Mike Ribblett

“WOOAAH, We’re Halfway There!” -Bon Jovi

This week officially marks the halfway point of the Workforce Development and Leadership Internship. It has been a wonderful opportunity filled with so many new experiences. I’ve met so many different people and got to know so many different people from across the state of Maryland. I’ve traveled to places which I’ve never thought I would go to. One of the best (and nerve racking) parts of this extension internship is meeting and seeing new people. I have always struggled with it but Extension has taught me the skills to handle it. It is amazing to listen to everyone's story about how they came to Extension and their knowledge in their particular field of work. And of course to symbolically celebrate this halfway point the weather has been absolutely brutal this week. Temperatures are at an all time high peaking in the high 90’s with the humidity averaging in the 60% range.

Luckily on Monday June 23rd I was able to work inside helping out with different tasks around the office in the morning as well as having our in-house monthly meeting. Once Dave arrived in the office we did our walk around the farm discussing what needed to get done this week. In the afternoon was our weekly connection meeting and guest lecturer series with guest speaker, Alexander E. Chan.

Tuesday June 24th was a busy day out on the farm. I got started around 9am and picked another round of blackberries. We have 26lbs total! Brian Hufker came at around 1pm and Dave, Brian and I picked more hops. In about an hour and a half we picked 1.75 pounds of hops from the cascade and comet varieties. Since it was pretty hot and humid outside, I stayed inside after we picked the hops and worked on updating and posting to the urban farms instagram page (@aaufrc_urban_farmer).

From left to right. This is what the barley plot looks like after Dave cut strips into the barley and mowed the grass around the farm. Im picking the blackberries from the Ponca, Sweet Ark variety (Photo courtesy of Dave Myers). This is one of the hops that Brian and I picked!

Wednesday June 25th was another hot day on the farm. I went outside when I first got in the office and in the morning to put twine around the tomatoes so that they wouldn’t fall over and wouldn't grow along the ground. They look much better and much healthier now! Since it was too hot in the afternoon I worked on updating our Urban farm blog which can be found here at https://aaufrc.blogspot.com/. It didn’t cool off until around 3pm when a storm rolled in but as we didn’t get rained on Dave and I worked out in the farm hoeing weeds in the vegetable plot.

From left to right, these are before and after pictures of the tomatoes in the vegetable plot after they have been twined. The tomatoes really needed it and they are doing so much better now!

Thursday was an adventure for me! It started as usual out in the urban farm picking another 12lbs of blackberries. We then had some visitors from the University of Maryland, one of whom is a graduate student from Rwanda studying Agriculture Economics for his Ph.D. After we finished our tour, Dave, Brian, and I left to travel to the Wye Research and Education Center where we met with Travis Ford (AgFS agent at Caroline County) and I met with my fellow interns Macy, Shelby and Elise. It was super awesome to visit WREC.

From left to right. This was a picture taken by Brian Hufker of our farm visitors is the morning! As we took our visitors around the farm, we took a detour to the horse paddock where horses are kept for the 4-H club here at the Anne Arundel Office. This is the Bay Bridge, taken on our way to WREC!

Friday was the nicest day this week. The hot weather finally broke so I took advantage of it and went out to the high tunnel to weed around the peppers and tomatoes. I accidently nicked our trip irrigation pipe (the weeds were thick and the pipe is a soft plastic) so Dave came out and taught me how to repair the pipe and how drip irrigation works. I managed to get most of the weeds out of the high tunnel and off the pepper plants which means we should be weed free for a few weeks.

From left to right. Dave is putting the drip irrigation pipes togther after we had to replace the main pipe. This is what the high tunnel loks like after I weeded around each of the Pepper and Tomatoe plants. As I was weeding, I looked up and saw this Tobacco Hornworm munching on a Jalapeno.