BY JANE BLOODWORTH ROWE
VIRGINIA BEACH — Terri Belkov thinks some young people spend too much time indoors, and, as agriculture educator at the Virginia Beach Farmers Market, she sees her job as “connecting children to the environment.”
Belkov has led children on tours of gardens, taught them to interact with baby chickens and showed them how rustic chores such as milking cows and shelling corn are performed. She is retiring at the end of the month after a decade of service at the city-run market where Princess Anne and Dam Neck roads meet.
Belkov became involved with the farmers market when, as a Virginia Beach Master Gardener, she worked at the market’s Kitchen Garden, a project of the master gardener program. She started volunteering to help market staff with school tours, and this evolved into part-time and then full-time work. The program now includes tours for elementary schools, pre-schools, daycare centers, churches and other groups.
Belkov also conducted tours for senior citizens, including tourists travelling as part of the Rhodes Scholar senior trips. She also performs some administrative work at the market. But, as Virginia Beach Agriculture Director David Trimmer put it, “Her primary responsibility is as an educator.”
Now, the program offers two-hour “Fun on the Farm” tours to groups that range from schools and daycare centers to churches and Parks and Recreation groups. By 2019, 97 schools had attended Fun on the Farm. Although school field trips were canceled in 2020, some tours were conducted late this year, and Belkov is optimistic about 2022.
Belkov and Master Gardener Mary Hubbard, who helps with the tours, work with the Virginia Beach city schools to assure that the tours align to the Standards of Learning requirements. The children learn about how eggs are hatched, the importance of insects and the significance of crops. They also do arts and crafts, learn how to milk “Beachy” – a life-sized artificial cow, scrub clothes on a scrubbing board and use an antique corn grinder. Each child is given a plant to take home.
To better educate teachers about agriculture, Belkov also facilitated summer workshops conducted by Virginia Agriculture in the Classroom, a statewide program aimed at promoting agricultural education in the schools.
Teaching children to connect with the outdoors and to appreciate how food is grown is her passion, Belkov said. As a child, she spent summer vacations on her grandparents’ farms in Oklahoma and Tennessee.
“My favorite expression is ‘no child left indoors,’” Belkov said. “My generation grew up in trees, but too many children today stay inside and play video games.”
“Our goal with the program is to help children understand that we can’t live a day without agriculture,” said Hubbard, who has worked with Belkov for about seven years. “Terri is focused on keeping the program as hands-on as possible.”
Holding baby chickens or planting seeds is an “eye opener” for the kids, most of whom have never thought about where food or other products come from. Working with children can be exhausting, Belkov concedes, but it also has its humorous moments. She recalls one time when she was showing the children a carrot and teaching them about root vegetables.
“One little boy spoke up and said, ‘Oh, you mean those choking hazards,’” Belkov said. “Apparently his parents or someone had told him not to eat raw carrots because they were a choking hazard.”
After her retirement, Belkov expects to continue volunteering as a master gardener, and she may help to conduct tours as a volunteer. Trimmer said that he hoped to hire a replacement by March, but he hopes Belkov will help with the transition.
“Her love is in it,” Trimmer said.
“I really hope that the Children’s Garden and the Kitchen Garden will be at the market for a long, long time,” Belkov said.
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