Nicholas Olson

Plantation Park Heights Urban Farm is run by Farmer Chippy who employs locals in the community whether or not they have experience growing crops. They grow anything from lettuce to bananas and have chickens laying eggs everyday. Chippy is a role model in the community an is known for being a positive figure who views life with an artistic eye.

This past week I accomplished a lot. I completed my largest task so far, met new interns,

and visited Plantation Park Heights Urban Farm. For the AUFPN project that I have been

working on, I had to help map out gardens where people grow their own food. Google Earth Pro

was used to scan the section of Baltimore City assigned to each intern and locate possible

garden sites. One thing I noticed is that Baltimore has a lot of community gardens. Also, a lot of

people grow produce in their backyards whether it be in buckets, raised beds, or hanging

gardens. We haven’t started interviewing these people yet, but we will be doing that in the

coming weeks.

I visited Plantation Park Heights Urban Farm with my mentor Neith, another intern

Bridget, and then two new interns working on a different research project, Cai and Jewel. Cai,

Jewel, and I drove up to Baltimore together where we then met up with the others to visit

Farmer Chippy. Chippy runs Plantation Park Heights which is a large urban farm that continues

to grow. I could write a whole other blog post on what they are doing, but in short it is not just a

farm but a community landmark.

There have been a lot of new experiences for me in the past week and a half. When it

comes to plant identification, my knowledge is limited but I am learning through this internship. I

saw this internship as an opportunity to learn about urban agriculture, but I am also learning a

lot about people. Not only are the people I work with all about community outreach, but so are

the farmers that I have met. They want to improve their community and share their knowledge of

growing crops with people who may not have thought about it as a career.

My hopes for this internship will be to say I helped make a difference in the lives of the

growers that we meet. The research that is published at the end of our project will hopefully

improve the access to healthy foods in Baltimore. Making urban agriculture more common

would be really cool to see because it's good for humans and the environment. Another thing

that I want to understand better is hydroponic systems. I have never seen one in action and I’d

love to be able to explain the benefits to anyone who doesn’t know what it is.