Winter high-speed ferry service between New Bedford and the Vineyard is expected to be sharply reduced, and may be abandoned altogether unless passenger numbers increase.

In the face of rapidly falling ridership, the ferry’s operators intend to cancel all weekend runs and reduce weekday trips by a third. The changes are expected to be formally approved by Steamship Authority governors at their monthly meeting in New Bedford on Tuesday.

The Vineyard real estate market showed resilience in the third quarter, with prices rising even as sales dropped and inventory rose.

Not so long ago, it was commonplace for Vineyard towns to have multiple blacksmith shops: thriving places of commerce that sold items such as bolts, hinges, horseshoes, cooking utensils and iron gates.

But as the all-consuming age of the machine took hold, the old village smithy went the way of the horse and buggy. The last blacksmith on the Island was Orin Norton, who operated a shop in Edgartown for sixty years until his death in 1961.

Farmers, town and county officials and Island residents will gather tomorrow morning for a workshop to discuss the possibility of forming an agricultural commission on the Island.

Established through a town meeting vote, an agricultural commission is a political body that provides a link to state and federal agricultural agencies and grant monies. Currently, there are over 95 agricultural commissions in Massachusetts.

The Dukes County charter study commission narrowed a list of seven possible recommendations for the future of county government to four in a straw vote at their regular meeting Thursday.

In a nearly unanimous vote, commissioners eliminated the options of recommending no change to county government, abolishing county government with no replacement and abolishing county government and replacing it with an alternative form of government. The vote was nonbinding, and in the future commissioners may choose to reconsider the options.

Ethan Arrives

Lila DiBiaso and Owen DiBiaso of West Tisbury announce the birth of a son, Ethan Rider DiBiaso, born on Nov. 10 at the Martha’s Vineyard Community Hospital. Ethan weighed 8 pounds, 2 ounces at birth.