My name is Kelly. I was born and raised in Washington, DC.
Then moved to Chicago for school. Now currently living in Baltimore. I have
claimed that I will always and forever be a city girl, but despite this fact I
have become a farmer. Yes you read it right, a farmer. I am currently working
as the farmhand/farm assistant at Great Kids Farm in Catonsville, MD. I have always been passionate about
food policy and food justice after my first college course entitled Discover
Chicago: Food, which turned out to be about the food issues in our society (not
trying all the amazing restaurants Chicago has to offer). In this change of
coursework I found my true calling in my life. –Connecting people to their food-
After
much studying, discussions and readings, I felt that I could only go so far
with what I have read in a book and talked about with fellow classmates.
Learning how to actually grow my own food is what I needed to know before I
could progress any further on solving the issues I see in our Food System today.
Episcopal Service Corps-MD gave me the unique opportunity to allow me to
explore this new knowledge I hoped to gain through a year of discernment in an
intentional community.
Now
I have been the farm assistant for five months and boy how my life changed-in
both the daily happenings as well as what my role is meant to be in fight for
Food Justice. In terms of my daily life, I have transitioned from waking up,
going to Starbucks, reading my coursework and bumming around on Pintrest to
waking up, drinking tea out of one of many mason jars I have accumulated,
arriving to the farm and checking on Goats, watering micro greens, checking on
our seedlings and other vegetables on the farm, dumping compost into the pile,
checking temperatures of our compost and recording them and so much more that I
could have never even anticipated. After five months as a farmer, I think I
have done more different tasks each day than I have ever done my whole life.
Who would’ve thought I would be able to help repair a deer fence? Or deliver
255 bags of soils to different schools? Carry an 80lbs bag of cement? Haul
produce in and out of coolers to be washed then processed? Coordinate garden deliveries to
schools? Work with high school students to get produce into their cafeterias?
And I could keep going on and on.
As you can see my life has become
quite different than I am used to, but this dramatic shift has allowed me to
grow as a person, deepen my understanding of my true passion in life and truly
help me define the role I am meant to play in the fight Food Justice and Great
Kids Farm has done all of this for me. This place has not only taught me how to
grow food, they have shown me how integral our students are in the way we are
changing the way we see food in their cafeterias. Being able to have not only
fresh produce on BCPS salad bars, but also organic and grown by BCPS students
is what truly makes the impact. Our food is so much more than something on our plate;
it has the power to connect students that might never actually meet, by
connecting them through the carrots, beets and cabbages on another student’s
plate. Great Kids knows the importance of this essential relationship and has
been illustrating this every day to me and those students at lunchtime. I now know
and understand that I must strive to be more connected to building that relationship
between students and the farm and I thank the Great Kids Farm staff and
volunteers for helping me discern this for myself.
