🖤Andrea’s Adventures🖤 Weekly Blog #8

🖤Andrea’s Adventures🖤

Start Date: July 20th-26th

Watching the film “Delmarva and the Ground for Change” was such an eye opening experience. I definitely am going to do a rewatch with my family in the future because they also like watching interesting documentaries. I am also gonna recommend it to my two college friends from NJ. One is an agriculture teacher in northern New Jersey (Blairstown) and the other is an agricultural and food systems major who TA an agricultural practicum at my old college dormitory. My old dormitory had its own agricultural program called, “ Helyar Agriculture” and we had 7 chickens that we cared for and collected the eggs from. We also have a hydroponics system inside our dorm where we grew lettuce, bok choy and herbs. And when I was a freshman- we used to have access to a greenhouse near our dorm. 

The portion that stood out to me during the film was the portion when the farmers were showcasing some crop scouting and how much farmland has been lost over the years. It breaks my heart to see the number of farms losing their land or unfortunately having to sell their plots because of the inability to keep their property. I learned that in Frederick county there were about 400 some dairy farms in the early establishment of the county- and during the last census- it was reported that there were about 25 dairy farms in the county. It dropped to the single digits- and that statistic not only scares me- breaks my heart. But I will not give up hope- the next generation of farmers and people working in agriculture will shift in a better direction. 

I firmly believe that if we give youth the opportunity to learn about soil health, soil fertility and agronomy- we will be able to show them the variety of careers and fields of study within agriculture!

Here is the interns learning about greenspaces on campus, this was a green wall full of plants in the Stamp building.

Here is Solomon and I attending a grain meeting in Poolsville at the Spates farm. We got to see a wheat collection demonstration.

Here is a selfie I took while I was setting up for the insect Pinning workshop that I hosted at the Montgomery County Ag Extension office.