Learning as a Collaborative Community

Though the days are short and the winter air is cold, gardeners are planning and training for the growing season ahead.

Wednesday morning we arrived at Hillcrest United Methodist Church and followed the signs to the room where Growing Together winter trainings take place. Esther was the first farmer to arrive -- true to her punctual nature. Esther and her husband Thomas have been in the program since its inception in 2013. Both arrived to the US as refugees from Burma and found a new home in Nashville. Thomas has a background in farming and agriculture from his roots in Burma. Over their time in Nashville he’s shared his knowledge with Esther and she too is now a highly skilled farmer and Growing Together veteran. As each farmer walks through the doors the room becomes a space for learning, sharing, and building.

We are At-Once Both Students and Teachers

At TNFP we believe that every person has wisdom to share and lessons to learn. We can learn from the experiences of others if given the opportunity to listen. This value is foundational to the design of both TNFP’s community garden program and market garden program, Growing Together. Beyond simply providing access to land, these programs facilitate space for knowledge-sharing through regular trainings. From the moment the gardens close in October, TNFP program staff are planning the trainings for Growing Together farmers and community gardeners. These trainings officially began in January for the Growing Together program and the New American community gardens.

Both programs work with community members who originally came to the US as refugees from Burma and Bhutan and who have agrarian backgrounds of varying degrees. For some, they began farming in childhood growing the vegetables that were used in family meals. For others, they grew crops in the hopes of selling them in the markets and to make a living.

Growing Together: Sharing Knowledge for Collective Success 

The Nashville Food Project's agriculture training program Growing Together is designed to expand access and opportunity to people from agrarian backgrounds. Through our program, farmers gain access to land, inputs, seeds and training, and continue to build upon their farming skills and earn supplemental income though the sale of their produce.

You may be wondering -- if the farmers and gardeners have such a deep founded knowledge of farming, why do they need trainings? These trainings aren’t about one “expert” conveying knowledge to a group. Instead, these programs create a multi-generational space for community building and knowledge sharing. Our Growing Together Program Manager, Sally Rausch, shares, “This is a collective project, and part of the training is how people work collectively using the same resources. The trainings offer both opportunities and relationship building so they can be a successful collective.”

Through end-of-season interviews the farmers expressed that they wanted more marketing outlets and to improve their sales. This feedback has been heavily incorporated into this year’s trainings. The trainings will cover topics like marketing outlets, customer preferences, and planning crops so that they will be at peak harvest quality for customers looking for their unique crops. At the most recent training, farmers were asked to share what sold the best at the Richland Farmers’ Market and what items didn’t sell as well. Then they planned out what crops they wanted to sell through the farmers market, Nashville Grown, and through a new CSA program that the farmers are piloting this year. By working together and sharing feedback, farmers are learning how to best plan and sell their crops through individual outlets as well as through their collective outlets as a group.

During the training sessions, the lines of student and teacher are blurred. Each gardener and farmer has a plethora of knowledge to share. After three training sessions Sally mentions “Gosh... I’ve already learned so much from the farmers. It’s my goal to have the trainings be an interactive experiential classroom where we are all learning from each other. I want to get to know the farmers and learn about their perspective and experience because they know how to grow really high quality produce… I think about my job as, ‘How can we integrate that valuable experience into the trainings to go even deeper and support the farmers in being more successful?’”

Community Gardens: Building a Foundation through Past Experiences

TNFP's community garden program facilitates three community garden sites across Nashville, providing access to land, supplies, and ongoing training. There are two New American community gardens, with these spaces held for Bhutanese and Burmese community members of any skill level. These sites begin trainings in January with the growing season kicking off in March. There are two neighborhood community gardens in North Nashville and Wedgewood Houston. These sites start trainings during the growing season with plots open to neighbors.

The New American community garden training is more comprehensive covering topics that all gardeners should know to succeed like what crops grow best in Nashville and when they should be planted. The purpose of these trainings are to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Similarly to the Growing Together program the topics are chosen based on gardner feedback during end of season evaluations and challenges in the previous seasons. Our Community Garden Manager, Kia Brown, explains, “In the past there has been a difficulty in understanding the irrigation system that we use. This year as a planning stage we are going in depth on how the system works, how to fix it, and how to plan crops so that they work best with it.” In this scenario Kia observed that the gardeners’ traditional farming methods did not work with the irrigation system offered last year. To overcome a problem that so many struggled with she has planned an in-depth training on irrigation.

In all TNFP programs there is an opportunity for everyone involved to be both teachers and learners and create a flow of knowledge sharing. Kia shares that she wants to explore the three sisters planting method. In this method each plant has a purpose - corn is used as a trellis for pole beans and squash is planted at the base to reduce weeds. Kia says, “it uses a comprehensive system where everything grows and dies at the right time all while something else is taking place. It’s something I’ve learned from the gardeners and that I am still learning about.”

TNFP garden training programs allow gardeners to expand on the skills they already have and learn from the trial-and-error of others while also gaining the opportunity to be introduced to new farming methods and tools that may bring them success. Garden trainings are a space created for all involved to learn and grow from one another embodying our value of learning. For more information about our garden programs please visit our website.

Learning Together

We often say that food has the power to transform lives, and we see this so clearly in our Growing Together program. Growing Together is The Nashville Food Project’s agricultural micro-enterprise training program. Through it, we work to expand farming access and opportunity to a group of growers who are originally from Burma and Bhutan. Through the program, farmers gain access to land, seeds, training and collective sales outlets, supporting them as they grow food to sell and earn supplemental income for their families.

While food is the tool of Growing Together, education and transformation are the results of the program, for both The Nashville Food Project and the participating farmers. Not only do the farmers learn important skills from our staff, but they learn from each other, and we learn from them! We recently sat down with one of these farmers, Chandra Paudel, to talk about what he has learned and what he has shared with others by participating in this program.

Chandra, like the other Growing Together participants, worked as a farmer in his native country of Bhutan. While he began the program with vast farming knowledge, he tells us that he has enjoyed building upon that knowledge. 

“This year I learned about how to look for pests and control them,” he says, adding that he has also “Continued to build on the bed preparation skills.” 

Growing Together Program Manager Lauren Bailey can attest to that. “Chandra’s plot is meticulous; the time and care that he devotes to tending his plot is unmistakable.” 

Chandra says that in addition to honing his farming skills, he has also learned more about budgeting, record keeping and crop production planning. On one Saturday each month you can see him at the Growing Together booth at the Richland Park Farmers’ Market. There Chandra is able to interact directly with his customers, showing them new types of produce not often grown in Middle Tennessee, while gaining the skills and knowledge necessary to grow for and sell at market. 

Lauren tells us that Chandra manages his household and his plot, while also working as a paid leader of the Growing Together community, giving him added responsibility of upkeep of the common areas on the farm. 

“Chandra shares so much with the community of growers and the staff,” she tells us. Lauren explains that Chandra truly is a leader in his Growing Together community. “He embodies this leadership in his willingness to take on new techniques and apply information that staff share in trainings and meetings. I think of him as an “idea champion”. If staff suggests a certain pest control practice or harvesting tip, he is often the first to positively respond with an eager nod.”

Growing Together is strengthened by Chandra and farmers like him, who enrich the practice by sharing of themselves. The reality of community-shared farmland can often be messy and unpredictable, but this incredible community makes it work with their willingness to learn with us and one another.

Building a Resilient Community

On an unseasonably hot and sunny day in April, I stand in the aisle between two newly shaped beds of a Growing Together farmer. We’ve been spending the last two weeks attempting to till the soil, but have been successfully thwarted by erratic weather that left the earth too wet to till. On this day, we are met with a window of opportunity to finish turning the soil on the remaining beds of farmers. Thomas, a grower originally from Burma, appears in a dress shirt, slacks, and loafers. He hasn’t had time to till his plot as he was balancing a recent acceptance to attend school to learn to become an electrician, along with supporting his family. He explains his circumstance, then rolls up his sleeves and begins to use the tractor to finish tilling his plot, no time to be wasted getting changed.

I watch as he turns over the soil in the hot sun, and think of the other circumstances of the growers in our market garden, considering the complicated decisions and challenges these Growing Together farmers face. For some, this challenge may manifest in the difficulty of acquiring health insurance in an inaccessible system. For others, it may come in the form of taking a citizenship test. No matter the challenge, it always adds to the already great responsibility of being a farmer.

Thomas, working his plots (this time not in dress clothes)

Farming is an art that inherently requires resilience. One must not only learn to be flexible, but also prepared, ready to consider factors ranging from seasonality to weather.  However, the farmers of the Growing Together program demonstrate an unbelievable amount of resilience. Not only must they go through the complicated process of resettlement into a new country (a process that is continuous and ongoing), but they must also strike a delicate balance between their work and family life all the while maintaining a commitment to growing food in a new climate with differing conditions for farming.

The resiliency of the farmers in the Growing Together program has been made readily apparent in the three seasons of the program’s life.Three of the eight growers have been with the program since the beginning, but all of the farmers, regardless of the length of their participation, have shared their personal growth and important life events with the program. We have watched growers celebrate new accomplishments, acquire new jobs, have children, and mourn the passing of a close family member. In my time with the Growing Together program, I’ve learned that while there is a commitment to growing greens or chilies or market skills, there is a greater commitment to growing a community, one that is filled with strength, support, and the perseverance to foster growth. Even when it requires tilling in loafers.

Get to know Thomas and the other Growing Together farmers here.

Food Crosses Cultural Boundaries

It’s a warm day in early October at the Nashville Farmer’s Market, I’m sitting at our table, assisting customers and rearranging the produce as the hours pass. The crowd has just picked up, and I observe some curious onlookers eye the assortment of unique vegetables on our table: from spikey bitter gourds to long, curling beans.

It’s just Thomas Piang and me; Thomas is a farmer originally from Myanmar working in the Growing Together program. We’ve so far spent our time talking about Burma/Myanmar in between helping customers. I curiously ask him about spiritual practices and the environment of his home country, he tells me briefly about the unrest in Burma/Myanmar, touching on military rule and government dysfunction.

We break in conversation as an enthusiastic regular customer approaches our table. Smiling, he shakes Thomas’ hand and looks at our selection before deciding on a bunch of red yardlong beans and bag of arugula. He turns back to Thomas, “So, you’re from Burma, right?” he pauses and looks down, “Ah, I’m so sorry! I meant Myanmar.” Thomas smiles and nods and the two engage in a short conversation. A few minutes later, the customer gathers his things and says goodbye to Thomas, “Well, so glad to see you. Again, thanks for everything”.

Thomas’ story of coming to America, although personally unique, reflects circumstances similar to those of our other farmers. As a program, we predominately work with individuals originally from Bhutan, Burma/Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, countries with histories of civil unrest and ethnic or religious persecution. Although all of the farmers we work with represent unique ethnic and cultural communities, they all share an agrarian background and passion for growing food. However, access to land and resources in an urban area with many neighborhoods relegated as “food deserts” can prove be difficult. 

This is where Growing Together comes into the picture. It is our goal to not only provide technical assistance by offering land and tools for the families we work with, but also to help foster community and ultimately promote food sovereignty in those communities.

Food is culturally universal, and the ability to grow one’s food, and have access to items that are culturally relevant is of incredible importance. Having access to familiar produce can not only help to maintain the strength of cultural communities, especially to those engaged in the ongoing process of resettling in a new country, but it also invites others to learn more about people or cuisine they deem unfamiliar.

I realize now that the interaction between Thomas and the customer at the market was more than just a conversation. Rather, it was a metaphor for what we hope is born out of the Growing Together program: the building of community both within and outside of cultural boundaries. Food is more often than not the catalyst for these interactions, and, in my opinion, nothing breaks the ice better than discussing how to cook komatsuna. 

This article was written by Krysten Cherkaski. Krysten has been with the Nashville Food Project since August 2016 supporting the Growing Together Program. She comes to us from Fresno, California and is currently a Belle H. Bennett fellow with the Scarritt Bennett Center.