopatra Winery & Vineyard, Crow Vineyard & Winery, Ego Organic Vodka, Fordham Lee Distillery, Gray Wolf Spirits, Layton’s Chance Winery, Lyon Rum, McClintock Distilling, Oliver Brewing Co., Pathfinder Farm Distillery, Rosie Cheeks Distillery, Sandbox Brewhouse, Shmidt Spirits, and Tenth Ward Distilling Company.
Back by popular demand, The Chesapeake Sons are returning for their third consecutive year. The band will perform from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.
Chesapeake Sons and The G Method to perform
Making their Maryland Crafted: Centreville debut this year will be The G Method with Guthrie Matthews on guitar/vocals. The G Method performs from 2 to 3 p.m.
This year’s main stage features live music by the Chesapeake Sons from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. and The G Method from 2 to 3 p.m. Led by frontman Jason Morton, the Chesapeake Sons blends convicted vocals and smart lyrics to produce a unique mash-up of Southern rock, rock, blues, country, gospel, and even a little bit of psychedelia.
Guthrie Matthews and The G Method will take festivalgoers on a musical journey through diverse genres from soul to metal, filled with funky grooves, powerful vocals, and dynamic melodies. Rounding out the stage entertainment will be Laurie Forster, The Wine Coach, who will perform an interactive tasting demonstration from 3:30 to 4 p.m.
Free parking available
While free on-street parking is available, attendees are encouraged to use the free event parking lots which will be clearly marked and include the following:
For event and sponsor information, contact Carol D’Agostino, Centreville Main Street manager at (410) 758-1180, ext. 17 or [email protected]. Juried artisan interest forms are available at centrevillemdevents.com.
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The Chesapeake Bay watershed comes in all shapes and sizes. Meander down this portion of the canal near Great Falls, Virginia.
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Feeling Cool by Nancy Tankerlsey
Now hanging at Easton’s liveliest art gallery, the Trippe Gallery, is the “Art of the Garden” exhibition. This popular annual show is celebrating its 9th year! In concert with “Art in Bloom” promoted by Discover Easton, the exhibition will feature floral arrangements inspired by a particular painting by members of The Garden Club of The Eastern Shore for the opening reception Friday May 2 from 5-7pm.
The exhibition will showcase the work of a talented group of artists who have taken inspiration from the natural world to create stunning pieces that explore the intersection of art and horticulture. The paintings display an exploration of the harmonies of color, texture, and form, and showcases the incredible diversity of artistic styles and techniques used to capture the beauty of nature.
Featured art in the exhibition will be oil paintings by Nancy Tankersley, Beth Bathe, Jill Basham, Meg Nottingham Walsh, Lynn Mehta, Zufar Bikbov, David Diaz, Cynthia Rosen, Christine Lashley, Georganna Lenssen as well as fine art photography by Nanny Trippe, acrylic paintings by Hanna MacNaughtan and botanical watercolors by Lee Boulay D’Zmura.
The Trippe Gallery invites you to come enjoy this exciting diverse collection of art by many of your favorite artists in the exhibition “The Art of the Garden”. The exhibition will run through June with new works added throughout. The gallery will be open on First Fri
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture in April announced the termination of its $3 billion “climate smart” program, a grantmaking initiative that was supporting hundreds of millions of dollars in conservation work in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
An April 14 USDA press release called the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, which promoted farm conservation measures with climate benefits, as a “slush fund” with high administrative costs and often low payouts to farmers.
It said some of the projects may continue under a new initiative called Advancing Markets for Producers, but only if 65% or more of the project’s funds were going directly to farmers and the work aligns with Trump administration priorities.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the Biden administration’s climate smart program was designed to “advance the green new scam” and benefited nongovernmental organizations more than farmers.
“We are correcting these mistakes and redirecting our efforts to set our farmers up for an unprecedented era of prosperity,” Rollins said.
The climate smart program was launched in 2022 as part of a “once-in-a-generation investment” that would enable universities, businesses and nonprofits to work with farmers to promote conservation measures that would help them adapt to climate change and market the products they produced.
Most projects did not begin until 2023 or later because of delays in paperwork, and some had just started up last year.
But the USDA froze funding for the program in January, leaving organizations that had incurred costs unable to recoup their expenses. In its announcement, the department clarified that it would honor eligible expenses incurred prior to April 13, 2025, but would review existing grants to determine whether they could continue.
Some working with the program said it appeared they would be able to successfully reapply under the new program, but others were unsure.
Pasa Sustainable Agriculture, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit, was managing a $59 million climate smart grant that supported work it was carrying out with a dozen other organizations on farms from Maine to South Carolina. With funding stalled, it laid off 60 employees in early April, leaving it with fewer than 10.
“We are honestly not sure what the announcement means for our project,” said Hannah Smith-Brubaker, Pasa’s executive director. “They said we can reapply, but we don’t know if that means for our current project or a completely new project under the new program.”
Smith-Brubaker said Pasa’s project did not meet the 65% farmer payment threshold because the USDA was not counting costs of providing technical assistance to farmers for planning, implementing and maintaining projects.
She said about 45% of the project’s funding went directly to farmers, but if the technical assistance were included, farmer support under the grant would be between 75%-85%.
Richa Patel, a policy specialist with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, also said it was “disappointing” that the department was not counting technical assistance as part of the farmer support funding.
With the USDA already reducing its own staff, she said, “the administration must take every opportunity going forward to increase access to technical assistance and support the staffing levels necessary to provide efficient and dependable customer service for our farmers — those working directly with USDA and those working with the farmer-serving organizations it partners with.”
Lack of technical support is considered a major impediment to widespread adoption of conservation measures by farmers.
Mike Lavender, the national coalition’s policy director, said he welcomed the ability to continue some projects under the new initiative, but said the USDA did not provide any clarity about whether grant recipients can make modifications to meet the new criteria.
As a result, he said the announcement brings “unnecessary hardship nationwide to farmer-serving organizations and likely farmers as a result of USDA changing program requirements and cancelling projects midstream.”
Nationwide, the climate smart initiative made awards to 140 organizations, businesses and institutions, which were supposed to benefit more than 60,000 farms and cover more than 25 million acres of farmland. The USDA estimated that, if successful, the work would sequester an amount of carbon equivalent to removing more than 12 million gas-powered cars from the road.
Hundreds of millions of dollars of that work was to have taken place in the Chesapeake watershed, managed by nonprofit organizations, universities, agribusinesses and others. The five-year program was one of the largest investments ever made in support of conservation measures on farmland in the Bay region.
It supported many traditional conservation practices such as nutrient and manure management techniques that reduce emissions of nitrous oxides, a powerful greenhouse gas. It also supported measures that curb runoff, such as cover crops, stream fencing and no-till farming. Those measures also help build organic matter in the soil, which allows it to absorb and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Smith-Brubaker noted that just a 1% increase in organic matter in a farm’s soil absorbs 22,000 more gallons of water per acre, keeping it from washing nutrient-laden runoff into local streams.
The climate smart program also promoted monitoring efforts to quantify how well the conservation efforts were working, and it supported marketing efforts to inform consumers about the environmental benefits of that work — which could increase the value of those products and expand markets.
By Karl Blankenship, Bay Journal
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The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.
Rachel Trousdale
The Bookplate is continuing their 2025 season of author lectures on May 14th with poet Rachel Trousdale for a 6pm event at The Kitchen & Pub at The Imperial Hotel. She will be discussing her new book; Five-Paragraph Essay on the Body-Mind Problem. Trousdale’s book- an inventive, poignant, and witty collection that speaks to the intricacies of love, both domestic and wild- is the winner of the Cardinal Poetry Prize.
“A rare gift in art is directness: to turn a clear, unsentimental gaze on love and grief in all their variations, with no smokey or mysterioso evasions. Almost as valuable is meaningful surprise, the stunned laughter of recognition even if the subject for marvel is loss. The heartfelt, unpredictable poems of Rachel Trousdale attain that kind of discovery.”
~Robert Pinsky, Judge, 2024 Cardinal Poetry Prize
“You can’t literally make modern poems with a laser, nor comedy with a magnifying glass, but if you could and you got it all just right—accurate, even-tempered, and delighted by life’s bizarre turns—you’d get something like this wise, sharp-witted and generally exceptional debut, by a poet who knows what to do when you fall in love as well as what to do when the world spins fast enough to throw you sideways and you have to hold on, for your kids, to your kids. How is a baby like ‘a brood of termites?’ ‘What have we taught our son?’ ‘Where are our robot sharks?’ What if a yeti visited a mature, equable, family-friendly Auden? If any poem, any life, amounts (as the poet says) to ‘an incomplete experiment,’ this one’s got lovely results, a thesis, an antithesis, and six kinds of love: filial, amorous, amicable, intellectual, maternal, and one that remains as an exercise for the reader. ‘I Swear This Is Not Intended as a Back-Handed Compliment,’ one poem declares, and neither is this self-conscious sentence: you can trust these technically gifted sonnets, prose poems, sestinas, poesie concrète, punchlines and acrobatic sentences to take you anywhere, and then (as the poet also says) to bring us home.” ~Stephanie Burt, author of We are Mermaids and Don’t Read Poetry
Rachel Trousdale is a professor of English at Framingham State University. Her poems have appeared in The Nation, The Yale Review, Diagram, and other journals, as well as a chapbook, Antiphonal Fugue for Marx Brothers, Elephant, and Slide Trombone. Her scholarly work includes Humor, Empathy, and Community in Twentieth-Century American Poetry and Nabokov, Rushdie, and the Transnational Imagination.
For more event details contact The Bookplate at 410-778-4167 or [email protected]. These events are free and open to the public, but reservations are recommended. The Bookplate will continue their 2025 event series on May 21st. Author Henry Corrigan will be discussing his queer horror novel, Somewhere Quiet, Full of Light. Copies will be available at the shop before and after the event. The Kitchen & Pub at The Imperial is located at 208 High Street in Chestertown, Maryland.
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Maryland Public Television is looking for collectors across the region who want to share stories of their prized possessions at a two-day taping event for its popular weekly series Chesapeake Collectibles. The event takes place on October 4 and 5 at the statewide public TV network’s Owings Mills, Maryland studios.
Chesapeake Collectibles has entertained, surprised, and enlightened MPT viewers for more than a decade. Each season, taping event guests meet with expert appraisers to learn more about their family heirlooms, flea market finds, and cherished collectibles. The most interesting items and stories are selected for evaluation in front of the MPT cameras, resulting in priceless moments as guests share their tales, discover the histories of their items, and receive an answer to the all-consuming question: How much is it worth?
The recording of segments featuring appraisers and collectors discussing their treasured items will provide Chesapeake Collectibles producers and editors with the content needed to develop 13 episodes for the series’ 13th season, which will premiere in 2026.
Paid registration is required to attend. The cost is $135 and includes verbal evaluations of up to three items by a team of experienced appraisers and a chance to be selected to appear on the show. It also includes a one-year membership to MPT. Registration information and attendance details are available at chesapeakecollectibles.com. Walk-ins cannot be accommodated because of occupancy limits.
“Whether they collect vintage sneakers, movie memorabilia, abstract art, or commemorative teacups, we want to give everyone an opportunity to possibly share the stories of their treasures with our viewers,” said Patrick Keegan, Chesapeake Collectibles executive producer.
In October 2024, nearly 1,000 people from across the Chesapeake Bay region brought their cherished collectibles to MPT to have them evaluated during the two-day taping of the series’ 12th season, which premieres Monday, June 2, at 7:30 p.m. on MPT-HD, the MPT livestream, and the free PBS app.
Past series episodes can also be viewed online at video.mpt.tv/show/chesapeake-collectibles/ and pbs.org/show/chesapeake-collectibles/.
Fans of the series can read the latest posts from the popular series’ Talkin’ Collectibles blog, available at mpt.org/blogs/chesapeake-collectibles/. It’s an insider’s look at the world of collecting and collectibles.
Major funding for season 13 of Chesapeake Collectibles is provided by Alex Cooper Auctioneers, Second Story Books, and the generous members of Maryland Public Television.
More information is available at mpt.org.
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(left to right) RCS Students Bo Zierfuss, Hazel Joiner, Addison Chobany, Waylon Clayton and Nikolai Chobany connecting during Discovery class.
Radcliffe Creek School announced it has been awarded $100,000 through the Maryland Legislative Bond Initiative to support critical repairs to the roof of its building. This funding marks a major milestone in ensuring the long-term safety and sustainability of the school’s facility.
This capital grant was made possible through the leadership and support of Senator Stephen S. Hershey Jr. and Delegates Jay A. Jacobs, Steven J. Arentz, and Jefferson L. Ghrist, who advocated for the school’s needs during the 2025 legislative session. Senator Stephen S. Hershey, Jr. remarked, “The Legislative Bond Initiative process is very competitive; I am pleased that so many families in the Radcliffe Creek School community will benefit from the funding.”
Although some repairs have already been completed, a large portion of the school’s roof remains original to the building, which was constructed in 1987. The facility houses a daycare, a physical therapy center and a karate school, in addition to serving as the academic building for the school.
As the only K-8 school on Maryland’s Eastern Shore specialized in educating bright children with learning differences, Radcliffe Creek School serves families throughout a broad region in Maryland, including four counties on the Shore, as well as areas across the Chesapeake Bay—Prince George’s and Anne Arundel Counties. “We are incredibly grateful to Senator Hershey and Delegates Jacobs, Arentz, and Ghrist for championing this investment in our school,” said Head of School Peter Thayer. “Radcliffe Creek School is a place where students who learn differently thrive, and this funding helps us protect and preserve our school for years to come. A secure roof may not seem exciting, but providing a safe and healthy learning environment is foundational to our students’ learning and success.”
The roof renovations are expected to begin this summer, with minimal disruption to school operations. The improvements will help safeguard classroom spaces, prevent future structural damage, and reduce long-term maintenance costs. Delegate Steven Arentz added, “The District 36 legislators work together to get special projects funded in Queen Anne’s, Kent, Caroline and Cecil counties. When a request gets approved, such as the bond initiative for the Radcliffe Creek School, it is rewarding to see that the monies granted will benefit families in our rural community.”
To learn more about the immersive, individualized education program offered at RCS, visit www.radcliffecreekschool.org or call 410-778-8150.
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The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.
The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.
