DURHAM — After being plucked from the life of a typical American teenager to pick kiwi fruit on an Israeli kibbutz, Michelle Wallace might be forgiven for eschewing agriculture as a career.
Instead, the Durham County horticulture extension agent says working the land drew her in much as it has the growing number of gardeners and urban farmers across the country in recent years.
Our whole history started with farming, and its a large part of our heritage, even if its somewhere deep, deep down, she says. When you grow up on a farm, people want to forget it, but it finds you.
Cooperative extension, established to bring the knowledge acquired at land-grant universities to the public, is celebrating its 100th anniversary this month, nationally and in North Carolina. Wallace is one of its devoted foot soldiers.
Her job includes educating professionals and the public on topics as varied as pesticide use, landscape design and aquatic weeds, as well as managing a team of 90 volunteer master gardeners who help residents grow plants and food sustainably.
But shes best known in Durham for her work establishing the Briggs Avenue Community Garden, a shared space that opened on donated land in East Durham four years ago.
Wallace has also helped unite a forum of 150 gardening enthusiasts and expanded her offices outreach through more frequent public appearances and the establishment of a blog and hotline for master gardeners.
Shes just this enormous reservoir of knowledge and expertise, in gardening as well as in how to reach out to people, says Jan Little, director of education and public programs at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens, where Wallace regularly conducts classes and other programs. She has developed a really dynamic group of people that assist this community greatly.
Plenty of independence
Wallace, 44, spent the early years of her life in Georgia and Florida, where her father worked as a psychologist and professor. When she was 14, her parents sought to get away from the rat race, she says, by moving to a kibbutz, a type of cooperative village unique to Israel.
She was the only American in a community of 450 people that was run as a pure democracy, with each adult weighing in on matters such as running the farm, providing health care, and maintaining facilities such as roads and the community pool.
It was a tough transition. All the children lived in a home separately from their parents, and she had to start high school in a foreign language. But there were some benefits, including a close relationship with her parents.
We didnt have the normal issues you have with teenagers because theyre all about wanting independence, she says. And we had independence.
Her kibbutz was a top producer of kiwi fruit, and she worked in the fields alongside her father, who continued to practice psychology part time. She picked fruit, pulled weeds and cleared rocks for a few hours a week and for half of each summer during high school.
After graduation, she did military service, required of all Israelis, and national service, which is common for kibbutz residents.
She returned to the United States for college, choosing N.C. State University for its strong programs in both horticulture and landscape architecture.
She earned bachelors and masters degrees and worked an extension agent briefly in Montgomery County between degrees; she loved the job, she says, but not the commute.
So she got a job with a landscape architecture firm in Raleigh and started her own business while her children were small. But when the Durham job came open, she was eager to return to extension work.
Staying flexible
Cooperative extension agents work in all of North Carolinas counties to educate the public on topics ranging from agriculture to health to home economics.
Its a job that requires deep expertise as well as the ability to share that knowledge with all kinds of people.
Wallace regularly consults with landscapers and farmers on problems with plants and organizes information sessions at libraries, schools and businesses across the county.
Every square of desk calendar is filled in with scrawled plans. One day, shes attending a presentation by a student at UNC-Chapel Hill who completed an impact study on Durhams master gardener program. The next day, shes offering pruning advice on muscadine grapes or teaching senior citizens about container gardening.
Flexibility is also key. Last week, a shipment of bees showed up at the garden on short notice, and her day was spent setting them up.
The person who has this kind of job has to be able to go with the flow, she says.
For Wallace, the Briggs Avenue garden also came with the job a huge effort, starting with the initial planning and gathering of community support to get it going.
The land was donated as a conservation trust, so that it cannot be developed. In 2006, Wallace took on the project of figuring out how to use it for the communitys benefit.
Local college students created a survey, and she gathered local leaders and residents to weigh in. Gardens and trails topped the list.
The garden now is made up of a quarter acre of rented 4-by-10-foot plots. Durham Technical Community College maintains a slightly larger plot; a demonstration orchard and vineyard showcase other local crops.
She helped find grants and other funding sources and has worked side by side with volunteers at weekly work sessions to add fences, a shed with a rooftop garden and a well for irrigation.
Her public efforts with the garden have made Wallace a well-known figure not always the case for even the hardest-working extension agents, whose roles are likely to change in the years to come.
The state budget passed last year included significant cuts in salary money for extension agents, and the state office is working on a plan to continue providing its services with fewer people.
Weve been around for 100 years, and we do great things in communities, she says. A lot of times we really work in the shadows to help other people be great.
Know someone who should be Tar Heel of the Week? Contact us at tarheel@newsobserver.com or find Tar Heel of the Week on Facebook.
