Little Portions Farm (LPF) is a nonprofit farm and a division of the Franciscan Friars in Ellicott City, Maryland aimed to help fight hunger and food insecurity in Baltimore Maryland. During the 3-month period Little Portion Farm Harvested and donated 8,670 pounds of produce total as well as 15 whole cows to the partners they have and soup kitchens/ food banks. Little Portions Farm fights hunger in Baltimore by donating all produce grown on the farm to soup kitchens in the inner city, which are cooked into various meals and given to people who may not be able to afford to feed themselves and their families. Little portions farm grows a wide variety of produce such as Tomatoes, Carrots, Cucumbers, Watermelons, Eggs, etc.
As an Intern at LPF, my day-to-day tasks included harvesting weighing, and storage of produce, as well as watering and maintaining beds before during, and after planting. Other tasks include weed-whacking fence repair and pruning tomato plants. My favorite activities were when I would oversee groups of high school kids doing various tasks around the farm. I enjoy being in charge and teaching people how to do things such as harvesting and other tasks they might not be familiar with. I find it interesting when young people who have no background in agriculture do these tasks because everyone works differently and usually has unique reactions to the task at hand. Working with these groups of kids was beneficial because it introduced me to the managerial aspect of Farming and how to manage employees. These tasks and activities during this internship helped me towards my career because they let me gain experience as a farm manager and a taste of what managers do to keep the farm running as well as possible. My favorite project I did during my internship was setting up the “caterpillar tunnels” which are long tunnels that go over four rows and keep a consistent climate for the plants. The caterpillar tents were my favorite project because I had never worked with them before, and I was able to learn how to properly set them up. One thing that I did that I don’t think anyone else did at their internship is planting Paw-Paw trees which are native to Maryland. Another thing, I believe I am the only person who learned how to brand cattle and keep track of livestock.
Little Portion Farm taught me a lot of valuable things throughout my internship about several topics from how to manage employees to row management and irrigation setup and others. Being able to manage harvests and projects was beneficial because it gave me managerial experience on a large-scale farm. The new ways of growing crops and maintaining them such as weaving strings between Cherry Tomato and asparagus plants and using large grow tents will benefit me in my future career in farming by providing more than one way of growing these crops.
