Mike Ribblett

Second Week Progress and Thoughts

Last week and this week were my first official weeks of being a part of this internship. When I first entered the office, I received a tour of the building and I met all of the extension agents and educators that work in the Anne Arundel Office. My typical week consists of office work on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, helping out others who need an extra hand or working on assigned internship work.

Tuesdays and Thursdays you can find myself, my mentor Dave Myers, and volunteer Brian Hufker out on the Anne Arundel Urban Farm Research Clinic. On my first day I was able to take a tour of the Urban Farm and was able to help with my first real task, moving our electric fence. Unfortunately, we needed to do this because of a recent deer problem. It seemed like a group of deer walked up and down every row of the urban farm’s beans and melons eating the weeds. We worked on moving the fence throughout the morning and now the electric fence lines the entire urban farm.

These are photos of myself taken by volunteer Brian Hufker, staking the fiberglass poles into the ground and rolling out the new section of electric wire.

On Thursday, May 29th, Dave and I visited the Central Maryland Research and Education Center (CMREC) in Clarksville Maryland to prepare for a specialty mushroom farming workshop on Monday June 2nd. On this visit, I met with 2 other extension interns, Elizabeth Karides and Veda Sanhai and extension educator Neith Little. During this visit we all prepared substrate for mushrooms to grow on so that we can give away inoculated bags for the workshop participants. Monday June 2nd, rolled around and our mushroom workshop was a success! We had about 10-15 people at CMREC and we had 2 guest speakers. The first speaker was Walker Santos from David’s Highland who spoke on how to fruit, grow, and care for mushrooms. The second guest speaker was Elizabeth Robinson and her partner from The Garden International speaking on mushroom marketing.

From left to right, Dr. Qianwen Lu, Interns Veda Sanhai, Elizabeth Karides and I are making the inoculation bags for sterilization on Thursday May 29th. I am handing an inoculation bag to my mentor Dave Myers to place into the "Bubba Barrel" where the substrate is steamed and sterilized. These are the Mushrooms that Walker Santos of David's Highlands brought in for the specialty mushroom farming workshop. The types of mushrooms are Blue Oyster (Pleurotus ostreatus var. columbinus) and Black Pearl Oysters.

On Wednesday June 4th, my mentor Dave and I spent the afternoon out in the Urban Farm. Since we’ve had some cold weather, we have been outside nearly everyday checking on the seeds and seedlings to check on their growth. We noticed that there were significantly less cantaloupes and watermelon seedlings, so Dave and I spent the afternoon reseeding 4 rows of cantaloupes and 10 rows of watermelons. On Thursday June 5th, I spent the morning outside pulling weeds around the pepper and tomato plants in the high tunnel. In the afternoon Dave and I put together a plan and idea to thrash our malting barley so that we can give our grain away to the local brewery.

From Left to right, Dave took a photo of me after we had reseeded the vegetables. The other 2 photos are of Dave and I's makeshift thrasher system. We put an old crate on top of a wheelbarrow. As we cut the stalks of the Barley we placed them in the crate. We then took turns rubbing the spikes on the bottom of the crate, which has tiny holes on the bottom, so that the awns and glumes would fall through the bottom. The wheelbarrow would collect the glumes which then made it easy to dump all of them into a bag.

Overall, my first 2 weeks have been a new learning experience and adventure filled with meeting new people and traveling to new places. But that is what Extension is all about, It's building on past experiences to create new ones. I did not grow up following the traditional agriculture path of working on farms or with livestock but doing yard work at home setting up my horticulture pathway. I’ve set for myself a goal for learning as much as I can about agriculture and especially urban farming. I’m most excited to learn about the usages of pesticides such as when to apply them, how to apply them, where to apply them, and what they are best used for.