Have you ever worked on a farm? Most people have not and those who have can tell you that it is usually a lot of work. While that is true, working on a farm proved to be both educational and fun for IAA student, Kia Calloway, who interned at Terp Farm in Upper Marlboro, MD this summer.
Calloway, a second-year student studying Sustainable Agriculture, is interested in becoming a teacher, and she had originally planned to work at Hidden Meadows Camp where she would be working with kids on a farm. She wanted to see if she liked working with kids in the long run. However, when COVID-19 hit, her internship was cancelled and she had to find somewhere else to work for the summer. With some help from her internship advisor, Meredith Epstein, Calloway secured an internship position at the University of Maryland Terp Farm. While she was not prepared for the sudden change, she made the most of her days on the farm.
The change was unexpected, but the timing and her work did not go unnoticed. Epstein commented, “Kia stepped in to help at Terp Farm and the Campus Pantry at a crucial time when they were both short-staffed and experiencing higher demand than ever.”
Calloway peeled garlic, harvested onions, cleaned the barn out, weeded the squash field, cut flowers, and made bouquets. She found bouquet making a unique experience because no bouquet is like the other and each one is special in its own way. Although arranging a bouquet may look easy, Calloway says it is actually a hard task.
In addition to learning to peel garlic and make bouquets, Calloway learned what mixtures to use when cleaning vegetables, and she now knows the names and uses of different farm tools. Admittedly, weeding the squash field was a hot and tedious task that required a bit of creativity to help her and her team get through the day.
"We played fun guessing games to keep our mind off the heat and how much we had to do,” she said. “At some point during the time, we did end up talking to ourselves because the heat got to us bad!"
Even though Calloway was not initially interested in interning at the farm, the experience proved valuable. She learned about the tasks that occurred on a farm and she began to understand the importance that farming and farmers have on our everyday lives. She soon applied things she learned on the farm to her daily life and future plans. When she went to visit her uncle one day, she found herself explaining the do's and don'ts of gardening to her uncle who has a garden. Along with wanting to be a teacher, Calloway wants to start her own business in sustainable agriculture and be able to teach and help her parents grow fresh food so they can have a little garden in their backyard.
"Terp Farm was an experience to remember! There was a lot of hard work involved but it was all worth it in the end," she said.
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