Rebecca Mason

Garden Harvest, Maryland

Garden Harvest is a non-profit, sustainable and organic farm located in Baltimore County, Maryland. Its mission is to provide poor and hungry people with nutritious organic food without harming the environment. In addition to donating all goods and produce harvested on the farm to shelters and organizations who feed many of the hungry citizens of Baltimore City, Garden Harvest also is dedicated to spreading information about the importance of sustainable farming.

My internship responsibilities varied from day to day. As an organization run mainly by volunteers, there were many things that needed to be done; yet not always enough people to do all these tasks. I was in charge of feeding and caring for animals every day, ear tagging animals and sending in registrations to the necessary associations, deciding when to move animals to a new field depending on land and vegetation conditions. Additionally I would lead volunteer groups of adults and children, from 1 person to 120 people, to carry out tasks such as planting, seeding, mulching, and harvesting while trying to impart some knowledge about sustainable and organic farming. After my first couple weeks working I started to give some ideas to my supervisor about how I thought things could run more smoothly and efficiently. She was open to my suggestions and so I began to work on ways to make Garden Harvest better known in order to increase volunteers and donations. I came up with ways to update the website and make it more accessible. I also found groups such as local 4H clubs that could help with a newsletter and animal caring throughout the year so that there would be less stress on the two permanent individuals. I worked on creating a guidebook/handbook for future interns and apprentices with advice about animals, volunteers, and things to look out for like poison ivy, and other information that I thought would be useful. I updated the adopt-an-animal program expanding it to include all animals, and I wrote up biographies and took pictures of each animal. I also wrote down information such as ages and parents of animals to make things easier when it was time to breed, show, or donate. I took on many responsibilities as time went on and near the end of my internship I worked to prepare the farm for the fall and developed a strategy for Garden Harvest to continue to reach its goals and achieve its mission.

One of my main objectives was to help this organization and its cause in any way I could in order to help it fulfill its mission. I feel I definitely played a large role in all that took place on the farm this summer. I had hoped to be able to advance the education program at Garden Harvest and while I didn't exactly achieve my goal of creating an educational outline or pamphlet, I did get a chance to teach volunteers myself. I think I helped bring Garden Harvest up to the point where its next step could be to develop its education program. There were just too many other, more important tasks that needed to be done such as fulfilling grant requirements, bringing documents up to date, learning about animals and their role in sustainable living, and figuring out a method to get dependable volunteers to help maintain the farm, all while growing sufficient and nutritious food to donate to food shelters around the state!

I learned so much while at my internship and much of it I think I will be able to put to use for my senior project. I learned a lot about the use of animals, specifically goats, sheep, pigs and chickens in tending to the land and vegetation. I also learned about how non-profit organizations work and what needs to be done to keep things going. One other thing that I learned a lot about and which I would like to incorporate into my research is the benefits of goats on a farm. Not only are they easier on the environment than cows because they don't tear up the land in their fields, but they need less food and can produce almost the same amount of milk as cows. Additionally, goat's milk is very nutritious and important for many people. Because it has such little lactose in it, most cow's lactose intolerant people have no problem digesting goat's milk. This played a large role in the goat's milk production at Garden Harvest because studies have found that a greater percentage of lactose intolerant people are of African-American descent. The shelters that Garden Harvest donates milk, eggs, and produce to are in Baltimore City where the homeless and hungry population is largely African-American.

For my senior project I would like to research and interview a variety of organic and sustainable farmers, from local family farms to some of the bigger, well known producers of sustainable produce and organic products in the US. I would like to compile information about these farmers' procedures, consumers, daily life, and their view on being a small farmer in the present day; inundated with competition from huge farms that can produce tons of food at a very low cost. I hope to sort the responses and create a presentation, paper or pamphlet for either farmers considering adapting sustainable and organic techniques or consumers looking to see why there is such a huge movement to go organic.

My experiences this summer led me into teaching both farmers and consumers about the organic and sustainable methods used on the farm at Garden Harvest and, in finding out about other farms, I hope to learn for myself about more environmentally conscious techniques. The more I can understand and experience the benefits of sustainable farming, the better chance I will have of instructing and convincing others. If enough producers and consumers became passionate and interested in the future well-being of the environment and the human race, there would be enough power and perseverance to switch to an alternate food production system for the country. If North America sets an example and succeeds, perhaps many other nations will emulate and reap the benefits of a healthier, happier, and sustainable country.