When I was six years old, my parents purchased a piece of land in Virginia, and so began my interest in farming. A local dairy farmer invited us to see his operation. He showed us his cows and how the milking operation worked. The best part of the trip was having the opportunity to bottle feed his calves. This was my first experience with farms and animals, and it piqued my interest.
In the Fall of 2019, I started taking classes at the Institute of Applied Agriculture (IAA) at the University of Maryland. I am a second-year student majoring in Agricultural Business Management. During the summer of 2020, I completed my internship at Holiday Memories Farm, which is located in West River, MD. I had previously worked on this farm and the owner, Gary Palmer, was the one who recommended that I should apply to the IAA instead of going to the community college.
When I found out about the internship requirement, Gary was the first person I asked. He was excited to have me complete my internship at his farm because Gary says, “Ryan is very passionate about what he does and is a very hard worker.” I started my internship on March 8 and worked until the end of August. During this time, I worked 8-9 hours a day, 3-4 days a week. Holiday Memories Farm was originally intended as only a Christmas tree farm but expanded to fruits, vegetables, flowers, and chickens and is open year round.
Among the variety of lessons I learned this summer, I experienced all of the day-to-day tasks of owning a farm. You plan to complete one task but end up working on something completely unrelated. Gary always says, “The reason they call it a plan is because it can change.” For example, people were trespassing on the farm, so I was suddenly in charge of installing a wooden gate at the second entrance to the farm.
I was in charge of the soil and fertilizer for the seedlings, which allowed me to apply my knowledge from the IAA’s Soils and Fertilizer class. I selected a mixture of soils and additives to create the potting soil that we used to start all of our vegetable seedlings. The seedlings grew well, and I was exciting to see them go from a seed to being sold at our farm stand.
We planted a “Hope Garden.” This started as an idea and then we made it a reality. The idea was to give people a friendly reminder to have hope in these hard times. We decided on a design with a windmill, flowers, and a sign. The windmill is in the center with sunflowers around it. And then we have our hope sign and then wildflowers in the outer ring around the sign (see picture below).
This summer, I was able to learn about all aspects of running a farm. It is not just about growing crops and raising animals; maintenance and repairs always need to be done. I hope to use this valuable hands-on experience one day when I have my own farm.
