Partner Spotlight: The Ark

The Nashville Food Project staff and our new friend, Butch

By Lilah Abrams, AmeriCorps Member

Butch usually starts lunch with a joke — an evident ritual that manages to draw a number of giggles from individuals throughout the room. Since 2001, Butch, alongside his wife Marilyn, Melanie Smiley, and Anne Carty, has guided the Senior Lunch program at The Ark, creating a regular space to laugh, share, connect, learn and eat.  

These weekly lunches seem to exemplify the core of the Ark’s work in their community: creating a web of care that is fundamentally personal. 

While the organization was officially founded in 2001, their meals programming has roots reaching back to 1995 – led by two volunteers who remain active Meals on Wheels delivery drivers. Dedicated to the goal of “addressing severe gaps in social services and community resources for seniors in South Cheatham County,” The Ark’s programming takes many different forms: hosting weekly a “Senior Lunch” out of Pegram United Methodist Church  providing utility assistance to seniors throughout the community, offering a robust food pantry, and subsidizing “back-to-school” shopping through their thrift store, Noah’s Ark, among other modes of community involvement. 

However, their work of community building – through humor, generosity and hospitality – seems as foundational as much of their programming. The exuberance and warmth of The Ark’s organizing, around and with their meals, embodies much of what The Nashville Food Project holds as a value – “bringing people together” and “cultivating community through food.” In experiencing this, I was reminded of a sentiment I’ve heard repeated here at the Food Project, pulled from words first spoken by Tallu, that imagines a world in which people “have enough to eat and people to eat with.” Experiencing the Senior Lunch at The Ark and their thoughtful, yet incredibly natural ways of creating spaces to explore ‘being together, this sentiment felt brought to life. 

This mother-daughter pair helps with Meals on Wheels deliveries and makes regular appearances at Wednesday Senior Lunch.

Sharing these values and goals, The Nashville Food Project has been partnering with The Ark since 2018, serving about 100 total meals each week for both the Meals on Wheels program and weekly Senior Lunches, cooked in our kitchens. Like the work we seek to do in our spaces, Melanie Smiley, a former director of meals for the local school district, often adds and alters based on what folks have been asking for (usually including some dessert options and homemade drinks gathered from donation), before serving inside the church’s community space or distributing among volunteer drivers. 

It is over these cake slices, glasses of lemonade, and plates of homemade beef stroganoff that The Ark draws people in to gather – forging new connections and nurturing years-long friendships…eating and having people to eat with.

You can learn more about The Ark’s work to create community in Cheatham County on their website.

Growing Together: Highlights of 2021

by Tallahassee May, Director of Growing Together

On a sunny Sunday afternoon in November, the Growing Together farmers hosted a potluck to celebrate the conclusion of the season. Colorful bowls and trays of vegetable curries, Nepali dumplings called momos, roti, and rice pilau, filled the tables and welcomed guests to the garden. 

As a part of The Nashville Food Project’s garden program, Growing Together supports those who came here as refugees and immigrants from Bhutan and Myanmar in their desire to farm. A big part of this work is the facilitation of access to land, resources, training, and markets that otherwise would not be available because of language and cultural barriers. Now in its seventh year, the Growing Together garden is a vibrant community space that provides a safe and beautiful sanctuary for its participants as well as their families and friends. It is always a very special occasion to open the garden to visitors and to commemorate the harvest together.

The Growing Together program is small, but its impact is deep. This year, there were six families farming our one acre of land. More than 20,000 pounds of vegetables were harvested from this green and compact corner of our city. More than 5,000 pounds of that were purchased by The Nashville Food Project from the farmers and then shared with partners and community members who helped distribute to those who otherwise lack access to fresh produce. We are also grateful for the customers who participated in our community supported agriculture (CSA) program. The Growing Together CSA fed 65 households, supplying weekly boxes of familiar Tennessee vegetables as well as the farmers’ cultural foods such as bitter gourd, long beans, and heirloom Nepali mustard.

Here are just a few of our favorite moments from the year:  

• Welcoming volunteers back to the garden! Volunteers play such an important role in our infrastructure and maintenance at the garden site, and it was wonderful to work together again tackling projects.

• Harvesting shiitake mushrooms!  Thanks to a seed money grant from Slow Food Middle Tennessee, we were able to purchase logs and start our shiitake mushroom enterprise this year. Our hope is to have enough in the coming years to offer them in our Veggie Boxes to our CSA customers.  This year was a fun learning adventure, and we picked enough to make some delicious shiitake mushroom salt to share with our guests at the year-end potluck.

• New Partnerships!  This year we worked closely with other organizations and community members who helped facilitate the distribution of fresh produce bags.  We have so much admiration for the work of Nashville Immigrant Center for Empowerment (NICE), Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), Trap Gardens,  Highlands Apartments, and organizers from the Burmese Community, and we appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with them in sharing organically grown and culturally appropriate vegetables to those in need.

• A new onsite walk-in cooler!  This was a game-changer for our program, making our vegetable harvesting much more efficient and improving the quality of our produce.

• Donating vegetables to the Burmese community for their fundraiser. The crisis in Myanmar left many civilians in that country powerless and desperate for resources. The local Burmese community banded together to raise funds for family members there by using Growing Together vegetables to make and sell kimchi.

• This Nashville Scene cover story on our work along with the the work of The Nashville Food Project!

  As Farmer Nar says: “The garden is a memory of home.  I am glad I can work and make money here, but most important to me is how it makes me feel.  I can be true to who I am when I am in the garden.”

Thank you to everyone who supported Growing Together this year!

Tips from the Kitchen: Butternut Squash

It’s okay to admit a love-hate relationship with butternut squash. Yes, it can be hard to cut — but, wow, it also can be versatile and delicious! We love that this plentiful fall squash keeps so well in cold storage, and we are grateful to have generous sources who gift us butternut squash such as Cul2vate Farms and Bells Bend Farms.  

Meals Coordinator Sarah Farrell shares a quick and easy(ish) way to cut these hardy, resilient vegetables below, and we include a few favorite recipes too! 

Recipes:
Butternut Squash Pasta Sauce

Skillet Chicken Pot Pie with Butternut Squash

Mushroom, Butternut Squash and Gruyere Tart

Butternut Pumpkin Pie

Butternut squash in cold storage. Thank you, farmers!!

Partner Spotlight: The Village at Glencliff

Photo by Cecelie Eiler

by Annie Slaughter, Food Access Coordinator

In Southeast Nashville twelve micro homes are making a big difference in both the housing and medical fields. The Village at Glencliff is a medical respite community which aims to bring people experiencing homelessness dignified and quality medical care after they have been released from the hospital. While the average stay is 90 days, residents can stay in their program until they are able to secure permanent housing. In addition to medical care, the Village at Glencliff offers their residents homemade, nourishing meals provided by The Nashville Food Project. We share about 85 meals a week with the residents. 

The village, which is located at the Glencliff United Methodist Church, had their groundbreaking in July and hit the ground running in late summer. “We had a COVID program since folks were being put in the old jail. They were literally having to stay in jails because they were unhoused and they had COVID,” said Zoey Caldwell, the organization’s volunteer and program manager. “It was scary, initially, I will be honest. I was so glad not to be a worker on the front lines and then suddenly that is my job. But there was a need and we had to do what it takes a village to be and do and that was to step in where we were needed.”

The Village at Glencliff is the first medical respite community in the country that allows residents to bring a partner and have pets while offering three meals a day and guaranteed, individual housing until a permanent living situation is found. “We want to be the national and even international model of what that grace looks like,” says Caldwell. 

Zoey Caldwell (left), Cecelie Eiler (right)

They also have a rain garden, raised beds, and various medicinal and edible plants around their campus. The gardens, which were designed and implemented with the help of Nashville Foodscapes, were the dream of Cecelie Eiler, the Village’s administrative and data manager. “One thing I realized with my research was that gardening and having access to more hands-on food production, localized food production, has a lot to do with our mental, spiritual and physical healing. Which are all large components of who we are as humans,” Eiler says. 

Photo by Cecelie Eiler

If you would like to help The Village of Glencliff, they offer twice monthly volunteer garden work days as well as volunteer opportunities to provide companionship and skill classes to their residents. “We need people to come and be a friend. That was a big thing, we didn’t want people to come and feel isolated,” Caldwell said. “We want this to be a community.”

Sign up to volunteer here: https://www.villageatglencliff.org/volunteer. 

Q&A with Justin Hiltner, featured musician for our 10th Anniversary Picnic Party

Left to right: Tristan Scroggins, Justin Hiltner, Vickie Vaughn, Brennen Leigh

When banjoist, songwriter, journalist and activist Justin Hiltner recorded a set at our headquarters for the upcoming 10th Anniversary Picnic Party, he took a minute to introduce a new song about “anxiety and growing Old Tennessee melons, called Muskmelons.”

A whole song about growing melons? We were obviously smitten.

To say we have loved working with Justin for this event would be an understatement. Learn more about him below, and don’t miss the streamed show, which will air Sunday, September 26! Reserve your tickets here!

How did you get into playing banjo and songwriting?

I first saw a banjo on TV when I was six years old and told my parents, "That's what I want to do!" Their response, quite reasonable, was, "If you still want to play banjo in a year, we'll get you a banjo." Now here we are, twenty-two years later, and the entire course of life has been altered by the whim of a six-year-old! I recently realized that that first instance of seeing a banjo was actually in "Cotton Patch Gospel" a Broadway musical that was a bluegrass and southern retelling of the gospel story. Quite a fitting origin story, I think!

I really began getting into songwriting in high school, when I was very much into writing and poetry and realized my own writing was lyrical to begin with—perhaps growing up a musician impacted that? haha – and it really blossomed as a primary vehicle for my art and self expression when I moved to Nashville in 2011 and began surrounding myself with other creators and musicmakers who saw songwriting not just as a craft or a livelihood, but as a modern form of literature and a folkway, too.

What has your journey in Nashville been like? We hear you have a new record coming in Fall 2021?

I love living in Nashville and in the South! I grew up in the country in rural central Ohio and Nashville and the surrounding hills really remind me of home—but with a lot more music everywhere you look. I don't know if I'll stay in Nashville forever, but I've found such a bright, diverse, fulfilling community here and I'm so grateful for the artistic and creative communities I've tapped into as well. One of my main goals when I first moved to town was to record and release a truly solo album, and I'm so excited that that debut project is coming before the end of this year. It might not be in the fall now, but very soon. The project is called 1992 and is just me, the banjo, and my sad, gay banjo songs!

We're so thrilled you're a part of this momentous occasion with us and loved hearing that you've been following our mission. Is food security a passion of yours?

Food security and food justice are two huge tentpoles of my personal mission in life and in music! Food security and food justice will be central strategies to responding to the climate crisis in a way that centers Black, Brown, Indigenous, disabled, and Queer communities. Community-based organizations like the Nashville Food Project have an important and vital role to play in those responses. I'm a hobby gardener and farmer and avid birdwatcher myself, so I've always believed so strongly that connecting ourselves and our human communities to our greater ecosystems is how we will right so many of the unjust problems of the modern world. I was so excited to be plugged in with y'all for the Picnic Party, not only because of how my mission in music aligns with the NFP's mission, but because I just truly love gardening, farming, and modern solutions for solving food insecurity and food injustices.

We hear you have a few songs about gardening and/or farming and other issues that sound quite aligned to our work! Can you tell us a bit more about those songs and your inspiration in writing them?

I truly have so many songs about nature, gardening, birds, fruits and vegetables, bumblebees, and just spending time grounded and connected to the natural world. The real problem was choosing which ones to showcase for this event! I love writing about the things I'm most passionate about, and whether I've sat down to expressly write about nature or I just happen to find that's what's pouring out of my pen, I find myself most fulfilled when I'm making art about the natural world and the sheer resplendent, awe-inspiring beauty in her every day, mundane things. I love poets like Mary Oliver and Theodore Rothke who connect such abstract and ethereal concepts and philosophies to concrete creatures and settings and feelings in nature. I try to do the same in my songwriting, whether I'm writing about migrant workers, or using birds as metaphors, or writing about anxiety and growing melons!

We also know you to be an activist and proponent of inclusion in roots music. Can you tell us more about that and the work you've been proud to be part of in that regard?

Being one of very few openly queer folks in bluegrass, I've always had an activist bent to my art and the community that surrounds my creative process. I believe so strongly that roots music and bluegrass are for everyone, regardless of who you are, your identity, background, or where you're from. Taking that central belief into every avenue of my career in bluegrass has been a North star for me while I've navigated the music industry over the past ten years. It's how I'm able to prioritize events and partnerships like this one, because I have a mission in music greater than just, "Make music cause I like to do it." I believe so strongly that we'll only solve all of the pressing injustices of modernity if we each realize we all individually and collectively have a stake in enacting that justice. That's why I keep my activism as present as possible in my music—there's much work to be done, but together we can get that work done!

Okay, Dolly Parton's America. We must know more. Can you tell us about being part of that?

Dolly Parton's America might just be the COOLEST thing I've ever gotten to do! I'm such a huge fan of Dolly, her music, her songwriting, and her artistic ethos, to get to be even a small part of the Peabody Award-winning podcast about her made by one of my all-time favorite podcast and radio hosts, Jad Abumrad – and his amazing co-producer, Shima Oliaee – was a dream come true. That at one point in the episode I appear in they cut directly from my voice to Dolly's saying, "God made everybody just the way they are" – I still get goosebumps and tears well up every time I hear it. DPA gave me the largest audience and microphone I've ever had to date, I appreciate it so much and I still connect with new folks and fans who found me via the podcast every day! So freakin' cool. Dolly if you're out there reading this, love ya.

Reflecting on Summer's Sweet Peas

Katie Scarboro remembers hearing from a parent who was shocked when her child requested fruit rather than chips at the grocery store. The child had tasted grapes or strawberries for the first time during YMCA Fun Company programming. 

“The parent was just floored that the kid had that kind of response,” she says. 

Truth be told though, Katie says she hears similar stories often as Anti-Hunger Initiatives Director at the YMCA of Middle Tennessee — especially when it comes to the fruit. 

”They cannot get enough of it,” she says. “You’d have kids come back over and over for fruit salad. And when you have kids who have the world at their fingertips in terms of gummy bears and candy in general and prefer to eat fruit salad? That’s fantastic.” 

While fruit might seem simple, it takes a lot of collaboration to get salads like this one — and other snacks and meals — to the table.

The Nashville Food Project often relies on donations of fruit from partners like Whole Foods Market, Costco, local farmers or generous suppliers such as The Peach Truck. The fruit salads go alongside snacks or meals such as barbecue chicken and roasted vegetables. They’re prepared, packaged and delivered to 16 meal partners (such as YMCA Fun Company) for Sweet Peas, a summer program sharing healthful meals with kids during the critical months when school is out. Also critical, Sweet Peas happens thanks to the generous financial support of sponsor Jackson®, which funded the program to help share more than 18,000 meals this summer!

“In the summer we know the need is so much greater,” Katie says. “We also know that kids get a break from school in the summer, but parents don’t get a break from work during the summer. They still have the same hardships of providing care and food for their kids for the summer as the entire school year. We want to try to bridge that gap as much as we possibly can.”

Fun Company provides all day care through their Summer Adventure Programming, beginning at 6 a.m. and ending at 6 p.m., which gives kids a safe place to be along with a meal or snacks. “It helps the parents not have to worry about rushing home to cook a hot meal or get fast food on the way back,” Katie says. 

This year, the YMCA staff also helped facilitate the new Promising Scholars program, which helps kids catch up on the learning loss that happened during the pandemic and virtual learning. Even still, Katie noted the ongoing and new phase of pandemic life: “We know that things have improved for some and not improved for others— and have gotten drastically worse for other folks.” 

In addition to YMCA Fun Company, Jackson® funding allowed Sweet Peas and TNFP to partner with 15 additional organizations such as Nations Ministry, Preston Taylor, NICE, Project Transformation, Nashville Freedom School and LETS Play. 

In summer months, we thankfully have a range of fresh produce to inspire meals to provide “not just food but good, healthy and whole food,” Katie says.

“It’s really nice to have mixed greens,” she adds. “They start to wonder why there’s a little green stripe or red stripe in this leaf. It opens up a bigger conversation about the world of food.” 

As the Sweet Peas program comes to a close, we reflect with gratitude for the many hands and hearts that funded, fueled and fed this work. 

“We have parents or kids who will say, ‘We just really appreciate this existing and this being there in our community,’” Katie says. “We are really grateful that things like this exist and center around helping us meet the need as the need has been presented. It’s an integral part of the work we’re able to do.” 

Partner Spotlight: Growing Together + Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition

by Tallahassee May, Growing Together Manager

It is morning at the Growing Together garden on Haywood Lane. The forecast looks to be a very hot one, and already the air is heavy with humidity. The farmers harvest for produce deliveries, working a bit faster than usual to beat the midday heat.  

This year the Growing Together program of The Nashville Food Project has expanded its produce outlets to include new partnerships in the city. As part of the Food Project mission to cultivate community and alleviate hunger, the Growing Together farmers now work to grow food that is specific for distribution to communities that otherwise may not have access to fresh, culturally appropriate produce.

On Thursdays we deliver produce to the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), a statewide, immigrant and refugee-led collaboration whose mission is to empower immigrants and refugees throughout Tennessee to develop a unified voice, defend their rights, and create an atmosphere in which they are recognized as positive contributors to the state. Our friends at TIRRC provide many services and community engagement opportunities, including legal services, voter registration, naturalization and paths to citizenship, English language classes, as well as an assistance line, a community garden, and events such as the upcoming InterNASHional Food Series. This is all happens with the vision of lifting up fundamental American freedoms and human rights and building a strong, welcoming, and inclusive Tennessee.  

As a part of their programming, TIRRC now offers free bags of Growing Together produce to its members who are participating in their services and events. “We love this opportunity,” says Arturo Salomon Reyes, Operations Coordinator at TIRRC. “I personally have noticed how helpful this has been with everybody that comes to get their free veggies. I've talked to most of the families that come every week. They tell me how helpful this is for them, especially how some of them sometimes don't have enough money to pay rent and buy food for the week.” 

At The Nashville Food Project we emphasize relationship-building with other nonprofits, communities and organizations who partner with us to share nourishing food.  This happens through our meals, but we also have the opportunity with Growing Together farmers to share fresh produce as well. We are grateful to these partners supporting the work of expanding food access, such as TIRRC and also others including Trap Gardens, Legacy Mission Village, and HIghlands Apartments.

In so many ways, this symbiosis between TIRRC and the Growing Together program encapsulates the many layers of food justice work that The Nashville Food Project supports. With the Growing Together program, participants who arrived to the United States as refugees are supported with land and resources that they would otherwise not have access to. In growing food for local sales and distribution, they have meaningful work for a supplemental income that allows them to contribute in significant ways to their family. In the garden, the farmers have the autonomy to grow food that is both culturally meaningful to them as well as crops that support relationship building with different cultures. This work makes a deep impact across many parts of the community, and encourages and supports marginalized peoples’  participation in the food system.

As Chandra and Tonka wash their freshly dug potatoes, and Lal weighs his cucumbers, we also gather bags of tender green beans, and pints of colorful and juicy cherry tomatoes. Crunchy green bell peppers are added to the bags as we pack. “Coming from a Hispanic family I know how important and how useful vegetables are in our everyday life, “ Arturo tells us later. “I see this same benefit for the families who come every week to get their produce. They always tell me how much we are helping them, so I always make sure to tell them that this wouldn't be possible without The Nashville Food Project and the people who work hard at the farm.”

We are grateful for your partnership, TIRRC!

Growing Together Manager Tallahassee May and Growing Together Coordinator Chris Burke talk with folks at TIRRC’s Welcome Home event.

Meat of the Matter: A Visit with Trusted Protein Partners

by Elizabeth Langgle-Martin, Community Engagement Manager

On a recent Monday afternoon, our Meals Coordinator, Sarah, poured steaming roasted vegetables with ground beef onto beds of rice in restaurant pans to be labeled and sent out the door on a schedule that runs like clockwork—or at least like a well-rehearsed dance. This dish, like those before it, headed for one of The Nashville Food Project’s 34 partners that serve our made-from-scratch meals alongside their programming from homeless outreach efforts to after school offerings and GED classes. 

The ground beef that marries so well with the peppers, onions and tomatoes is part of Porter Road Butcher’s weekly investment of 100 pounds of locally sourced, ethically raised ground beef. 

To learn more, we visited Porter Road Butcher’s shop on Gallatin Road recently. Team member April Caldwell said that PRB’s co-founders (Chris Carter and James Peisker), “believe everyone should have access to delicious, pasture-raised meats and are committed to organizations that are focusing on nourishing our community and the Nashville Food Project does just that.” 

This level of commitment and generosity through the sharing of high-quality goods is an extraordinary gift from a generous industry. Indeed, farms and food producers throughout the Nashville area have consistently supported TNFP with their investments each year to the point that donated and recovered food makes up 19 percent of our organizational budget. Gifts of high-quality, high-value items like animal proteins are the meat (literally) of many of the offerings we are able to extend to our partners and we have the commitment of folks like those at Porter Road Butcher to thank for it. 

So far this year, PRB has already donated 2,700 pounds of ground beef (valued at $8,100 dollars). During my visit, I tasted cheese laden with vegetable ash and took a peek the ivory containers of lard and tallow in coolers, evidence of PRB’s commitment to full animal processing that reduces the waste that happens in mainstream animal harvesting all while yielding versatile, flavorful ingredients for the home cook. April and I chatted next to the smoker behind the building, the rich thick smoke and stacked firewood juxtaposed with sounds of Gallatin Road traffic just steps away.

Similarly, this summer, Tennessee Grass Fed’s generous donation of over 1,000 pounds of all-beef hotdogs meant that we could offer a kid-approved favorite during the peak of summer programming that still met our standard for high-quality, nutrient-dense, flavorful offerings. This summer, TNFP partnered with youth-focused programming and provided over 19,300 meals in just a handful of weeks to meet the nutritional needs of the children our partners serve.

At Tennessee Grass Fed, Phil and Kathy Baggett transitioned family land that has been farmed since 1837 into a grass-fed farming operation in 2007. Located on 422 acres in the Clarksville area, the Baggett family is committed to the health of the land, their animals, and the products they pour into Middle Tennessee communities. 

On a balmy summer morning, I sat in their 100-year-old dairy barn-turned-farm store, packing room, and offices around a residential dining table. Shelves nearby were stocked with sauces, seasonings, honey, and other staples and coolers were filled with rows of meat offerings, primarily their own grass-fed beef cuts but also chicken and pork offered through deep inter-farm connections that Phil and the Baggett family has cultivated with other producers. When Phil spoke about their web of providers, it reminded me of TNFP’s value of Interdependence. This includes items like the honey, sauces, and even eggs that they want to display in the farm store to make a convenient stop for customers where they can source a number of their core groceries. The network of local food providers with which the Baggett’s collaborate means that when Tennessee Grass Fed does well in business, a whole network of local farmers also do well, creating relationships built around mutual success and community. 

Phil spoke enthusiastically about soil health, perennial ground cover, grass varieties, pasture rotation, and a team that cultivates and cares for the cattle with gentle and intentional respect. Other staff members in the packing room awaited customer orders purchased digitally, carefully packaging and labeling items for either home delivery or delivery to one of the farmers markets or freezer drop sites that makes their high-quality products easily accessible to consumers from East Nashville, to Clarksville, all the way to Mt. Juliet and Murfreesboro.

Immediately across from the farm store and packaging facility is a historic home—the one that Phil was born and raised in. He pointed out the four front-facing windows and talked about how it was originally log cabin construction. As our conversation came to a close he told me how to navigate a way out that winds through the property with huge grassy pastures, immaculately tended fencing and crisp black and silver barns. I passed a few cows taking advantage of the ample trees, each looking easily pleased in their own little cool hammocks of shade. 

At The Nashville Food Project, we often dream about a just and sustainable food system, noting that this would require the collective work of many from the work of politicians to farmers to the ordering and recovery practices of restaurants, grocery stores and even to what is featured on individual kitchen tables. The work of PRB and TGF among others reminds us that we can cultivate foods, even animal proteins, in ways that have the potential to be good for the earth, the animals, the producer, and the health of the community.

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Want to get your hands on some goodness?

Tennessee Grass Fed products can be ordered online and delivered to your home or convenient drop spot (think East Nashville Brew Works)! If you are up for a short drive (40 minutes from downtown Nashville) you can even visit the farm, book a tour, and snag products from their on-site farm store!

Porter Road Butcher is centrally located on Gallatin Pike and products can also be ordered online for nationwide delivery. Stop by the butcher shop and chat with their crew to get the insider info on the different cuts and their team’s personal favorites!

Partner Spotlight: Elmahaba Center

When Ashraf Azer arrived in the United States from his native Egypt about 15 years ago, he took a job as a housekeeper at Gaylord Opryland Hotel. He cleaned rooms by day and spent three evenings a week for three years at McGavock High School taking English classes. 

“I was the most annoying one,” he said of his persistence in learning. “I was always asking the teacher.” 

These days, Ashraf works as operation manager in housekeeping at Opryland—and he serves as an interpreter for the Arabic-speaking community gardeners at The Community Farm at Mill Ridge. 

While you can hear multiple languages in our gardens, this is the first year we’ve had the privilege of hosting Arabic-speaking folks, specifically seven gardeners who came to the United States from Egypt and live predominantly in South Nashville. For this new development, we thank Ashraf and the folks at Elmahaba Center, a nonprofit formed two years ago to serve the Arabic-speaking community. Ashraf, a leader in the community, acted as a founding Board member. 

Ashraf says response to the community garden applications took off quickly in his community, which has an agriculturally rich culture of fertile land along the Nile River. “We are very passionate about farming. It’s our history,” he says. 

But in this country few people have access to land for growing their own food. “Not everybody in the Arabic-speaking community owns a house. Most own an apartment. Even the houses don’t have a big backyard,” he says. “It’s something everybody maybe dreams about.” 

Folks also were eager to know, for example, if they could grow culturally significant crops at Mill Ridge like specific greens for Molokhia, a soup many consider the national dish of Egypt with a name that means “vegetable for kings” and dates back to the time of the pharaohs.

“All this stuff is very, very important ingredients in our food,” he says. “The green soup. It’s a big deal.” 

Lydia Yousief, founder and executive director of Elmahaba Center, adds that food sovereignty is crucial for healthy communities. “When there are limited people who are able to own land, that means that the food we are eating—mostly people of color—is given to us. You don’t have much agency when you don’t have land in what you’re putting into your body.” That also translates to less agency over health, mental capacity, community and culture. 

“Having the power to cultivate the land is also mutual,” she says. “I can’t just grow anything in Tennessee. I have to listen to the land as well. Once you do that you become not temporary here.”

Beyond their own tables, Ashraf says growing food provides opportunities to be connected to a place in giving back. “Maybe they like to donate but don’t have the resources to donate,” he says. “But they can donate food.”

Helping people have access to gardens and interpretation is, of course, just one part of the work at Elmahaba Center, whose name means “unconditional love.” Lydia estimates that between 50,000 and 75,000 Arabic speakers live in Nashville but belong to various communities—Egyptian, Iraqi, Yeminis and Syrians—with different cultures and religions. “If our reaction is to further isolate, that’s not gonna save anybody,” she says. So the group holds cross-cultural Community Saturdays to provide goods like clothes or food. Elmahaba also posts educational videos on all manner of topics from COVID-19 to legal advice with hopes to expand more into ESL, citizenship and businesses classes for Arabic speakers. 

In the meantime, The Nashville Food Project will be working to expand and create safe spaces where gardeners of all cultures can continue to grow different but culturally relevant food side by side. As Lydia says, “We are much stronger together than alone.”

To learn more and support Elmahaba Center, visit their website or follow their work on social media.

Addressing Child Poverty Beyond the Pandemic

by Johnisha Levi

Last month I wrote an article for Yes! Media on the American Rescue Plan’s potential to reduce child poverty in the United States. The plan, which was signed into law in March, seeks to uplift American families suffering from the economic impacts of COVID-19 with a series of cash transfers and expansion of benefits. While the focus of the bill is specifically COVID-19 relief, it has potential to have lasting impacts on childhood poverty and hunger in our country.

At The Nashville Food Project, we have long recognized that child hunger is not an isolated problem, but one that is inextricably linked to housing, education, employment and a host of other systemic failures. This is why we work collaboratively with local organizations that provide child and youth poverty-alleviating programming so that we can augment the impact that our work has on children and families in our community. Sharing our nutritious meals and fresh produce supports the essential work that these organizations do every day to help lift children and their families out of poverty. Just look at our Sweet Peas: Summer Meals for Children program, which will provide close to 15,000 meals for children over the next two months, lessening the critical summer nutrition gap for area children and youth who rely on school meals for their daily nutrition.

The benefits that the American Rescue Plan offers to U.S. families have the potential to significantly reduce the child poverty rate in America, giving it great historical context. You can learn more about the bill’s provisions in the Yes! piece and in the excerpt below:

The Center on Social Policy at Columbia University has estimated that the American Rescue Plan will cut the child poverty rate by as much as 56% this year, which will alleviate the suffering of children of all races. The poverty rate for Black, Hispanic and Indigenous children, who are disproportionately impacted by both poverty and COVID-19, would decline by 52%, 45% and 61% percent respectively. However, as the Children’s Defense Fund’s Director of Poverty Policy, Emma Mehrabi, cautions, “Th[is] data will only live up to its projections if families—especially the hardest to reach—know about the benefits [offered through the plan] and can easily access them. So we need to make sure that families and communities on the ground are aware of this program and we need to work aggressively to get them signed up.”

The Plan’s newly liberalized child tax credit, which is a cash transfer that can be spent as parents/guardians determine, has been receiving a lot of media coverage due to its transformational potential. The Plan’s child tax credit is fully refundable, and therefore does not phase out jobless parents nor those with the lowest incomes who pay little to no federal income; it will benefit 93% of the parents of American children, or 69 million people. Prior to the legislation, the poorest 10% of children did not receive any benefit from the child tax credit and approximately 25% received only a partial benefit. Many of the children whose families were excluded from the original tax credit were the children of single parents, Black and Hispanic children, and those who live in rural areas. 

Effectively, parents who receive the child tax credit under the Rescue Plan are getting a small taste of what it would be like to have a guaranteed minimum income to support their children. According to a recent UNICEF report, at least 23 countries  guarantee a minimum income for families with children. A guaranteed minimum income for children not only alleviates poverty in real time; it has also been linked to better health outcomes for children, improved performance in schools, and the ability to earn higher incomes as adults.

The temporary child tax credit is only a start; to have a significant and far-reaching impact, we’d have to make such assistance to families permanent and also combine it with other legislative solutions that address the deep economic and racial disparities in this country.  But we hope that the American Rescue Plan opens doors to a more empathetic manner of addressing poverty in this country—one that treats it as a societal failure rather than an individual moral shortcoming. We owe it to our children to give them a better start in life.

Kale Yeah!

Last week, we posted on social media about a glorious donation of 150 pounds of kale from Harpeth Moon Farm. That’s a mountain of greens! 

But we always love the challenge in stewarding gifts like this by using every part of the vegetable to pack as much tasty nutrition into our meals as possible. It often includes brainstorming by the meals team to think of many ways to use a product—such as whirling greens into juices, folding them into stir-frys or pastas, roasting, braising, pickling, and making stocks with the stems. 

For part of this batch, Contract Meals Coordinator Jake Martin had the idea to make a kale pesto, which could be used in several different applications. We spread it onto French bread for a pizza base, added it to cream sauce for pesto pasta, and transformed it into green goddess for drizzling over veggie grain bowls. 

 Jake came to The Nashville Food Project earlier this year after working with his father Chef Michael Martin of South Fork Catering Co. During the height of the pandemic, the Martin father-son duo supported our meals program by using their time and skills to help us process vegetables when we had no extra hands (a.k.a. volunteers) to help us and as South Fork had fewer events to cater. Creativity comes in many forms—finding smart ways to use vegetables and creative ways to work together too!

Kale Pesto 

2 to 3 cloves garlic
3 cups packed kale (about 1 small bunch)
¾ cup  toasted walnuts 
2 tablespoons lemon juice (about 1 lemon)
¾ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon ground pepper
Red pepper flakes, optional (if you want to add some kick)
¼  extra-virgin olive oil (more if desired)
⅓ cup grated Parmesan cheese

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and whirl until smooth! 

Partner Spotlight: Darrell Hawks of Friends of Mill Ridge Park

As many of you may know, The Nashville Food Project stewards a portion of Mill Ridge Park as the Community Farm at Mill Ridge, as space that currently hosts about 80 community garden participant families that are able to elect from individual plots or communal gardening opportunities! Monthly training in four languages creates spaces for learning and plots hold vibrant patches of green with produce selections reflective of the gardener’s culture, tastes, and preferences. 

Now entering into our third growing season in this incredible space, our partnership with Friends of Mill Ridge Park (FMRP) has been essential in the continued success of TNFP’s efforts to create infrastructure and land access opportunities for folks to grow their own food in the South East Nashville area. If you’ve been out to the farm you will notice rows and rows of carefully tended young fruit trees as you turn off of Old Hickory Boulevard. As we celebrate the ways that our work is intertwined with other types of environmental justice work happening in Nashville, we wanted to invite Friends of Mill Ridge’s Executive Director, Darrell Hawks, to share more about this burgeoning oasis. 

Can you share a little about yourself and your work with Friends of Mill Ridge? 

While completing my MBA at Belmont University, I worked to develop and operate social enterprise employing people after incarceration. Outside of work, I spent much of my time in the outdoors and became more aware of the exclusivity of the outdoors. With motivation to “open the outdoors,” in 2018 I began new work as founding executive director of Friends of Mill Ridge Park. FMRP is an Antioch-based nonprofit with a mission to enhance and advocate for Mill Ridge Park to strengthen the community in Southeast Davidson County. We operate at Mill Ridge Park as an official partner to the Nashville Department of Parks & Recreation. Through our work, we create outdoor experiences (in the areas of education, recreation, and conservation) for people lacking sufficient access to the outdoor and outdoor services. 

For those aren’t familiar with Mill Ridge Park, can you share a little about the space as a whole? 

Mill Ridge Park is 650 acres (mostly undeveloped) of woodlands, grasslands, and historic farmlands. Located in Antioch, off of I24 and nearby Cane Ridge High School, it’s a Nashville Regional Park, soon to be developed with park amenities and facilities to serve our fast-growing community in southeast Davidson County. The masterplan, developed with community involvement, can be seen online. 

I saw that Friends recently celebrated surpassing their 100th fruit tree planted at Mill Ridge Park, not far from the Community Farm that TNFP stewards! Congrats! Can you share how increased fruit tree presence became a priority in the bigger vision for the Mill Ridge green space? 

The orchard, included in the master plan for Mill Ridge Park, creates opportunities for FMRP to engage the community to advance our mission. By involving the coming in the creation and care of the orchard, we generate regular experiences in outdoor education, recreation, and conservation… all while improving the air and water quality and food access in our community. Additionally, the placement of the orchard will serve to buffer the sound of nearby traffic.

What types of trees have been added to the space? Are there varieties you are personally excited about?

There are a variety of apple, pear, plum, persimmon, and cherry trees that make up the orchard currently. I’m excited about the cherry trees and the possibility of pawpaw trees, which I’m learning about from Tennessee natives. 

The Nashville Food Project’s work at the Community Farm at Mill Ridge is intimately connected with the work of Metro Parks and Friends of Mill Ridge among countless other relationships and interdependent efforts. We love examining the way that varied efforts in Nashville intertwine for mutual goals and visions. Can you share some of the folks who have been essential to creating this expanding orchard at Mill Ridge? 

To create and grow the orchard at Mill Ridge Park, we’ve enjoyed partnering with the Cumberland River Compact, Root Nashville, Hands On Nashville, plus a variety of other community and corporate partners. 

When you think about the orchard in 5 and 10 years, how do you imagine the presence of fruit trees will positively impact the space?

The site alone of an orchard signifies a cared-for space, and in this case of a public orchard we have a cared-for community! It’s even more special that it’s community generated! In the coming years, our park will be beautified by the presence of the orchard, blooming and fruiting throughout the seasons. It will bring our community together for the service of pruning and picking, for the learning about conservation, for the celebration of eating and sharing! And it won't end at the park exit; the orchard will serve as inspiration for some to go back to their own, greenspaces to grow and care and share. 

My family and I recently attended Kite Fest hosted by Friends of Mill Ridge! It was wonderful and my toddler is still talking about it! What ways can people connect with Friends upcoming events or volunteer opportunities? 

We share about upcoming activities at Mill Ridge Park at friendsofmillridgepark.org and on our social sites (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter). We also invite the community to share ideas and requests for experiencing Mill Ridge Park. Happening these days, we have outdoor yoga, park meditations, outside cinema, birding and plant walks, and others.

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Speaking of trees, did you catch our Instagram Live conversation with Root Nashville? Tree canopy enthusiast Meg Morgan joined TNFP’s Community Engagement Manager Elizabeth Langgle-Martin to talk all things trees, environmental justice, food access, and our interdependent work for healthy ecosystems, neighborhoods, communities and people. Click HERE to watch and listen.

Recipes That Tell Our Stories: Meg's Overnight French Toast

Senior Meals Coordinator Meg Doster cooked up a special treat for the St. Luke’s Community House Pre-K children recently — her family’s favorite French Toast Bake. Today on the blog, she shares the recipe and a bit about its backstory with us. It’s another example of how food tells our stories like the Dirty Pages recipe storytelling exhibit that hangs on the walls in our Community Dining at The Nashville Food Project headquarters. 

My mom has a million cookbooks. The beautiful cacophony of books and loose-leaf paper are jam-packed like sardines in a skinny cabinet in my parents’ kitchen. She has recipes saved from her mother and her great-aunts scribbled on notecards; recipes printed from Pinterest from women in her bible study; recipes saved from my father’s mother as her memory wanes. The ones that we love have food stains and notes in the margins. Each one represents moments in her life and the people that have shaped and held her, like she shapes and holds our growing family. 

In “The Pot Thickens: Solving Mysteries in the Kitchen,” compiled in the mid-1980s by my hometown junior women's league, you will find our Overnight French Toast. My mom has taken this recipe and elevated it over the years. It is one of those special dishes that we only serve once a year, and it never tastes the same way as when she makes it (I have tried! I don’t have the touch!). She often makes it after our Christmas Eve festivities, which don’t end until well past midnight. I don’t know why we never make it before our Christmas Eve party, but it’s not helpful to ask these questions to your mother when it is 1am and you just hosted 30 people. Nonetheless, this dish is perfect. Years of tweaking to the recipe has yielded one of the principal dishes in our family’s holiday repertoire. It does not feel like Christmas without our ritual of pulling the blender down from the cabinet (probably the only time out of the year we use the blender), cracking the eggs, and doctoring up a maple syrup on the stove. It consists of typical french toast ingredients (eggs, milk, bread, etc.) with the added twist of letting the french toast sit overnight to absorb the liquid. After it bakes, I recommend dusting it with powdered sugar for serving. It also makes for a lovely leftover, warmed in the microwave or eaten cold out of the tupperware.

Week Two: Earth Month Challenge!

by TNFP Sustainability Team

For Week 2 of Earth Month Challenge, we’re taking a look at food waste.

In the United States alone, food waste is estimated at between 30-40 percent of all food produced. Wasted food is the largest contributor of material placed in landfills, which produces approximately 15 percent of all methane emissions. The water, energy, and labor used to produce wasted food could have been directed for other purposes—not to mention the wasted nourishment that could have gone to feed families in need.

Day 8: Understand Your Food Labels

Confusion over date labeling accounts for an estimated 20 percent of consumer food waste. According to the USDA:

A ‘Best if Used By or Before’ date indicates when a product will be of best flavor or quality.  It is not a purchase or safety date.

A ‘Sell-By’ date tells the store how long to display the product for sale for inventory management.  It is not a safety date. 

A ‘Use-By’ date is the last date recommended for the use of the product while at peak quality. It is not a safety date except for when used on infant formula.

A ‘Freeze-By’ date indicates when a product should be frozen to maintain peak quality. It is not a purchase or safety date.

Learn more about food labeling and how to determine if food is safe to eat by clicking HERE.

Day 9: Make a First Use Box for The Refrigerator

An easy way to prevent food going beyond its safety date is to create a designated space in your fridge for foods that you think will be going bad within a few days, and use those items first.

 Day 10: Commit to Composting

Organic waste in landfills generates methane. Composting food waste scraps creates a product that can be used to help improve soils, grow the nutrient rich produce, and improve water quality. We don’t have to have a yard to commit to composting though. We can partner with a local curbside collection program like our friends Compost Nashville who collect residential and commercial food waste. If you are interested in starting your own compost system at home our colleagues at FoodPrint have a great composting 101 to follow HERE.  

 Day 11: Freeze Food Scraps for Stock

Instead of throwing away the tops, bottoms, skins, leaves, stems, or cobs of the vegetables, consider freezing your scraps first to use for a tasty vegetable stock.

Place your vegetables scraps into a gallon-sized freezer bag until it is full. Make sure to press all the air out of the bag before sealing it to avoid freezer burn. It can stay in your freezer for up to six months. When ready to make stock, dump the bag into a pot and fill it with water until the scraps start to float. Add herbs and seasoning to taste. Cover the pot and bring the water to a boil, then let it simmer uncovered for about an hour. Strain and keep or use the liquid. There you have it, delicious homemade stock. The remaining strained vegetable scraps can be composted. Enjoy your vegetable stock within four days of making it, or freeze it and use within three months.

Day 12: Cook Every Part: Stems, Greens, Seeds

The average amount of food wasted per person every year in the United States is 238 pounds. Another great way to reduce those numbers is by cooking every part of the ingredient. Here are some inspiring tips on how to use the stems, greens, peels, seeds, and fun tips on how to use non-edible parts like egg shells, avocado pits, and citrus seeds. 

Day 13: Try a Food Scrap Recipe

Many food scrap recipes are not only tasty but super-easy to make such as Crispy Potato Peel Chips. The peels are often discarded on potatoes, which is a shame since the peels are the most nutritious part of the potato.

Crispy Potato Peel Chips

Ingredients:
Peelings from two potatoes
Two teaspoons olive oil
Pinch of salt and pepper, or have fun and add a shake on any of your favorite seasoning blends.

 Directions:
Preheat oven to 425 F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper or foil.
Gently toss the peelings with the olive oil. Place in a single layer on the baking sheet, and season away.
Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes or so, watching carefully through the oven door to make sure they don’t get too brown. Remove when they are crispy and serve at once.

 Day 14: Learn How To Increase the Life of Fruit and Veggies

If your veggies start to wilt, that does not mean they are ready for the compost pile. Perk them up by submerging them in cold water. Learn more ways to preserve life in your fruit and veggies from this in-depth guide from our colleagues with the ReduceReuse initiative in Seattle.

A Spirit of Service

Our founder Tallu Schuyler Quinn took the stage recently at Harpeth Hall School to accept the 2020 Alumna Spirit of Service Award. She shared about her journey and our work at The Nashville Food Project including programs like Growing Together.

“What I love about these programs as we think about the spirit of service is that they are built on the strengths of those who participate and not their deficits. I think that's an important and extraordinary way for us to think about poor people. Those of us who haven’t grown up in poverty can often think about poor people as just what they lack. Many of these program participants, while they lack much in life because of an unjust economic system, have incredible strengths, knowledge and experience that contributes something really meaningful in our community. To me that’s such a core tenant in the spirit of service.”

It was a particularly special time, too, as the school’s students and parents also worked that week to raise funds and gather pantry supplies to help keep our kitchens stocked and our community fed. A spirit of service showing up in multiple ways! 

During the drive—as well as one Harpeth Hall hosted in 2020—the Harpeth Hall community pulled together an incredible 2,300 pounds of often-used ingredients including cooking oils, stocks, beans, rice and other highly adaptable and fundamental building blocks to our meals. 

“These ingredients can be used to add substance and nutrition to such a wide variety of dishes and really help take the edge off of our budget,” says Procurement Manager David Frease. “This frees the kitchen up to spend their resources on more fresh, high-quality produce and protein, adding more diversity to the meals they create.” 

David finds some peace after sorting donations at The Nashville Food Project headquarters.

The latest drive also happened toward the end of the cooler months, a particularly lean time for us when the majority of our local farm partners go into hibernation and there aren't as many donations coming into the kitchen.

“The idea of the students rallying behind our cause in such great numbers is really incredible,” David says.

You can hear Tallu’s full speech from Harpeth Hall at the video below. 

Offering a Place of Hope and Joy

Growing Together farmers with their new cooler, a game-changer for their vegetable harvesting.

The Nashville Food Project garden spaces have long been witness to the wisdom, hope and joy of growers who came to the United States from Southeast Asia. In the community gardens and at the Growing Together garden, we have watched Nepali mustard sprout from the soil and tasted a rainbow of heirloom hot peppers lighting up the rows. At community potlucks, we have been treated to gundrek soup and potato paneer curry lovingly made with the fruits of labor on shared garden land.

But this year amidst the everyday fears and economic losses of a pandemic, we also have been witness to the added hardships of our friends who already endured so much by coming to the United States as refugees from countries like Bhutan and Burma (now known as Myanmar). Family members in farming communities have faced COVID diagnoses after working jobs at hotspots such as meat processing facilities. In February, we learned of the military coup and violence erupting in Myanmar, the home country to many garden program participants. (Growing Together farmer Roi, for example, has been sending her Growing Together earnings to a school for the blind in that country terrorized by the coup.) And on American soil, we are seeing racism and violence directed at Asian communities too. Following the Atlanta shooting, Growing Together Manager Tallahasee May posted these words on the Growing Together instagram account: 

“Violence against Asian Americans and BIPOC is not new. During this past year, however, as the Covid 19 pandemic surged and fear mongering and false rhetoric spread through local and federal leadership, we heard that the immigrant, Asian, and Asian American community felt the rise in tension and persecution. Many participants in the Growing Together program told how they feel threatened and vulnerable as they move through their day, and have continued to live in fear.  Unfortunately - again- this is not new.  But it should not and can not continue. It is very much time to call out this racism, to support the work for civil rights, prevention of hate crimes, and for restorative justice initiatives in communities, and for all to speak up against dangerous rhetoric against Asian Americans and descendants. The Growing Together program and @thenashvillefoodproject celebrate and are grateful for the Asian American community and for all the work and support they generously contribute on this path towards food and social justice.”

It is no doubt a heavy time. And yet, we continue to intentionally strive for our garden spaces to provide a safe place of hope and joy—where farmers can feel connected to this soil and to the community around them. We are proud to offer programs where we do not focus on scarcity or lack but rather abundance in harvest and also the abundance these growers bring in their strengths, community connection and deep knowledge.

We thank you for your support of the growers. 

Today we also offer a few additional ways to show support to the local API community. 

• Follow API Middle Tennessee, which offers links to:

  • Sign up for future workshops to help advocate for a safe and just Tennessee for Asian and Pacific Islanders. 

  • Support the families of Atlanta victims. 

  • As well as report any harm happening in our community. 

• Consider training on the positive impacts of bystander intervention.

• Support local immigrant and refugee advocacy groups such as Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, Nation’s Ministry, Nashville International Center for Empowerment and Catholic Charities of Tennessee. 

• Support Asian-owned restaurants. Just a few of our staff favorites include Ate’s Filipino Kitchen, East Side Banh Mi, Thai Esane, Thai Ni Yom and Laovin’ It.

Goodbye (and Thank You), Winter: A Reflection on Finding Beauty Even in the Toughest Seasons

by Julia Baynor, Meals Manager

Ah, the seasons. 

Even in our pandemic year, summer at The Nashville Food Project still managed to show how we receive so much abundance, with piles and piles of vegetables coming through our doors. 

Through donations and sourcing from local farms, we were up to our ears in tomatoes, cucumbers and summer squash. The Tennessee summers are long, and bountiful produce filled our walk-ins until what seemed like October. We look forward to that time again. 

Then summer slipped away and a beautiful fall descended upon us until the constant flux of donations started to dwindle. I found myself calling over to our headquarters kitchen from my office a few blocks away at St. Luke’s Community House, looking to source extra produce for our meals. “We’ve got nothing,” became the common refrain. Winter had started to set in.

Fresh produce is one of the things I love most about my job at TNFP. I will never stop marveling at the natural rainbow housed in our bins: the crimson tipped lettuces, the blushing pinks of crunchy radishes, and the deep, dark violet of beets fill me with inspiration. Turning beautiful produce into delicious meals and sending them out to nourish our community is what I live for, but in the winter, things get a little harder. Produce becomes more scarce, and the items we do get aren’t always the easiest to work with. Butternut squash have tough skins and seeds that must be scraped out. Winter turnips come in with gnarled skin and stringy roots that must be peeled away. Working with winter produce can be arduous and slow, much like working through winter itself.

Around the same time the winter season descended upon us, I started contemplating winter myself. In the book “Wintering,” author Katherine May explores the many characteristics of physical winter but also recognizes the difficulties we as humans experience in our personal winters as well. As I read May’s perspectives about the cyclical nature of our lives and of the seasons, I found myself reflecting on the changes the previous year had wrought at The Nashville Food Project.

The meals team has been harboring a winter of its own. In addition to the psychic hardships and exhaustion of working on the front lines of a pandemic, many meals team members suffered the loss of loved ones over the course of the past year. This winter penetrated the fabric of our team as well as we saw several treasured veterans move on to other endeavors. As last days came and went, so did uncomfortable feelings about what to do next as a team. In a lot of ways it has felt like starting over, building our program from the ground up.

There were days that felt scary and discouraging. A meals team without several foundational members felt like staring into the darkness of winter. I kept going back to lines in “Wintering” which assured me, eventually, things would look up. 

“Over and again, we find that winter offers us liminal spaces to inhabit. Yet we still refuse them. The work of the cold season is to learn to welcome them.”

I realized I had been looking at winter with the wrong perspective. With May’s musings on my mind, I felt my resistance to winter begin to thaw. We hired new team members who came with fresh energies like spring, and I began to feel hope again. With new people come new perspectives, and I look forward to the growth of our program that will come with their ideas. 

I also began to welcome that hardy winter produce into the kitchen with less trepidation by focusing on the potential these scrappy vegetables held to become something delicious. This winter, we received upwards of 600 pounds of butternut squash from a local independent farmer, hundreds of pounds of root vegetables from Bells Bend farm, and, after a little winter storm made their delivery routes impossible, Imperfect Foods filled every shelf of our walk-in with boxes brimming with so-called “ugly” produce. In the darkness and cold of winter we were still able to make trays of colorful root vegetables, slowly roasted in our ovens until the peppery bite faded into sweetness. We made silky, garlicky turnip purees, creamy butternut squash pasta sauces, and peeled away the rough exteriors of “ugly” carrots to use in mirepoix for comforting winter soups. Winter vegetables are the perfect example of taking what is seemingly “nothing” and turning it into so much goodness.

On their way to becoming garlic-mashed turnips to serve alongside Meyer lemon-rosemary chicken.

Winter presents a set of circumstances none of us can control. But it also gives an opportunity to embrace the action of letting go. Winter holds space for all of us to deal with the hard truths of the year that has just passed. And through the sharp lens of winter’s harsh reality, it gives us something else too: the prospect of new beginnings, and with it, the arrival of spring.

As I sit outside with the sun on my face for the first time in what feels like months, I can feel it approaching.

“Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.” -Katherine May

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Radish Tart in an Almond Flour Crust

Adapted from Martha Stewart and Dishing up the Dirt.

Yields 1 x 9 inch tart 

 Almond Flour Crust
2 cups almond flour
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp dried parsley
1/2 tsp salt
pinch of ground black pepper
1/3 cup olive oil 
1 Tbsp + 1 tsp water 

Tart Filling
4 oz goat cheese, room temperature 
8 oz cream cheese, room temperature
1 egg
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
8 oz radishes (watermelon radishes are beautiful!), scrubbed, trimmed and thinly sliced.
2 tsp extra-virgin olive oil

 Instructions: 

1. Place a rack or sheet pan large enough to hold your tart pan in the center of the oven. Preheat the oven to 400F. Grease a 9 inch tart pan with oil. In a large bowl, whisk together the almond flour, garlic, parley, salt and pepper. Stir in the oil and water and mix until well combined. Press the dough into your greased tart pan, making sure the dough goes at least 1 1/4 inches up the sides. Bake until the crust is lightly golden and firm to the touch, about 18 minutes. Let the crust cool to room temp and reduce heat to 375F. 

 2. In a large bowl or the bowl of a food processor, whisk or blend together the goat cheese, cream cheese, thyme and egg. 

3. Using a a spatula, spread the filling evenly over the crust. 

4. Toss the thinly sliced radishes with salt, pepper and olive oil until evenly coated, then layer them over the filling. Sprinkle with flaky sea salt and bake in the oven until the radishes begin to shrivel and the filling is bubbling around the edges, 35-40 minutes. If you notice the crust getting too brown, cover the edges with tin foil. 

5. Let the tart cool for about 15 minutes before slicing and serving. Top with more fresh thyme, or even some balsamic glaze! Enjoy! 

New Seasons, New Phases: An Update Regarding Volunteers

Volunteers with staff in our kitchen pre-pandemic. Photo by Abigail Bobo.

by Christa Bentley,
Interim Co-CEO, Chief Programs Officer

A little over a year ago I was having my first day back after a leisurely maternity leave, mid-February 2020. I remember I spent my first two weeks back working virtually because I wasn’t ready yet to leave my sweet babe, and it was such a challenge. I hated not being in the room with everyone I was working with. Two weeks later, the day after my first scheduled day back at the office, I woke up to news reports of a devastating tornado in Nashville. Two weeks after that we shut down our volunteer program to stop the spread of COVID-19 and here I’ve been at my home office (let’s be honest, it’s my dining room) ever since.

Today I want to share an open look with all of you at where we are right now with our volunteer program. It is wild to even think that we are coming up on almost a year of very few volunteers in our kitchens, gardens, and food trucks. TNFP’s Volunteer Program has been the backbone of our organization since our inception, spurred on by the support we felt from so many during the 2010 Nashville flood. It’s how our community has responded to nearly every significant crisis, by filling our spaces with helping hands to amplify our work. But COVID-19 has been an entirely new crisis for our city and for The Nashville Food Project. We have had to make so many changes to the way we work to nourish our community. And the loss of volunteers has proved one of the biggest differences, requiring a lot more time in the trenches for our small but mighty team: chopping, weeding, and cooking more than we ever have had to do on our own.

 A few months into the pandemic we created a tool we’ve been calling our “phased plan” (the linked plan shows some of the details we’ve included) to help us make decisions about all aspects of our programming, including how many people and volunteers we welcome back into our spaces and when. The plan is broken down into 4 phases (A,B,C,D), and each details a lot of the things our staff were wondering about: work from home, space capacity, in-person meetings, output capacity, on-site protocols, you name it. Our move from each phase is dictated by 4 weeks of consistently decreasing trends in the COVID diagnosis rates in Davidson County (we’re tracking this data available from Mayor Cooper’s office). 

This is a conservative approach. We know this, but we also stand behind it. It has helped us make countless hard decisions and most importantly has kept our programming open. Because our kitchens are tight quarters, it has been vital that we keep exposure down. One positive test in our kitchens might mean an enormous scramble for our meals team and an inability to continue serving meals to our partner organizations, something we are desperately trying not to do with the need for access to food higher than it has ever been.  

While the garden spaces do feel safer, our site capacities mean that we have to work through what is essential for our programming in our decision making, especially as many of the communities that participate in our garden programs have been disproportionately affected by this pandemic. We are constantly asking ourselves “does this keep people (staff and participants) that have to be on site safe” and “does this provide access to healthy food”? We are incredibly lucky to have had very few incidents of exposure in our spaces over the past year and we credit that to procedures that are truly working and staff that are willing to follow protocols even when it often means making their jobs harder.

I am sharing all of this now as we’ve got a little hope in our hearts for the chance to share this work with volunteers once again. As of  Monday March 1st, we have moved into Phase B of our plan after many weeks of decreasing case rates. Additionally, we are starting to get some of our onsite team vaccinated, which has been one of our biggest concerns around introducing additional people into our spaces (especially as uncertainty still remains around the ability to spread the virus even after vaccination). This positive news means that we’re dreaming and working on engaging in this work with all of you once again. While these details will take a little time, I hope this message gives you hope that it is coming.

 This year has given us a lot of time to think about our volunteer programs. Much of our timing in the past was built out of long ago necessity. As we are thinking about the future here are a few of the things that we have been talking about.

1.    We would like volunteers to play an integral role in ensuring that we are using as much donated food as possible, decreasing the amount of food that ends up in the landfill and increasing our ability to batch cook and put things away when there is an abundance.

2.   We would like volunteers to help us grow and maintain our garden sites, working on specific projects at our sites and engaging with the land and history of the land in meaningful ways. 

3.    We would like to increase accessibility to our volunteer times, expanding our hours into nights and weekends and diversifying the people who support this crucial work. 

4.    We would like to reintegrate volunteers into our work safely while also always providing an enjoyable, engaging experience for both volunteers and our dedicated staff. 

We know that the coming months will come with more learning, just as the past year has. We want to thank you all for supporting us through it all, and for helping us learn and evolve. I have always treasured how seriously The Nashville Food Project takes the beginning of our mission statement, “Bringing people together…,” and I can’t wait to bring you all back into this work once again!

Finding Dignity and Power in Food

by Lauren Bailey, Director of Garden Programs

This year, we have all considered the essential worker like never before — the nurse, the grocery clerk, the bus driver. At The Nashville Food Project, we're beyond grateful for the many food chain workers—all those people growing, processing, packing, cooking, delivering food— within our agency and beyond it. COVID-19 has, in some ways, highlighted professions that can often receive little to no recognition. 

This lack of acknowledgement became clear for me, recently, as I was talking with a gardener who works in a meat-packing facility. He talked at length about the stresses of work and the burden of being in a leadership position while being short-staffed and concerned about COVID-19. Then he said something that has stuck with me. He felt like his situation, his struggle was invisible to others. And it’s true, isn’t it? The countless hands that go into making our food system are often unseen. 

As food writer Alicia Kennedy reminded readers recently, we must continue to "write about the realities of the food system and those who labor in it….People will ignore or forget that which is unsettling or upsetting. The stories must be told relentlessly."  So, I’d like to propose a challenge for us. Can you join me in acknowledging and learning about the many hands that are a part of this work and working for a better system? 

• To the farmers who showed us what it takes to make our favorite Thanksgiving dishes happen and who continue to get food to our tables (United Farm Workers)

• And those fighting for fair wages (Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program)

• To the BIPOC farmers like Soul Fire Farm and Sylvanaqua Farms and many others who sharpen our analysis of what it takes to manifest a sustainable and just food system

• To the Indigenous people of the US fighting for food sovereignty

• To those working in meat-packing and other processing facilities that have faced unsafe conditions before and during COVID-19

• To the countless line cooks, service staff, chefs, dishwashers, drivers and grocery store clerks

• We know this is not a comprehensive list. Who is missing?

We share our gratitude and acknowledge you, your labor and your fighting for a better system.

I have recently come to understand just how important it is to point to the larger system we exist in. We, at TNFP, cannot untangle ourselves from this. And at the same time, we are trying to  build, in our corner of the universe, spaces and practices that value people, their experiences and their knowledge. 

This summer, I was harvesting Thai chilis with a few other staff and gardeners for our communal garden produce bags. We all knew this task would take the longest as the small chilis made a tedious task. We could take this on at a slow pace, and this was something that made me curious about the pace of larger commercial operation as many farmworkers are still paid by units harvested versus by the hour. 

When I asked if anyone had any experience harvesting chilis in bulk, a gardener who grew up in Burma/Myanmar said that in his community all the grandmas would come together to harvest chilis so they could talk and laugh and sing together. And that’s an image I’ve seen often in our community gardens, at the Growing Together farm and of our staff working together. It’s an image of dignity. Dignity that comes in cultivating relationships with each other and the Earth, and the dignity and power of growing your own food.

It is time that we complicate the narrative of our food system. Food chain workers and Indigenous land stewards deserve dignity and justice. There are a myriad of solutions and a collective of folks building those out—whether they are fighting for fair wages and safe working conditions, the rematriation and sovereignty of Indigenous lands or shifting power and access to land as is proposed through the Justice for Black Farmers Act. 

I’m on this journey of learning and action, connecting our work with the broader food system. What solutions are you seeing? Whose work would you like to uplift? Will you join me?

Partner Spotlight: Community Care Fellowship

The Nashville Food Project currently shares 80 meals a day with Community Care Fellowship — a new meal partner in 2020 — for the nonprofit’s lunch program, pre-school, and a program that temporarily provides hotel housing during COVID-19 to folks who have previously lived in encampments.

 Community Care Fellowship has a long history in Nashville, and we are thrilled to be in partnership with these folks! We caught up with Executive Director Ryan LaSuer recently to hear more about their mission.

 What particular challenges have you faced with COVID-19?

“The thing I love about Community Care Fellowship is we are so family-oriented and very relationship-oriented. Obviously in the South, hugs as greetings aren’t being done at the same click as prior to COVID,” he said, noting that the numbers of folks they’re able to have in the building has been reduced. While some meals are served indoors alongside other stabilizing services such as hygiene, laundry, mail services -- others are served as grab-and-go out the front door or at temporary hotel housing.

“There are a lot more logistics,” he said. “We’ve had to figure out how to have relationships in a different way and be sure we’re still hearing people and their stories.”

 Many people know of Community Care Fellowship as Ken & Carol’s. Can you tell me a little more about that? 

“If you ask anybody who’s in an encampment or on the streets about Community Care Fellowship, they will call it Ken and Carol’s, because Ken and Carol Powers were some of the original founders and because of the way they built relationships with our guests.”

 Ryan says it was the hospitality of Ken and Carol that started the culture living on at Community Care Fellowship today.

 “We originated downtown at McKendree United Methodist Church. It was in the early 80s, the beginning of individuals experiencing homelessness in Nashville. They used to serve lunch for the working class downtown. It goes back to food, right? Slowly but surely folks came in who couldn’t pay and community members would pay for individuals behind them. It wasn’t the church, it was the community—a neat point about how the community can problem-solve and be part of that solution.”

Image from Community Care Fellowship website.

By the late 80s, Community Care Fellowship had expanded services and moved to East Nashville. While stabilizing services were an early offering of the nonprofit, it also led to developmental services, which helps create pathways through employment and enterprises such as Unlocked, which encourage creativity and teaches women how to manufacture jewelry. CCF also offers pathways to permanent housing through our master lease with Urban Housing Solutions. . 

 “Toxic Charity is one of the most impactful books I’ve ever read. The main point of the book is what does it look like to empower versus enable?” he continued.  “Our stabilizing services go back to Matthew 25: ‘I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me…’ That became the starting point of our stabilizing serves. But then we need to create pathways out. That’s the empower part.” 

 Learn more about Community Care Fellowship here.