He speaks with an Irish accent: “Let me get the little one for ya.” And the man we just met, wearing a white T-shirt, blue jeans, and sporting dark scruff, hops over a wooden fence into the wispy tall grass of the pasture, then glances down where his feet landed. He sees something glinting in the sun, a set of horse blinders and a bug net used to keep critters out of horses’ faces.

“I’ve been looking for those,” he says. “I spent 30 minutes this morning trying to find them.” He deftly picks the items up and places them in his pants pocket.

It’s a warm, late summer afternoon, and I’m holding my 1-year-old daughter, Molly, in my arms as we stand atop a hill, surrounded by farmland, at the Baltimore County Center for Maryland Agriculture. My wife, Jamie, stands next to me with the stroller, and the sturdy Irishman, who later introduces himself as Jim, is off in a nearby field fetching a horse to show our baby. In the distance, four horses, two big and two small ones, are grazing, and when Jim gets about 40 yards away, he whistles to get the smallest’s attention, coaxing the white pony toward us, like he’s walking a dog off leash.

“You’re like the horse whisperer,” Jamie yells to Jim as he gets closer. To me, he looks more like Ray Liotta as “Shoeless” Joe Jackson exiting the cornfields in the famed baseball movie Field of Dreams, with horses in tow instead of the 1919 Chicago Black Sox. The remaining horses, two of them large brown and white thoroughbreds, follow the little one, their tails swooshing with curiosity. “They think I have food,” Jim says with a chuckle.

Molly is doing her amused, curious pointing thing at the biggest one, when Jim tells us about where they came from and what they’re doing here. One, named Tina, is an old racehorse rescued from a kill pen in Pennsylvania. The other big one is a laidback 31-year-old named Doc, who injured a back leg about 18 years ago and was donated by River Valley Ranch, a nonprofit ministry in Manchester, Maryland. Today, they’re used as therapy horses for kids and adults.

As Jim speaks, we look around and see endless forest and clear skies to the north and west, Timonium office buildings to the east across the valley of Interstate 83, and the tops of buildings in Towson to the south. It quickly becomes clear we’re standing on a hidden gem of a property, an oasis on the edge of the city, a place that makes us think, “How did we not know this was here before?”

I start taking notes on my phone. “You’re a writer?” Jim says. “You should write a feature about this place. We’re trying to get the word out.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Of course, Baltimore and the entire state of Maryland has a deep and rich equestrian history. The Preakness has been run in the city for well over a century, and a quick drive from downtown will take you past fields of horse farms soon enough, but the proximity and accessibility of this particular farm—it’s also a county park—with its old racehorses grazing for public view minutes from our own home, took us by surprise.

At 149 acres, the place is roughly the size of 113 football fields in the beautiful Maryland countryside, which Jim says reminds him of the Irish hills in which he was born, and it’s open to the public every day of the year. It’s also much closer and cheaper than a trip to Ireland.

It’s a well-traveled area of Baltimore County—you’ve likely driven past it on your way to the Hunt Valley Mall or Oregon Ridge Nature Center—but we’re not the only ones who have passed the brown, county-styled Agriculture Center sign near the road without thinking twice.

“I think people drive by and think we’re a private business or something,” says Gina Porter, the farm’s manager, who was hired in July. “I want people to know that this is a county park for them paid for by their tax dollars. And we’re open sunrise to sunset every day.”

We had come across the Agriculture Center on the recommendation of a good friend who suggested it as a way to break the pandemic-fueled monotony of endless walks around our neighborhood. (As new parents, we were desperately looking for a socially distanced place to wander around outside between Molly’s naps.) We had never even heard of the place, but our friend told us it was near Oregon Ridge Park, and there were goats. That was about all the incentive we needed.

The day we were there, there couldn’t have been more than a half-dozen people on the property, but fortunately one of them was Jim. After a picnic lunch in the shade of a row of starting-to-turn-fall-color trees, we spotted him leaning against a metal fencepost within eyeshot of the parking lot and what looked like a barn behind him.

“Are we allowed to walk around here?” my wife asked tentatively. “Well, you’re not going to get arrested,” he said. Then he pointed us to a steep hill, over to the right where the horses were roaming today.

His full name is Jim Phelan, and he’s a 48-year-old former jockey (taller than you might think) who was essentially born into the horse industry in Ireland and rode professionally for three decades during a globetrotting career in Ireland, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Australia, and Dubai. He moved to Baltimore 15 years ago to work as an exercise rider to keep the horses in shape at Pimlico Race Course and Laurel Park.

He’s an obviously approachable guy, and that was before we learned he’s also the lead singer and banjo player in the Irish band The ShamRogues, a group he started in 2009. His wife, Katie, a Baltimore-born Irish dancer, is in the band, too. When we ask him what he does at the Agriculture Center, where he’s worked since 2018, he shows some of the charm befitting a frontman and modestly calls himself a “gofer.” His official title is Farm and Livestock Specialist. Along with another staffer and two interns, he tends to and feeds the horses, sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens on the property.

 

“I WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW THIS A COUNTY PARK PAID FOR BY THEIR TAX DOLLARS.”

 

As we chat upon the hill next to a run-down, long white barn that looks like it likely dates well before the turn of the last century, when this land was privately-owned, Phelan starts telling us exactly what goes on here. Yes, you can pull up the driveway, lined by beautiful trees on both sides, park, and simply spend a few good hours wandering the grounds, or you can take part in more deliberate activities like farming or gardening classes.

The first building you’ll see is the welcome center. Admittedly, it does look more like a corporate headquarters than a place for visitors, and it kind of is, as it doubles as an office for several farming agencies, like the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and used to serve as a voting location in election years. It was originally conceived as a one-stop shop for local farmers to get questions answered and do business.

Now it almost feels like a one-stop shop for anyone interested in the outdoors. For a family, you can simply sit outside and have a picnic in a quiet landscape while watching the black and white sheep and goats. For the sustainable-minded looking to grow their own food, there’s an upcoming program for that, too. This spring, says Porter, a University of Maryland graduate who grows her own food at home, the county will start providing some of the Agriculture Center’s farmland to beginning farmers who are interested in a low-cost and low-risk way of getting started.

In a greenhouse near the welcome center, there is already space for rent, “similar to a community garden,” Porter says, where volunteer farmers and county staff have grown organic food that’s donated to the Maryland Food Bank. The American Chestnut Foundation is breeding disease-resistant trees in there, too, to try to help bring back the species from the brink of extinction.

If you’re looking to exercise, there are challenging hiking trails, and off-road bike riders are welcome, one of the few county parks where that is the case. And, broadly speaking, the land is a sanctuary for animals, like the horses and four rescued pigs in two separate pens. Two fell off a truck on I-695, saving them from being bacon, and the other two were found abandoned in a landfill. (We fed those two potbellies a few extra carrots and strawberries left over from our picnic lunch.)

And the horses, whether they know it or not, are paying their rescues forward to kids and adults who visit them. Doc, for instance—he’s one of the horses we saw, the calm-tempered 31-year-old—is part of the Eagala organization, which uses horses in open-air, equine therapy sessions for children dealing with anxiety, depression, or other disorders.

In certain situations, having a sensitive, non-judgmental animal like a horse present can help kids open up to a therapist. Separately, the farm has welcomed schoolkids and foster children from the city and surrounding areas for field trips that expose them to a new environment.

But perhaps the center’s most signature program is its partnership with Saratoga WarHorse, a New York-based nonprofit with a chapter in Baltimore. Founded in 2012 by decorated Vietnam War veteran Bob Nevins, it brings together rescued former racehorses and war veterans, active-duty military, and recently, frontline workers facing COVID-19—who are struggling with conditions like post-traumatic stress—for free, hands-on therapeutic sessions.

Roughly every other Friday, in one of the Agriculture Center’s indoor or outdoor arenas, or pens, Phelan hands a half-dozen naturally skittish horses over to trainer Suzanne Berger and a class of five or six participants for private, confidential sessions over the course of three days.

The abiding philosophy of the program is this: The horses that have been saved and the humans looking for relief have more in common than you may imagine.

Take Tina, who ran two races in her career and finished last both times. After her offspring were equally unsuccessful racing, “she kind of got lost along the way,” Phelan says, and was ultimately saved by a former owner who learned she was bound for slaughter in Mexico.

“They were going to be decommissioned,” says Marc Junkerman, a police lieutenant, Army veteran, and graduate of the WarHorse program, putting the horses’ often near-death post-racing condition in end-of-duty military terms. “They weren’t going to stud.”

 

THE MEETING BETWEEN HORSE AND HUMAN IS DESIGNED TO BUILD TRUST ON BOTH SIDES.

 

When Junkerman went through the program two years ago, he was dealing with a separation from his wife, caregiving for his father who was going through cancer, stresses from work, and was in a bad place, just like the horses once were.

The meeting between horse and human is designed to build trust on both sides. It might start with the horse running wild around the pen—and a few new realizations.

“You’re locked in a pen with a 1,200-pound thoroughbred,” Junkerman says. “I didn’t realize they were that freaking big in real life and run that fast for real.”

The session ideally commences with an especially cathartic moment, a horseman’s handshake: a gentle nuzzle from the big animal. In some cases, it culminates with a participant guiding the horses through a series of tight, reinless figure-eight walks.

Those things only happen if the horse trusts you, if you let it see you and its surroundings long enough to get comfortable, a formidable challenge. A horse is a prey animal, explains Porter, that sees two different sets of images out of each of its eyes, meaning its brain is on extra alert for predators. That’s something that veterans, also on high alert from the battlefield, know all too well and can struggle letting go of in civilian life.

“It’s a forgiveness thing,” says Porter, “that the predator—the veterans, so to speak—can gain the trust of the prey, and that allows them to release some of the trauma they have.”

Junkerman, who now volunteers for the WarHorse program, recalls his experience while sitting on a set of metal bleachers that overlook an outdoor equestrian pen. He says of the property, “This is everything community is supposed to be, where everybody can be themselves and enjoy,” adding that a few licks from a former racehorse named Dun, Dun, Dun—on loan from nearby Sagamore Farm—changed his life.

“I felt something on my hands,” he says, “and I’m like, ‘Are those horse’s lips?’ And at that point, you bond, and you don’t see or hear anything else. It’s therapeutic.”

It’s not an atypical story. “I’ve seen people come here who were suicidal and leave changed,” says Phelan, who describes some veterans leaving in tears.

As he speaks, the big rescued horses behind him, Tina and Doc, and the two smaller ponies, are slowly walking back to the center of the field, suddenly uninterested in us.

It turns out, Jim didn’t have food, and neither did we. And it’s getting close to Molly’s nap time, which means we need to leave this sanctuary behind for now.

But we promise to come back soon, to which Jim says, “Please, anytime.”

There are goats grazing in a meadow in Northeast Baltimore. There’s also a coop full of chickens with names like Scarlet, Rusty, and Lemongrab. And across 10 acres that were once abandoned by the city, there are crops being planted and a natural forest being tended by dedicated stewards and volunteers. This piece of land, spread across Barbara and Parkwood Park, is BLISS Meadows.

The urban green space in Frankford is the brainchild of Atiya Wells (pictured center) who went to the lot to explore the space after noticing it on Google Maps in 2017.

Wells, a pediatric nurse, had grown up with her grandmother’s garden and worked with plants at home. After reading Leah Penniman’s Farming While Black, Wells was inspired to develop the space, which had been abandoned and overgrown for decades, into a place that could enrich and teach the neighborhood through nature.

“The project evolved organically,” she says. “When I found the land, it was initially just to steward the forest. And then, as I was walking, I noticed that [an additional] two and a half acres were vacant as well. I thought, well, we can wrap this all together in one package and create a space for environmental education in the city.”

That environmental education includes urban ecology, farming, animal husbandry, and more, all informed by the community around BLISS, which stands for Baltimore Living In Sustainable Simplicity.

Dr. Rose Brusaferro, (pictured right), the farm’s environmental education programs specialist, says that it’s the engagement aspect—the way they assess neighborhood needs to inform projects, from the building of outdoor classrooms to what crops they put in the ground—that has made BLISS such a success.

“I’m most proud that some things we’ve grown this season, we’ve been able to donate to people who need it the most right now,” says Jordan Bethea, farm manager, (pictured left), with a portion of the farm’s yield going to neighbors and a local community refrigerator. “For me, the most powerful success is delivering [food] to people who are actually going to make use of it, to pare down a small part of their grocery bill, and make sure families are fed.”

The BLISS team is hoping that this space can become a model of what can be done with abandoned lots and homes in Baltimore and beyond.

“I want people to see that neighborhoods, especially predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods, have the power to change their communities for the better,” says Wells, whose work garnered her a lauded fellowship with OSI Baltimore in 2020. “You are the people you’ve been waiting for. Just go out there and do it. If there’s something that you want to change, just start. And eventually the people who you need to reach will find you.”

As the ferris wheel lights flicker off around 9 p.m. and the last visitors head back to their cars with plush prizes, half-empty bags of popcorn, and a day’s worth of memories, 12-year-old Kailyn Donahue’s favorite part of the Maryland State Fair will just be beginning. Although she will have been at the fairgrounds since that morning—giving tours of the animal exhibits, displaying her pastel and pencil drawings, and tending to her goat and sheep—the Baltimore County middle schooler will be wide awake as she leads her lamb, Duffy, back to the Cow Palace for the night.

Surrounded by dozens of other barnyard animals and their teenage caretakers, Kailyn will tuck him into his pen with plenty of fresh water and feed, lock the gate behind her, and drag her cot to where her friends will have made a makeshift slumber party a few feet away. They will stay up whispering until the sun peeks through the slats of the wooden roof, finally falling asleep side-by-side to the snores and snorts of their animals.

A short distance away, Kailyn’s mother, Karen Donahue, will play chaperone and smile as she watches her oldest daughter create the same sort of friendships she made 20-some years ago when she herself exhibited at the fair. Karen’s parents even met there, at the Dairy Judging Pavilion in 1959, and they haven’t missed one of Kailyn’s state fair events since she began showing her animals at 8 years old.

“Most of the families that show animals here have been doing it as long as my family has, so our parents and our grandparents know each other,” says Kailyn, who is the president of the Chestnut Ridge 4-H Club in Cockeysville. “It’s like a little family, and the fair is our reunion.”

Its size and scope have increased since the inaugural festivities more than a century ago, but the rural traditions and family-centric values on which the Maryland State Fair was founded have stood the test of time. While attractions such as deep-fried food, amusement rides, and concert series have been added along the way to draw modern crowds, the fair continues to be a highly anticipated annual celebration of the state’s agricultural community, one that connects generations of Marylanders through its nostalgic spirit.

It all started 140 years ago, in September 1878, when more than 5,000 people flocked to Ridgeley’s Woods near Lutherville-Timonium for a one-day “out-of-door show” for local farmers. Here, they could display and sell their livestock, as well as their fruits, vegetables, and dairy goods, while also connecting with other growers. It was a surprising success, leading a group of local businessmen to turn the one-off into an annual event, and on a crisp autumn day the following year, visitors flooded the fair’s new-and-improved location on York Road, where it still stands today, to browse local livestock, play carnival games, and watch horse racing on the just-constructed half-mile track.

Over the next few decades, the fair flourished as its leaders continued to increase the number of acres and attractions with the goal of making it “the biggest and greatest fair south of New York.” There were a few financial hardships and changes in ownership along the way, but by 1943, when the fair went on a three-year hiatus during World War II, it had already become a beloved tradition for both the city folk, who came to see everything from pig races to husband-calling contests, and the farmers, who spent months preparing their animals for the annual exhibitions. Even former President Dwight D. Eisenhower frequently entered his Black Angus cattle into competitions during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

During the second half of the 20th century, the Maryland State Fair rose to national prominence as new, prestigious, high-stakes animal exhibitions drew entrants from across the country. To this day, young exhibitors travel from near and far to present their prized livestock in its competitive shows run by nationally and internationally renowned judges. After months of sunrise feedings, mucked stalls, and vet visits, it’s an opportunity to showcase their hard work with other 4-H Club members who share the same passion for farm life.

That sentiment rings true for Kailyn, who is a rising eighth grader at Pine Grove Middle School on Old Harford Road. “We live closer to the city, so people from school just don’t understand,” she says. “It’s cool to be able to go somewhere where I can talk with people about my animals and sewing and it’s not weird because they do the same things.”

On top of that, it affords farm families a little holiday. Maryland State Fair president Donna Myers started showing Guernsey cattle some 50 years ago, when she was 8 years old, and remembers the “12 Best Days of Summer” as some of her family’s only time away from their working dairy farm in Montgomery County.

“The fair was our vacation,” says Myers. “We loved to eat fair food, have fun with our friends, and show our animals.” Years later, she and her husband, Jason, raised two daughters on their own 159-acre dairy farm in New Windsor, and this year, during Myers’ first fair as president, their daughter Kelly and their three grandchildren will carry on the family pastime, showing dairy cattle, beef steers, and heifers.

The fair has long acted as a way to unite and celebrate the country’s nascent and lifelong farmers, but fair officials have also recognized a growing gap between visitors and knowledge of state agriculture. As far back as 1973, Board of Directors member George Wills stated, “There is a crisis in farming and agriculture today because people don’t understand it—can’t identify with it.” Fast-forward a few decades, and today’s fair is still facing similar challenges. Although agriculture is the top commercial industry in the state, the number of Maryland farms decreased by the hundreds over the past decade, reflecting a downward trend that has affected some 12,000 farms nationwide.

Myers notes that the average person is a few generations removed from living or working on a farm. With less firsthand knowledge, the fair can act as an important vehicle for informing visitors of the benefits of local food production, such as keeping farmland open and active, preserving rural spaces, and investing in small-town communities. “This next generation isn’t going to have that connection, so it’s our job to show them how it’s done,” says Myers. “They need to understand how vital it is that we continue to provide space for farming and support for local food growers.”

To that end, the Maryland State Fair has continued to increase agricultural awareness and engage a growing number of visitors from nearby cities by expanding its hands-on learning experiences. From interacting with baby ducks to sampling perfectly red strawberries and running their fingers over hand-sewn quilts, fairgoers can learn about agriculture from the farmers and makers who fill the exhibits and pens with their work.

One promising turn of events: The farm-to-table movement has helped the fair and its programming, according to Maryland State Fair CEO Andy Cashman. These days, “people want to know where their food comes from, and it wasn’t like that when I was growing up at the fair,” he says. “People want to be educated about it. They want to know where their food and clothing comes from, how it’s made, and they are more committed to buying and shopping locally.”

Of course, while the animals and exhibitions might have once been the main event, many fairgoers still frequent the end-of-summer celebration for another aspect: the Midway. Since the days when the merry-go-round was one of its main attractions, the Maryland State Fair has entertained guests of all ages with hundreds of games, rides, and fried eats each year. While a few classics have remained for decades—the Ferris wheel, the giant swings, the adjacent Maryland Foods Pavilion—fair leaders spend the months leading up to opening day finding new ways to draw visitors to the fairgrounds.

“The traditional aspects of the fair are very important to us, but we need to keep up with what people want to see and do,” says Cashman. “We’re constantly trying to see what works and what doesn’t work. We go out on the end of a limb and try new things each year without being afraid of change.”

In 1918, that meant dropping 500 letters addressed to fair exhibitors from the sky in its first-ever airmail delivery. Eight years ago, it was a live performance by a shaggy-haired, 16-year-old Justin Bieber. This year, the all-new Live! ON TRACK concert series, featuring rising country artists Chase Bryant and Chris Lane, as well as throwback rock band Smash Mouth, will span four days so visitors can hear live music between spinning on The Cliff Hanger and watching Thoroughbred horses round the now-historic track. Thanks to the 2016 decision by Governor Larry Hogan to start public schools after Labor Day, the fair saw its third-best attendance on record in 2017 with more than 555,800 visitors, and fair officials hope to match or grow that number during this year’s event.

This month, when the gates open on August 23 and the “12 Best Days of Summer” begin again, new and returning visitors will walk the same grounds as generations of fairgoers have before them, gathering to see animals, ride the Ferris wheel, fill their bellies with deep-fried Oreos, and become another page in this next chapter of the fair’s rich history.

Kailyn, Karen, and the rest of the Donahue clan will be in tow, as they have been for the past three generations with their sheep and goats. And of course, Cashman will be there, too, and he knows why they all come back, as he has only missed one fair since he began exhibiting sheep, beef cattle, and pigs in 1969.

“I think it’s Maryland’s biggest family,” he says. “There’s things that you can do and see here that you can’t anywhere else; you can smell and taste and learn what makes this state special. To me, it’s one of the best places in the world.”