Week One with Extension by Dan Gustitis

My name is Dan Gustitis, and I am interning in the Baltimore City office with Neith Little. I am graduating with my AA in Sociology from CCBC this week, and plan on continuing my education at the University of Maryland Global Campus. Throughout this summer I hope to gain as much knowledge, skills, and experience as possible. 

As I have gravitated more towards agriculture and ecology, I have thought about to possible career paths. I would love to start my own farm, centered around sustainability and setting an example for future generations. Another idea I have been playing around with is a cooperative of community gardens, centered around building relationships, skills, and spaces for communities to grow and flourish together. I believe this internship can help provide a lot of helpful tools for me to at least start a path towards meeting these goals.

I am very excited to get started and this first week has already been very insightful. I have spoken to Neith about our plans for the summer; studying rainwater harvesting and irrigation, and cooperating with food pantries to help stock them. 

On my first day we visited Green Street Academy, a charter school in Baltimore that has a focus on sustainability, and has several agricultural structures, including a greenhouse and hoop house. It was amazing to see, and we sat in on Geoff Rinehart’s lecture on turf grass and opportunities the University of Maryland provides. It was a great experience, and only my first day. 

Image: A multitude of hoop houses at

Strength to Love 2. It was amazing to turn the

corner in the middle of the city to find a thriving

urban farm. 

Later in the week we toured several farms that we will be returning to for various projects. We first visited Hope Garden in Harlem Park where I got to sit down with the farmers and listen to them discuss expectations for harvesting, and what vegetables they will be providing for the market and pantries. Neith explained to me that this was part of Baltimore City’s Adopt-a-lot project, which was never set up for farming, but many folks have taken advantage of it for just that purpose. We then traveled to Strength To Love 2 which was much larger than the first with many hoop houses, already full of crops. This was an interesting place, as they look to hire people who may otherwise be forced out of the job market due to previous incarceration or falling out of the school system. In a place where the education system seems to be failing kids, and crime enforcement is heavier than other places in the state, this seems like a wonderful opportunity to help members of the community get back on their feet. Thirdly, we visited farmer Chippy at Plantation Park Heights. He gave us a tour of the many plots they had working, and had a wonderful energy about what he was doing. It was interesting to see the variety of ways he had come to acquire property. Some leased, some bought, and one plot he mentioned was a vacant lot he just threw some plastic down to kill weeds and started growing on it. 

This was a great first week full of unique experiences, and I am very excited to see what is to come for the rest of the summer.

Image:Farmer Chippy explaining past and future plans for his farm. Behind us is one of (and soon to be two of) his newest hoop houses for extending the growing season.