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Click here to see the video In her first year as a professional farmer, Kristin Carbone, 32, quickly learned how to improvise as problems sprang up — sometimes literally — on her two-acre vegetable farm in Upper Marlboro.

Speaking to a dozen other budding farmers who were touring her farm Monday, Carbone said that during the last year, she created a makeshift irrigation system by running hoses from her house to the field, bought a refrigerator on Craigslist after realizing she needed more space to store harvested greens and consulted the Internet to figure out what was killing her arugula plants.

"Getting all the little things in place" was the biggest challenge, Carbone said.

The tour was part of a program that supports new Maryland farmers by pairing them with experienced mentors for one year. The New Farmer Training Program, an initiative run by the Baltimore County-based Maryland Agricultural Resource Council, has paired 11 trainees with mentors since 2008.

Carbone is the first trainee from Prince George's County. There have been no Prince George's County mentors to date, but program director Cathy Tipper said she is hoping to change that as the program expands.

Since April, Carbone has spent one day each week working alongside Jack and Becky Gurley, who for 17 years have run a four-acre vegetable farm in Hereford. The trainees also attend workshops on the business of farming, from crop rotation and pest control to accounting and marketing.

"[The Gurleys] have been really open to us asking a million questions," Carbone said. "It was great to be able to bounce ideas off of them, to learn while doing and experiencing."

The Maryland Department of Agriculture announced Sept. 17 that the program will receive a $25,000 grant to expand. Much of the money will go toward a stipend the program pays trainees as they sort out their finances during the first year, according to Jack Gurley, who helped create the program.

"People are scared away," Gurley said. "A lot of people think you need to be a ‘poor farmer.'"

Beyond the usual financial and logistical challenges faced by most new farmers, Carbone is also beginning her career at a time when the county's agricultural community is trying to stop the steady loss of farmland to development.

The most recent statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that between 2002 and 2007, the number of farms in Prince George's County dropped by 17 percent from 452 to 375, while farm acreage shrank by 19 percent, from about 45,500 acres to 37,000 acres.

Tipper said she is inspired to see younger farmers such as Carbone get started, especially as the existing farming population ages. According to the same USDA survey, the average age of farmers in Prince George's County was about 60 years old.

"We're trying to get more farmers in the state to take over when all these existing farmers retire," Tipper said.

After volunteering at Clagett Farm in Upper Marlboro for one year, Carbone quit her desk job at a nonprofit organization in Arlington in 2006 to work full time at Clagett Farm, before deciding to strike out on her own in 2009.

"I just really enjoyed the process of being outside and working with the land," she said. "I am very concerned about the rapid loss of agricultural land in the county. When I started, there were no developments you could see from [Clagett Farm], and now every direction you turn you see a new housing development."

Carbone rents her farmland and relies on help from volunteers, which has cut down on start-up costs. She sells her vegetables at a farmer's market in Cheverly but makes most of her money through a Community-Supported Agriculture arrangement, or CSA, where clients pay a fixed amount at the start of the season to receive a weekly supply of produce.

This year, Carbone had 26 members in her CSA, who each paid $625 for 22 weeks of fresh produce, which she grows using organic practices. She said she expects to make a small profit and hopes to expand her CSA to include more members next year.

Gurley said he believes small vegetable farms and specialty crop operations, such as vineyards, are the county's best option for preserving agriculture. Small farms require less space than corn or soybean operations, and feed the metropolitan region's desire for locally grown food, he said.

"That's the future of agriculture," Gurley said, pointing to Carbone's field. "You need 2,000 acres of soybeans to pay the bills, and you need five acres of vegetables to make a living. Do the math."

ztillman@gazette.net