EASTON, Pa. — As three teenagers seed catnip, cabbage and beets at a picnic table under a large red umbrella, Mark Reid tends to the small details that make for successful planting.
The cabbage needed shallower indents than the ones 15-year-old Ralph Foss originally planted. So Reid — Easton Urban Farm’s farmer and project manager — asked to look at the boy’s hands before instructing him to go halfway down his fingernail before placing the seed.
- The Easton Urban Farm at the Easton Area Neighborhood Center hosts high school interns every year to learn more about gardening
- Interns get both gardening experience and career skills
- They are taught under project manager and farmer Mark Reid
Layla Brown, 14, learned to garden from her grandmother, whom she calls “Nanny.” Layla seems to love it, despite identifying the dirt under her fingernails as her least favorite part of the job.
It doesn't stop her from a job well done, because just moments earlier she took off her gloves to better plant her beet seeds one by one.
"She was telling me about how they farm here and how there's a giant garden, and how like you kinda get to help your community. And I was like, ‘Oh, I'm interested in that.’”Layla Brown, an intern at the Easton Urban Farm
A budding program
Elijah Walters, 14, says gardening reminds him of his grandfather back home in Jamaica, where they grew apples, star fruit and grapes. Apples were Elijah’s favorite. The catnip seeds eventually need to be covered, so Reid instructs Elijah to brush dirt over them gently, as sunlight will be essential.
All three teens are high school interns at the Easton Urban Farm (EUF) at the Easton Area Neighborhood Center on South Side. The third year of the high school program started last week.
It has averaged four participants a year, but Reid hopes that will grow with the recently approved farm expansion.
Reid says expansion plans for the half-acre plot are going well, with the city having recently sent in assessors to plan the move of a playground inhibiting the farm's growth.
He hopes to have the new section up and running by the end of this planting season, but says that in all likelihood it will take until next year.
According to a brochure for the program, interns earn $200 a week, but all three working there now cited a desire to be outside as a main reason for applying.
“I wanted something to do in the summer.," said Layla. "And [my grandmother] already volunteered here. And so she was telling me about how they farm here and how there's a giant garden, and how like you kinda get to help your community. And I was like, ‘Oh, I'm interested in that.’”
Community resource
The EUF provides produce both for the neighborhood center’s food pantry and for drop-offs in the West Ward, which is what Layla means by helping the community. The microfarm produced upward of 11,000 pounds of fruits, veggies, herbs and flowers in 2022.
When asked what the catnip he was planting was for, Elijah answered, “Well, I was told that it's like an herb and it can be used to make perfume…I didn't [know] either. I was informed not too long ago, because I was wondering.”
Elijah says he thinks he’s too quiet, but Reid says he’s learning quickly. Ralph also is a teen of few words, but he says the weeding is his least favorite part of the internship.
Reid says the teens learn skills in and outside of gardening.
The neighborhood center provides resume and cover-letter classes to the interns, as well as letting them interact with guest speakers, like the Easton Tomato Girl and a beekeeper from Prohibition Honey.
Reid also hopes to add more structure to the internship this season in which returning interns can help teach future students. (The farm also has college interns, whom Reid says serve as a resource for the high schoolers and on this particular day were out delivering produce).
The teens say gardening figures into their future plans in one way or another.
Elijah is interested in potentially being a farmer, though he makes no commitments.
Ralph hopes to continue gardening with his family.
And Layla wants to travel abroad and create an ecosystem garden, where the plants grow close together and help each other grow instead of in separate, if orderly, rows like the ones on the urban farm.
