Wednesday roundup

600 positions were up for grabs at a job fair in Watertown on Tuesday. Many of them were in manufacturing, which seems to be making a comeback. “The big mantra used to be that manufacturing was a dying occupation,” said Cheryl Mayforth of the WorkPlace employment agency, speaking to the Watertown Daily Times. “But there’s been a resurgence across the U.S.” Regional employers expect a boom in the industry to continue into next year.

The Rural Energy for America Program gives financial boosts to farmers, while developing renewable energy sources. Today, REAP awarded the Woodcrest Dairy farm in St. Lawrence County with a grant of $400,000. As U.S. Senators Charles Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand announced in a news release, the money will fund an anaerobic digester, which will generate ecologically sound electricity for Woodcrest — and possibly for the grid, too.

An Essex County school district received a less impressive grant today. The Glenn and Carol Pearsall Adirondack Foundation gave the Ticonderoga Central School District a thousand bucks in support of its backpack food program. The initiative sends income-eligible students home with backpacks full of healthy food at the end of each week.  It only costs $167 to sponsor a child for a school year, so that thousand bucks amounts to more than one might think. As of this month, about 60 children benefit from the program.

And here’s what’s coming tomorrow, on The Eight O’clock Hour:

We continue our Olympic preview with Saranac Lake ski jumper Peter Frenette.  Frenette is scrambling for a spot on the US Olympic team and his entire family is pitching in to help get him to to the Winter Games in Russia.

A long-running microloan fund for small businesses in Jefferson County is running dry.

The State Senate held a hearing on the new high-stakes testing regime in New York’s schools. It comes as angry parents around the state are speaking out against what’s called the Common Core.