Digest: Child of the corn, spying on farms, Long Meadow tour

NPR: A Massachusetts farmer has cut a maze honoring Julia Child into a cornfield. For the maze's cut-out areas, the guy plans "a potato putting course, tomato trebuchet, potato cannons and anything else we can throw in."

NPR: The USDA is taking surveillance photos of farms. (The a-maizing pic above is not one of them.) Billions of dollars in subsidies each year go to more than half a million farmers: some for growing certain crops and others for protecting streams and wetlands. The USDA monitors compliance by air. [DQ sez: A farmers market vendor told me about this a few weeks ago, and I nodded indulgently, thinking he was just a black-helicopter conspiracy theorist. Oops.]

San Francisco Chronicle: A tour of Long Meadow Ranch in Rutherford, CA, which produces organic wines and olive oils as well as grass-fed beef and hormone-free eggs.