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The afternoon began with chicken salad sandwiches with meat from the Farm at Prairie Oaks, and the last farm on the tour included a look at Joe Bowman's Cornish Cross broilers, fluttering about in a pasture. The message to Scott County commissioners and planners: Here is a vision for the county's future--neighbors feeding neighbors. By the end of a long afternoon of climbing in and out of a bus, visiting farm after farm, it was clear how complicated it will be to try to keep farming alive in Scott County as suburbia spreads. At issue is a new long-range plan for the county's future due to be submitted to the Met Council by the end of the year. The most contentious part of that plan, if a public hearing last spring was any guide, is that it envisions the gradual suburbanization of western Scott County, an area that boasts prime farmland. Full Story: Star Tribune (may require free registration)

Before development begins on the 500-acre plot that sits east of 35W and south of County Rd. I, city officials want to give it a new name in hopes of changing the public's perception of the area. Formerly the site of weapons and equipment manufacturing during WWII, the property could house condos, shops, quaint streets, parks and be called, The Ridges at Arden Hills, or Capstone at Rice Creek or Arden Crest. Full Story: St Paul Pioneer Press (may require free registration)