Farm to Table, UMD Style
Terp Farm Celebrates 10 Years of Growing Fresh Produce for Campus
By Karen Shih ’09
Photos by Stephanie S. Cordle
On a surprisingly breezy July morning, Laila Wilson ’26 (above) and Ty Stanick ’27 pull red twine along rows of Roma tomatoes, securing the growing plants as their oblong fruits inch toward marinara readiness. Fields of corn sway behind them, and up the hill, former tobacco barns stand starkly white against the blue sky, containing crates of Napa cabbage and fat bulbs of garlic hanging to cure.
Soon, these products will appear on the plates of students in the dining halls as red sauces, pesto-coated chicken and tangy kimchi, all from UMD’s Terp Farm.
Students appreciate knowing where their food comes from, says Wilson, an architecture major with an interest in urban and community farming. “Helping to feed people on campus is really rewarding.”
That’s what Terp Farm has done for 10 years, providing vegetables and herbs to Dining Services for the dining halls, catering services and the Campus Pantry.
Piloted in 2014 with a Sustainability Fund grant, the farm started as a two-acre plot in Upper Marlboro, Md., part of the 210-acre Central Maryland Research and Education Center (CMREC) operated by the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Terp Farm has since expanded to use up to 10 acres each year.
Farm Manager Guy Kilpatric initially tried more than 90 varieties of vegetables, such as peppers, beets, head lettuce and heirloom tomatoes.
“The culinary team was very excited, very complimentary about the quality,” he says. But producing 20 pounds of salad mix was barely enough to supply one of UMD’s three dining halls for even a day. If the goal was to educate students about the source of their food, offering a dish just once a semester wouldn’t register. “How do you message around that?”
Kilpatric realized he had to narrow it down. Today, basil is the farm’s top crop. It grows well during the summer, when the Dining Services team has time to turn it into pesto, and can be stored for use throughout the school year in pasta, sandwiches, roasted dishes and more, labeled clearly as “Terp Farm Pesto.”
Its products have now gained a reputation: When Dining Services ran out of the 15,000 pounds of Terp Farm-supplied tomatoes by mid-October last year and switched to another source, students noticed and wrote in, asking what had changed.
Other main crops are sweet potatoes, winter squashes and daikon radishes, as well as spring mix grown in tunnel-like greenhouses called hoop houses.
Throughout the school year, Kilpatric is the only staff member dedicated to the farm full-time. He collaborates with CMREC staff led by Donald Murphy and relies on partnerships with volunteer groups that come each Saturday, such as the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity, Terps for Change and College Park Scholars. A Do Good Institute grant will support a new cohort of interns to help out this year.
Terp Farm also has four full-time student workers each summer, essential for tasks like hand-planting 5,000 sweet potato vines or building the hoop houses to protect delicate crops. Most are from the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, especially plant science and environmental science and technology majors, including Stanick, an Institute of Applied Agriculture certificate program student.
He’d grown sunflowers and strawberries with his grandmother in their tiny New York City backyard, “but I’ve never had to weed before!” he says. That’s one of the toughest parts of the job, which often starts at 6 or 7 a.m. to beat the heat.
Terp Farm is also used for research, examining rainwater harvesting for urban farms or insect relationships with crops, as well as for classes. Some take place annually, such as “Introduction to Sustainable Agriculture” and “Fruit and Vegetable Technology,” while others do more one-off field trips to learn about nutrient budgeting or use it as a capstone study location.
Kilpatric hopes to expand Terp Farm’s scope with more student employees and greater production, planting crops like rainbow carrots and beets, as well as flowers to sell at the UMD Farmers Market.
“I want the farm to be award-winning, nationally recognized and a model for the really cool campus farm programs out there.”
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