Week One with Extension by Alison Layton

I am a rising junior studying food science at the University

of Maryland. I was raised on a farm and have witnessed

the positive effects of extension firsthand. 

My goal for this internship is to learn as much as possible. While I was raised around agriculture, there is so much I still know nothing about. Typically agriculture is lumped together and only viewed as family farms and farmers' markets. This is not the case; it encompasses a broad range of subjects. I intend to use this time and this opportunity to learn as much as possible about all the different things that are encompassed by agriculture. My goals for after college are to go into a field such as food chemistry or research and development of food products. In these fields, I hope to work on getting the most out of the resources we have so that there is as little food waste as possible. I hope this internship will be an opportunity for me to better understand the ag industry as a whole so that I can then use that information to help guide me into what I can do to help with food science specifically.

My internship is at the Dorchester County extension office with Emily Zobel. Throughout this internship, I will be doing a lot of different things. Most prominent and what I find most exciting is that I will be helping with a vegetable study with squash. The study is taking place at the Lower Eastern Shore Research and Education Center. I am excited because this will give me some hands-on research experience.

    Image:  Emily and I went out to check on the 

    vegetable study to see if the squash had come up yet.

Along with this, I will also be doing community outreach help. A major part of this is helping with the podcast Emily puts out with two other extension agents. I’ve already started listening through and fixing transcriptions of these and will later work on editing and working further into the process of making these podcasts. Another thing I have already done for community outreach is helping prepare for an event that we will hold at the public library for kids, where we will teach kids about the lifecycle of a butterfly using pasta to represent the different stages of life.

Image:  Dying pasta with fun colors for an event where we will teach kids about the different stages of life for a butterfly using different pasta shapes.

So far in the week of being here, I have learned so much already about other types of agriculture. I grew up on a grain farm, which is very different from the fruit and vegetable production side of agriculture. Helping out with the Garden Thyme Podcast and looking at what we will be doing with the vegetable study, I have already learned so much about that part of agriculture.