2024

  🖤Andrea’s Adventures🖤 Start Date: 5/10/24 I was helping out Jean to do some nitrogen level scouting with the Green machine. Hello! I cannot believe that we are at week three of this awesome internship! As I am navigating through this internship - I am blown away by all the wonderful extension agents and extension workers! It has been so fun to meet people of all ages and backgrounds. I really like the internship so far and I have learned so much from my mentors: Mark, Kelly and Nathan! I am so happy to have such fun, caring and inspiring mentors. This past week I got to help out at a field day/ field trip at the WMREC (Western Maryland Research and Education Center) with my mentor Mark! I also got to help out with Jeff and Dr.Amanda Grev! The event had three stations at the WMREC facility for the high school students to tour and learn from the extension specialists! I helped out Mark at the station that talked about Agronomy and careers in agriculture! He talked about progressi...

The LEAD Maryland group and I at the Mountain Fresh Farmers Market for their seminar. It was great to meet and interact with this group of individuals from across the state.  Week three was nothing short of amazing! Tuesday, LEAD Maryland made their way to Garrett County. I was able to join them for part of their third seminar. It was great to hear from the Rural Maryland Council, learn about Garrett County Agriculture & Resources from our AgFS extension educator, and hear about Rural Community Development and services. Later that day I traveled down to Barton, Maryland to assist Sarah Llewellyn with the kids’ gardening class. It was great to see all the kids again and see how much their garden had grown since the previous week. I finished my day at Yough Glades Elementary School for a kid’s activity night. Ashley Bodkins and I set up a booth and did a craft with the kids. Our craft was a DIY bird feeder. The kids were able to string cheerios and get creative with differen...

This is a picture I took of crates used to cage oysters at an oyster farm on the eastern shore.   Internship Update :  My internship with University of Maryland Extension is going extremely well! I am learning a lot about not only agriculture, but other professional skills such as communication, teamwork, and public speaking. Since my last post, I have done a lot with research and extension. I have been preparing to start a research project with Dr. Izursa on black soldier fly larvae as aquaculture feed. I have been compiling a list of materials and making a step by step plan on the research I will be engaging in. I am excited to get started with this experiment soon. I have attended an agricultural conference in Ocean City, Maryland. The highlight of the trip were the farm tours. Brigit, Nick, and I went to many different farms to gain a further understanding of the agricultural processes taking place. A notable one was the oyster farm, which cultivates and sells oysters....

Montgomery office picture taken by me / Solomon Hutchins  Last week 6/11/2024 I visited the Montgomery office. My drive there was new and interesting and I was able to see a few crops and animals as well as wild turkey. One of my mentors, Mark Townsend, talked about how seeing turkeys in areas is a good indicator of a healthy ecosystem.  I actually also found information from the Nobel Research Institute on how ( Josh Gaskamp) a researcher said how all ground nesting birds for example turkeys, quail, pheasants and others symbolizes healthy grasslands. After arriving I was introduced to Kelly Nichols who showed me around the office and the crop field as well as the animals and how the research building and farm is also used to introduce kids to animals and farm equipment, small garden and the corn field. I learned how to identify certain pests and animal chewing on corn fields and the differences in chewing such as deer and how the chewing was more jagged and uneven and how slu...

Picture of me standing in front of a giant pile of oyster shells, taken by Abi Anderson I am at week four of my internship which is progressing nicely! During this week I attended my weekly connection on Monday where me and a few other interns led a discussion about how great leaders inspire action. The next day, I sprayed pesticides and did some weeding with Emily Zobel.  One major thing I focused on during this week was researching and planning for a taste panel involving blackberries. The research involved me typing survey questions and researching what materials would be needed. It was a great experience for me because I will be able to conduct a taste panel of my own for my homegrown fruits and vegetables one day. Another major thing I focused on was processing bio samples. My mentors (Haley Sater and Sarah Hirsh) and I have to place our bio samples in the dryer for 24 hours before weighing them and sending them to a testing lab. To clarify, bio samples are basically plant ma...

All of the interns from the different Extension offices across Maryland. Pictured after our farm tour in Dames Quarters at the diner “From Scratch”. I got a crab cake sandwich. On Tuesday, all the interns returned to Harlem Park to practice the mapping aspect of our AUFPN project. Sally was kind enough to let us come back after being interviewed about a week earlier to work on figuring out the logistics of mapping an urban farm. Mapping requires sketching an outline, measuring garden beds, and identifying the different plant species. Efficient teamwork is essential to make sure that we collect data as accurately as possible, but also not be there all day.  Wednesday to Friday was my first time going to Ocean City, Maryland. This may seem like an odd topic to talk about, but I went to meet the different extension agents from across the state, and even one from New Jersey. Like most years, the conference for the Maryland Association of County Agricultural Agents (MACAA) was in Ocea...

Nick, Cai, Mia, Abi, Me, Ciera and Sam at our lunch spot. These were all the interns at the conference.  For the past week, my schedule has been packed full! Meeting new people, going to new places, learning new things. A big part of our research project is mapping out growing spaces within Baltimore City, and we did our first official mapping last week. The fieldwork of it was fairly low tech, so it was fairly simple to get the hang of. I enjoyed the process because I felt like I got to know all the ins and outs of the space, and what is actually being grown and where. I learned (embarrassingly) for the first time what some plants and trees looked like while growing, not just the final harvest. We ended up being there for more than three hours, just to make sure we got everything, and that everyone knew how to properly map. Although it’s no surprise that my biggest takeaway was the MACAA conference in Ocean City. Meeting a bunch of other interns for the first time was so much fun!...

At the MACCA tour, I met some of the other interns. This past week has been quite eventful at my internship. From working on multiple different trials and meeting new people here at the Wye REC, to going to OC and touring farmland all around Crisfield. The beginning of last week started with me traveling to the Somerset County Extension office to meet up with my mentors, some of my fellow interns, and many other Extension agents and employees. All of us met there to go on the MACAA tour. I had a lot of fun on this tour and was able to meet many extension agents from all over the state and talk about their different roles and responsibilities. I was also able to meet 6 of the other interns on this tour, and we were able to share our experiences that we've had at our internships. The tour started out with us taking a ride and looking at how saltwater intrusion and sea level rise are heavily negatively impacting the communities and agriculture in the area. We then took a tour of a loc...

  Leon the bunny, who we had brought to an elementary school! Super cute. This week was pretty interesting! Starting on Monday after our weekly connection, April and I went to an elementary school for one of their fun days to introduce her goats and a bunny to the children, allowing them to pet some of the animals and learn a bit more about their life cycles. I was able to help with handling the rabbit and goat. Many kids brought up their own animals at home, especially if they also had a rabbit or goat.  I’ve been doing some tasks in the Cecil County office throughout the week. On Tuesday, I spent some hours cleaning egg incubators from the embryology classes UME provides to kindergarten and 7th-grade classes across the county. Additionally, I counted ribbons from the Breeder’s Fair we had during my first week for inventory purposes. On Wednesday, April helped me with some of the IRB paperwork for my research project, just to make sure I was keeping in line with the guideline...

  Hello from Western Maryland! Raven Herron Hello from Western Maryland! Exciting things have been happening over in Washington County! The last week has been educational, experiential, and extremely exciting! I would like to highlight some of the things I have been able to participate in under the supervision of Mr. Jeff Semler and Dr. Amanda Grev. The image above highlights me, taking notes, and a graduate student at the University of Maryland,  Niraj Suresh, taking measurements on a Jersey calf. We were finishing up some data collection on a study created by Dr. Fabiana De Freitas Cardoso and Jeff Semler with tracking of calves just over 70 days after birth. While I am not working with crunching the data, getting the hands-on experience of moving the claves, taking measurements, and recording data for real research purposes is so fulfilling. The next image, above, is of a large 900+ head dairy farm with a newly built rotary parlor. This farm had an open house to show all of...

It is a giant pile of oyster shells. At MACAA Tour My internship is going really well! I am learning a lot. I have been working on putting together an outline using data from a survey regarding on-farm research. An example of communication last week was when I had to ask quite a few times for clarification regarding the outline and on a different project as well. It was effective because my mentor gave me more direction regarding it. I did notice that email is a preferred communication, which is something that I need to work on getting used to professionally sending emails and utilizing email more. Some takeaways that I have are asking questions, and taking more notes about the things I am learning from my mentors. An example of this is the first time I did bug counts with my mentor Emily. In the first two rows of collards, I had to ask her so many times which worm was which and if something was an egg. It did make it take a little longer but she told me that it was normal because I ha...

Me in front of a huge pile of oyster shells at the MeTompkin Bay Oyster Co. facility. Many of the other interns and I attended the AgFS In-Service and MACAA conference where we took a tour of their aquaponic operations Since my last post I have done more work in the Urban Farming Research Clinic and have been surveying the development of the crops that we are growing. At the beginning of last week, we prepared the field the previous week and planted the pumpkin seeds. Now, the pumpkins plants are already showing from the ground and are continuing to grow rapidly. The sweet corn plants are also following the pumpkins in their rapid growth. Our crops in the high tunnel are growing fast as well. This week I helped my mentor and his colleague put up trellises as support for the tomato plants. In the work at my office it is very important to take pictures and videos of our work on the urban farm and the progress we’ve made. With these pictures and videos, we post on a blog and an Instagram...