The food is delicious, organic, and local-and it’s on the dinner menu at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The public as well as students are invited to partake in feasts served by the University Housing Dining Service Tuesday, April 19 and Thursday, April 21. Many of the food items featured on the menu will come from Wisconsin farms.

While summer and county fairs are still a few months away, Wisconsin dairy cattle judges need to be thinking about renewing or obtaining their Wisconsin Purebred Dairy Cattle Association judging certification. PDCA has scheduled its annual judges training for Saturday, April 30 at Mapleton Valley Farm in Oconomowoc and Four-Winds Farm in Hartland.

Baby boomers have been dubbed the

Are you wondering how you will get the nine daily servings of fruit and vegetables recently recommended by the US Department of Agriculture? The 2005 Farm Fresh Atlas makes healthy eating easy by placing information about locally grown produce, meat, eggs, cheese and other food at your fingertips.

Purple potatoes, red popcorn, and giant green caterpillars – horticulture will go Technicolor at Family Horticulture Day. A variety of indoor and outdoor exhibits, staffed by Dane County Master Gardeners and Dane County 4-H youth and adult volunteers, will give visitors hands-on experience with horticultural science (but nobody has to handle the giant caterpillars).

Place names throughout the United States such as Montezuma, Aztec, Anahuac, Tula and others have traditionally been attributed to the romanticism of 19th-century U.S. archaeologists. But an ongoing, collaborative research effort that includes exploring cartographic, linguistic, agricultural, and cultural connections between the peoples of North and South America has challenged that view.

Oral Reasons for the 2004 Hoard’s Dairyman Cow Judging Contest is an ideal resource for coaches of 4-H youth dairy judging teams, high school vo-ag instructors, or youth looking to enhance their oral reasons skill levels. The 18-minute video features six UW-Madison dairy judging students giving sample reasons based on classes from the 2004 Hoard’s Dairyman Cow Judging Contest. The students are 2004 team members who won first place in oral reasons at the National Intercollegiate Judging Contest and at the North American International Livestock Exposition.

2005 field days, as of April 7

The recipients of the 2005 Meat Industry Hall of Fame award are Elmer Fechner, James H. Kalscheur, and John, George and Ronald Klement. The award winners will be inducted into the Wisconsin Meat Industry Hall of Fame at a recognition luncheon Thursday, May 5 at noon at the Sheraton Madison Hotel. The event is hosted by the Wisconsin Livestock and Meat Council.

Upsizing or supersizing – taking advantage of fast food restaurants’ willingness to pile on lots more food for little more money – seems economically sound, but investigators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison say it’s no bargain financially if the extra calories get stored as fat.