Creating and Sustaining a Local Food Web

by Christina Bentrup, Garden Director

The Nashville Food Project has been proud to call ourselves a full circle organization in the past. We grow, cook and share food in a way where each of our programs nurture and sustain each other and our mission.  However recent events have led me to wonder if we have limited ourselves in speaking this way and if actually what we are growing into is a vibrant and resilient food web. 

We all learned in biology class that food webs are made up of interdependent linkages. No part of a web is too small to not have an oversized effect on the whole web if disrupted or displaced. In the garden program at TNFP we grow thousands of pounds of fresh produce for our meals program, work with over 75 community and market gardeners and engage hundreds of volunteers each month in learning about urban agriculture through doing this work.

Daily, in and around our gardens we compost, raise chickens, provide homes for bees and other pollinators, collect rainwater, plant cover crops to protect and nurture the soil - the list goes on and on. We collectively refer to these aspects of our gardens as ecosystem components. In our controlled environment, our gardens could survive without many of these aspects. But they thrive because each of these parts contributes to a whole that supports and sustains a vibrant farm ecosystem. 

I believe that what is happening in the gardens at TNFP is a microcosm of our larger work. Food webs depend upon producers, consumers and even decomposers - no component exists in isolation or can survive fragmentation. We believe the same is true for Nashville’s food system. The isolation and fragmentation of communities has led to people without enough food to eat and without the social connections to tap into community resources that can help. 
 
TNFP shares meals and gardens because we believe that food has an incredible ability to connect and unite people in deep ways. The non-profit partners we work with every day share our meals to build community in their programs. Our gardens provide places for connection to the land and to diverse community-building activities. Volunteers in all of our programs nurture and support this work and build community with us and each other every time they gather. We are creating and sustaining a vibrant food web that makes connections, supports people and carefully stewards our resources.

Someone told us recently that we needed to work more on connecting the dots in our programs. We have a difficult story to tell and a complex solution to the problems we’ve identified. We need to understand better the root causes of fragmentation and isolation in our communities. We need to find innovative ways to measure the impact of our work and to evaluate and to place value in the links in our food systems.
 
Decades of factory farming that has fragmented food supply chains and destroyed ecosystems have shown that linear efforts to simplify food production don’t work. In our gardens we strive for complexity and resiliency to support an ecosystem based on food production that is connected to our specific places and communities - as does The Nashville Food Project as a whole.

We strive to create and support connectivity, to build resiliency, and to do these things in a framework of justice and anti-racism.  It’s a difficult and complex story to tell but that doesn’t mean we should simplify our efforts. Rather we need to continue to appreciate the thousands of small links joining together to make big change. We cannot do this work alone. We invite you to be a part of our food web, help us share our story, and make the connections that build community through fighting hunger.
 

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.

Reconnecting with Family History Through Food

Today is International Women’s Day, a global day that celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. Beyond that, this year’s theme for this day is #BeBoldForChange, something we at The Nashville Food Project work towards every day using the power of good food.

In honor of International Women’s Day, we are celebrating one of the incredible women we work with in our community gardens. Ifeoma Scott and her husband have been growing in our Wedgewood Neighbors Garden since last year after hearing about it from their friends Jay and former Meals Assistant Makisha, or Kiki as Ifeoma calls her, at Mt. Zion Church.

Ifeoma and her husband

Ifeoma had long been a container gardener, but she wanted a chance to grow in the ground, directly in the dirt. Beyond that, she wanted to be active with other gardeners. “Because of where I live - it’s an urban area - I don’t have the chance to interact with many gardeners. This was my first time interacting with other gardeners besides my uncle who lives in Illinois. It was really important for me to get involved and to see how others grew their food.”

The comradery of growing food was extremely important to Ifeoma. For her, growing food is a family affair so personal connection and gardening go hand in hand. Her great grandfathers were farmers - in Mississippi and Arkansas, and her fraternal grandfather grew plots in his backyard in Illinois, practicing urban gardening before we even had the term.

“For me, it’s not only sustainability, but it’s part of my history. I wish I had [my grandfathers] to ask them questions…Farming is a hard job, but my great grandfather [who farmed in Mississippi] made it look so easy.”

Ifeoma has loved learning more about her family and herself in the garden. “I get to learn, see, be patient. I’ve never been a patient person until I started gardening, but I can’t just make something grow. I have to be patient.”

Since growing in the Wedgewood Neighbors Garden, Ifeoma has reignited a curiosity about all the small things that come together to grow food. “I get excited about seeing animals and things in the garden - insects and worms - and how that really helps the garden and how it functions,” she tells us. Always looking to learn, Ifeoma has become most interested in growing heirloom varieties, and she’s challenged herself to successfully grow lettuce for the first time this year.

She’s also learned about other cultures growing alongside refugee gardeners from Bhutan and Burma. In college, Ifeoma studied international business so she’s always been interested in other cultures, but in the garden she’s had the opportunity to see it all first-hand. “I just like seeing how different people garden and seeing the different plots. How they’re using natural structures to trellis. That type of thing excites me - seeing how people do it differently.”

Ifeoma has enjoyed creating a sustainable food source for herself, her husband and their friends. Now she’s learning to compost and hopes to take on canning next so she can continue to share her garden-grown food with her friends and family.

She says it’s important for people to understand where their food comes from. It can be easy to take for granted the time and effort that so many people put into producing our food.

“You don’t realize how important food is, and people who give their lives to do this. To farm. To give us the food we have on our tables. It means so much more than just putting things in the dirt. It’s the history of my family and what I’ll do for my children someday.”

Want to keep in touch with Ifeoma and what she's growing? Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @Yepshegrewit.

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.

How We Grew in 2016

In 2016, our garden program grew from three garden sites to five, and we became more intentional about the way we use these sites to grow both nourishing food and community. 

In the spring, we partnered with the Center for Refugees and Immigrants of Tennessee to launch the Growing Together market garden program, supporting nine refugee farmers in growing and selling produce through a booth at the Nashville Farmers’ Market, wholesale sales to restaurants and through an online food hub. In the fall, we fully integrated this program and the Refugee Agriculture Partnership Program’s two community gardens into our existing operations.

Through this expansion, we’ve also grown our garden-based adult education program, offering weekly and monthly training opportunities to diverse groups of adults who participate in community and market gardens. 

We began thinking about the program as an urban agriculture program with three distinct types of gardens: production gardens, community gardens and a market garden.

Our staffing reflected growing program needs in 2016. We welcomed Lauren Bailey, previously Director of Agriculture Program at CRIT, as Growing Together (market garden) Manager. Former Garden Coordinator Kia Brown has transitioned into the role of Community Garden Manager to support TNFP’s four community garden sites. Former Garden Manager Christina Bentrup has transitioned to Garden Director to provide long-term leadership of the program. We are currently hiring a Production Garden Manager to provide technical assistance to all gardens and care for ecosystem components.

Celebrating the Summer Harvest

On a recent Saturday the Wedgewood Neighbors Community garden teamed up with the McGruder Green Thumbers Community garden for their Summer Harvest Potluck Celebration. These celebrations are held at the end of each season (spring, summer, and fall) as a way to toast the previous season, share accomplishments, and show other gardeners how they prepare their harvest. 

This season’s event at McGruder celebrated more than just a successful summer growing season. The United Way Family Resource Center welcomed a new lead agency and several new nonprofit partners to better serve its North Nashville community. We opened up the celebration and invited The Nashville Food Project staff, the entire staff at the McGruder Family Resource Center, as well as The Little Pantry that Could participants. 

It was a great way for our community gardeners to welcome the new organizations in the building while also showing off their amazing garden. The grill was hot, the food was flowing, and there were plenty of laughs to go around as people shared picnic tables and stories of either their gardening adventures or humorous attempts

Growing Safe Spaces for Community

When most people think about The Nashville Food Project’s gardens, they think about the food grown for use in the meals that we share in our community. Last year alone, our staff, with the help of hundreds of garden volunteers, harvested more than 4,000 pounds of organic produce from our gardens, all of which was incorporated into tens of thousands of healthy, made-from-scratch meals.

But what many don’t realize is that our gardens are also spaces where several communities are coming together in a common desire to grow good food and get to know one another better. Our gardens truly are their gardens—spaces where families and individuals can build connections with one another in beautiful spaces they can call their own.

We spent some time in the Wedgewood Urban Garden (WUG) the past few days and want to share stories from four different communities who come together there to grow food and deepen relationships, and create spaces of their own:

The Refuge

One Friday morning, we joined families from the Refugee Agricultural Program that we support alongside the Center for Refugees and Immigrants of Tennessee. We met with families from Bhutan and Burma who grow gardens at WUG. Having been displaced from their native countries, creating safe places is critical for these men and women, many of whom come from farming and agrarian backgrounds. Many of these families had never met one another until they began growing food at WUG, but they have now built a community that grows together and shares the fruits of their labor by exchanging vegetables, stories and life!

Volunteer Groups

While many of the refugee families were packing up on Friday morning, a group of religious studies students from Belmont University arrived at WUG to tour the garden and volunteer. Garden intern Nathaniel led the group around the garden beds, telling them about the incredible ecosystem that we have built there, including bees, chickens, pollinators and even goldfish! The students soaked up the information and then came together to pitch in and volunteer. Many remarked how interesting it was to see so many different aspects of urban agriculture - production gardens, community gardens, animal raising - all together in this one small place.

Harvest Hands

On Tuesday morning, the garden welcomed children from Harvest Hands for their weekly garden-based education activities. These activities get the kids engaged in the garden so they can learn about where their food comes from and the importance of making healthy decisions when they eat. This week, all-star food project volunteer Linda Bodfish taught the kids about plant families and how they share similar characteristics while also being different. They learned about kale, chard, lettuce and sorrel and experienced the tastes, textures and smells of these green leafy vegetables. Then they talked about the differences between fruits and vegetables and tasted their way through the lower garden.

Friends Life

As the Harvest Hands children left the garden, our Friends from Friends Life Community pulled in for their regular volunteer time at WUG. Friends Life Community is a nonprofit that serves the needs of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We’ve been lucky to have the Friends join us in the garden each week for service learning activities for years! There our Friends learn about gardening and food, and they help us in growing the food we include in our meals. Earlier this year, we began sharing meals with Friends Life, bringing it full circle for the participants in their programs. Now the Friends love their garden time even more because they get to enjoy all of the fresh food they’ve worked so hard to help grow.

Over the course of just two days, we watched in gratitude as each of these very different groups cultivated their own unique communities within the fences surrounding Wedgewood Urban Garden. We give thanks that these communities can come together in this safe space to learn about food, share cultural experiences and work towards their own goals. We welcome you to our gardens and invite you to do the same…

A February Snapshot of Our Gardens

“We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

It’s starting to look like spring, a favorite time of year for all of us on the garden team. This is a time of year when all of our planning over the winter can finally start taking shape. Here’s a look at what we’re up to in the TNFP gardens this month written by our Garden Manager Christina...

In February in The Nashville Food Project gardens we try to remember that it is still winter. Our garden crop plan for the year has hopefully been made and checked twice. Seeds have been ordered. Machines and tools are clean and tuned. Winter cover crops are growing slowly in the field along with beds of overwintering greens like kale and spinach. Potting soil and other garden supplies are stockpiled waiting for the signal to start planting. We do the essential February tasks of pruning fruit trees and brambles, direct seeding flowers that require cold weather to germinate (poppies and bachelor buttons), check on the bees’ honey stores and, if necessary, feed them. Spring is surely close at hand but we try to remember that we risk doing more damage than good by trying to work soils that are still cold and wet.

We anxiously await the end of the month, when we can start our first seeds in the greenhouse and begin preparing a few beds for our earliest vegetable plantings in March. The first crop we plant outdoors is the onion transplants that we’ve started in our greenhouse the previous November. Onions are soon followed by peas, lettuce and other leafy greens, and root crops that love the cool weather of early spring. By the end of the month, the greenhouse is full of crops that we begin indoors to get a head-start on the growing season - leafy crops like kale and chard and fruiting crops like tomatoes and peppers.

We try hard to follow the garden plan that we made over the winter. We start this garden plan begins with a list of crops that we are excited to grow for our meals program with a rough idea of how many beds should be planted in each. We map out where each crop should go in our permanent bed system and ask whether another crop can be planted in the same space before or after the main crop during our long growing season. We aim to have at least one-fourth of the garden resting at all times in cover crops so that we can maintain productive and healthy soils for many years to come.

This time of year, we love the broadfork - a garden tool that lifts and aerates the soil while maintaining good soil structure. Where we can, we begin to broadfork the beds that will grow our earliest crops  - the lifting and aeration action warms up the cold winter soils and allows them to breathe out excess moisture. Volunteers love the aerobic work-out of it, too.

Another exciting thing happening this month is the start of a new year with all of the community members growing in our gardens! This month we’ve begun meeting with participants in the Middle TN Refugee Agriculture Partnership Program, a group of farmers from Burma and Bhutan, with whom we share our best practices for growing production-focused urban gardens in Nashville. We help them with creating their own garden production plans for growing and selling their vegetable crops to restaurants and at local farmers markets. We’re also recruiting other community members for our neighborhood-based community gardens in North and South Nashville.

And don’t forget about Project Grow! We’ve started planting for our annual subscription vegetable plant sale. Sales will open soon so be on the lookout for emails from us!

This truly is one of our favorite times of the year, a time when we breathe with anticipation, because the busy time is almost upon us.

Check out some of our favorite resources for specific information about growing vegetables in the South:

• Ira Wallace’s excellent Vegetable Gardening in the Southeast with month-by-month checklists of garden activity
• Pam Dawling’s spreadsheet-heavy but full of years of hard-won details book: Sustainable Market Farming, from her experience growing in our same zone in VA.

Growing Together: The Refugee Ag Program

In January, Tennessee gardens tend to offer more frozen patches than green, but growth in the TNFP gardens continues in the cooler months in different ways—with preparation, trainings and relationship building.

At Hillcrest United Methodist Church on a recent Monday, the Nashville Food Project’s Garden Manager Christina Bentrup stood before a group of refugee growers from Bhutan and Nepal to talk about opportunities to sell crops at farmers’ markets and restaurants through the Refugee Agriculture Partnership Program (RAPP). 

Speaking through translator Siddi Rimal, two farmers named Chhabi and Chandra shared their successes selling popular mustard greens at a negotiated price within their community. But beyond learning ways to market and work together—and hearing how the growing seasons differ in Tennessee than their home countries—the trainings help make deeper connections.

“Participants build stronger relationships with each other, with the physical land, with neighbors and members of their community and with other communities through selling their food,” Christina says.

Lauren Bailey, the Agricultural Programs Director at the Center for Refugees and Immigrants of Tennessee, the agency partner on the RAPP program, also participates in the trainings where lessons go beyond the soil.

“Sometimes farmers come to us with other issues that they are facing in life, such as the complicated nature of obtaining citizenship,” she says. “In these moments, we're faced with the opportunity to listen and to find ways to connect and advocate with our farmers. As our relationships grow, our understanding of our farmers' lives grows.”

A few days later at the Woodmont garden at The Nashville Food Project, a group of volunteers sifted compost to make potting soil for starting crops in the greenhouse. 

“See how pretty that is?” said volunteer Linda Bodfish. “It started off as melons and rotten tomatoes.” 

They worked together over a hands-on process that couldn’t be rushed. Among discussion about the compost, they shared stories about family pets, jobs and hometowns. 

“Growing food, even if you and your family are the only ones eating it, is a communal activity,” Christina says. “It brings us into contact with the earth we all share, with the traditions of agriculture that have kept our species alive, and spirit of abundance that pervades all well-cared for gardens.” 

Linda, a long-time volunteer in TNFP gardens, says she’s learned over the years about irrigation and overwatering and companion planting: “I feel like I get out of it more than I give."

Lauren, too, said preparing for the trainings reminds her of the power that garden programming has to build community and foster existing community leaders.

“People seem really happy at the field trainings, both in the RAPP program and in our neighborhood-based community gardens," Christina says. "I am privileged to be a witness to the joy and pride people seem to feel when working in their gardens. This joy reminds me that isolation is one of the biggest cofactors of hunger. When we work in a garden, even if we happen to be by ourselves, we become deeply rooted to a place.  This connection alone can bring people from isolation to integration.” 

Planting Seeds of Change

Garden Coordinator Kia writes garden inspiration on a chalkboard.

As we reflect on 2015 and look forward to 2016, we’ve been talking and thinking about “hope.” Rather than feeling discouraged about the problems of poverty and food waste, we’re focusing on the small changes we can make in the community.

In the garden specifically, here are a few ways we’re planting small seeds of change:

1.) Educating students at veggie tastings.

We might not be able to solve all the issues related to farm-to-school, but we can introduce children to great-tasting vegetables. 

Students from Fall-Hamilton Elementary School visit the McGruder Community Garden on occasion for activities that range from observation journals to lessons on seeds and compost to planting vegetables. We also donate food and cooking time to the school in twice-per-semester “veggie tastings,” where students sample colorful roasted root vegetables, kale salads, or sweet potato fries. "The idea is to introduce kids to vegetables they might not opt for at home or have access to at all," says Garden Manager Christina Bentrup.

Students from Fall-Hamilton help out in the Wedgewood Urban Garden.

2.) Making good use of land.

Through our gardens, we’re using land that might otherwise be overlooked to increase access to healthy food. We’ve harvested 4,250 pounds of produce this year for 50,100 meals.

3.) Teaching others about growing food. 

Through our community garden plots, education and volunteer sessions, we’re hoping to empower those in the community to grow their own food in our gardens or at their homes. 

Volunteers from Whole Food Market help out at the Wedgewood Urban Garden.

4.) Sharing land to create spaces for others.

With the community garden plots and the Refugee Agriculture Program, we want growers to feel as if they have a place of their own. 

Tika Adikhari, a Bhutanese gardener at the Wedgewood Urban Garden, proudly shows off his plot. 

Siddi Rimal interprets during a training session with refugee gardeners. 

5.) Keeping bees and chickens.

Beyond the plants, we’re keeping bees and chickens at our gardens, which provide vital functions in an ecosystem. They also serve as educational tools for students and volunteers.

Through small steps forward, we can maintain hope. Hope is contagious. We hope you’ll continue to help us spread it in 2016.  

Garden Spotlight: McGruder Community Garden

When Garden Coordinator Kia Brown arrived at the McGruder Community Garden on a recent morning, it didn’t take long for her to spot a couple new raspberries hanging from a vine near the garden’s front gate.

“That’s so exciting,” she said, taking a closer look. “I come in here and learn something new every day.” 

Kia has been overseeing the McGruder garden located in North Nashville since June. She checks on the 24 plots for individuals and groups and holds monthly garden trainings to teach growers about proper harvesting, planting for the time of year and soil care.

“I need to let Ms. Gloria know,” she said, pointing out another new development -- a green pepper that would soon need to be picked.

While McGruder Garden doesn’t act as a production garden for The Nashville Food Project, it certainly fits with TNFP mission to bring people together to grow and share nourishing food. The garden helps cultivate community and provides access to healthy produce.

In addition to trainings, Kia hosts garden work days and helps an after school program through the 14th Avenue Missionary Baptist Church care for a community raised beds planted for any passersby who have a need for fresh produce. 

Next year she plans to implement a recruiting effort that will go to neighborhood churches and community centers to bring in new plot holders. She’s helping maintain an orchard of pear and nectarine trees next to the garden plots, and she looks after the community herb garden (which is flowering this time as year) as well as compost and leaf collection bins. 

Plot holders have been collecting the last of their cherry tomatoes and peppers. Next up they will have lettuces and roots such as turnips, carrots, kale, radishes and collards. 

Kia helps maintain the garden through a grant from United Way, and she says her main focus is to help prepare those who grow here to work these plots independently.

"We want to share," she says, "as much information and knowledge about growing food as possible."

A Day in a Dozen: From Harvest To Plate

The marketing team from Whole Foods in Franklin joined us on a gorgeous morning at the Wedgewood Urban Garden. 

Whole Foods has long been generous with our organization, so it was nice to welcome this group to the garden for the first time. 

Meanwhile at TNFP headquarters, the morning crew arrived to prep food for a delivery to John Glenn, a retirement community. Volunteers Mary (left) and Cheri (right) got to know one another over the makings of a fruit salad. Mary visits every Monday and Tuesday to prep plus three times per month to cook. Cheri was visiting for the second time. 

Meals Assistant Katie picked up a generous donation of corn and tomatoes from Green Door Gourmet and later organized a donation from Whole Foods including brioche and muffins. 

After their time in the garden, the Whole Food team visited the kitchen and prep room where Meals Manager Anne explained the “giant puzzle” of putting together more than 1,000 meals each week with the variety of donations and harvested food from our gardens.

The Whole Foods group had harvested approximately 50 pounds of kale. When team member Michael Martin arrived that morning, he didn't know he was dressing particularly well for the occasion.

The greens will be prepped the following day, but meanwhile, Tamara and Brittney rolled enchiladas with donated ingredients from Chipotle. Their prep work will be finished off by a cook team for delivery the next day.

Just outside the kitchen by the Green Hills garden, Tom cleaned potatoes...

…which had been donated by Long Hungry Creek Farm. They will be sliced, baked or mashed for future meals.

In the midst of it all, we welcomed new intern Mary Blythe and put her right to work making cookies for dessert throughout the week.

Then the final cook team for the day arrived at 3pm to make meatloaf for 5pm deliveries to Rex Courts, an Urban Housing Solutions property off Murfreesboro Road, and Trinity Community Meal at Trinity United Methodist Church in East Nashville.

The group cooked from Judy Wright's mother’s meatloaf recipe (which she shared in a lovely tribute on her blog, Judy’s Chickens).

The meal made with many loving hands and hearts arrived at Trinity for dinner just as neighbors began to gather. 

Teamwork Helps a Garden Grow

On any given day, the groups coming together in the gardens are often as varied as the crops harvested.

A recent week at the Wedgewood Urban Garden welcomed Friends Life, a nonprofit serving the needs of adults with intellectual and development disabilities.  

After harvesting squash... 

...the group gathered flowers for their loved ones. 

"We have always prioritized service learning for our Friends through volunteer work, because we know how much they have to give to the community," said Waverly Harris-Christoper, Friends Life Community Director of Programs.

Meanwhile, students from CRIT's RISE (Refugee and Immigrant Students Empowered) program learned about the work of bees. 

The following day, a workforce development team from Room in the Inn helped agitate the soil where kale had just been harvested.

Ryan with Room in the Inn said he volunteered to help because TNFP had delivered meals to the church where he stays. "I thought it would be nice to give something back to the people who have given to me," he said. 

He sprayed tomato plants with an organic fertilizer made from comfrey (the broad left plant below), which grows well with stinging nettle and blueberry plants.  

Also at the garden, Deanna Kendall, a teacher at St. Cecilia Academy, brought a group from the school’s service camp. Each day the women visit a different organization.

“They get some pretty diverse experience," she said, "and hopefully they find a place to plug in.” 

World Refugee Day Celebrate with Art and a Potluck

Potlucks make the best parties for their diversity of flavors. They give us an opportunity to share a bit about ourselves while learning about others through food. 

A few weeks ago, a collaboration and art project for World Refugee Day included such a meal. The Nashville Food Project joined friends from the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, the Center for Refugees and Immigrants of Tennessee, Oasis Center and members of their International Teen Outreach Program, Bhutanese gardeners and neighborhood gardeners at the Wedgewood Urban Garden.   

"I just loved sharing a meal with all these people who came together around growing food, volunteerism, making art and celebrating World Refugee Day," said TNFP Garden Manager Christina Bentrup. " There were people and foods from both around the world and from different neighborhoods around Nashville, It was a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-generational group of folks celebrating community and diversity. It doesn't get much better than that." 

The group also turned recycled bicycle parts into art for the garden. 

---

Squash Casserole

Meals Manager Anne Sale shared this recipe from the potluck making good use of summer squash. Recipe by Robyn Stone of Add a Pinch

Makes 12 servings

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 4 cups sliced yellow squash
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup grated cheddar cheese
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons butter
• ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 sleeve Ritz crackers

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350º F.
2. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in medium skillet or saute pan over medium-low heat. Add squash and onions and cook until tender.
3. To a large bowl, add eggs and lightly whisk. Add cheese and milk and whisk into egg until well-combined. Add cooked squash and onions to egg mixture and stir well to combined. Melt remaining 2 tablespoons butter in skillet used to cook squash and onions. Add to squash casserole mixture. Add cayenne pepper, if using, along with salt and pepper. Stir well to combine.
4. Spray a 9x13 casserole dish with cooking spray and pour squash casserole mixture into the baking dish. Top evenly with crushed Ritz crackers. Place in preheated oven and bake 45 minutes, or until top has lightly browned and casserole does not "jiggle" when the dish is moved.
5. Allow to sit for about 3 minutes before serving.

Also! Be sure to check out the Frist Center's video documenting World Refugee Day and the art project:

Since 2000, the Frist Center has partnered with local organizations to provide art educational programs to Nashville-area communities. This partnership features collaborations with trusted community institutions serving pre-school and after-school youth, English as a second language and adult basic education learners, families, and senior citizen groups.

TNFP Welcomes Kia Brown as Garden Coordinator

Kia Brown, a New York transplant, has lived in Nashville for 11 years. She's had lots of adventures along the way including school at the University of Memphis where she earned her B.S. in Geography and a year serving in AmeriCorps. While traveling the country during her service year, she spent a couple of months in Seattle and discovered her love for growing both food and community.

Kia loves to travel and explore, which led to a summer interning at the Nashville Zoo and an interest in new hobbies such as metalsmithing. You might encounter Kia leading groups in any of our gardens, but she works closely with the Green Thumbers in the McGruder community garden .

Local Vegetables

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Kale, zucchini, cucumber and lettuce growing within a few feet of our kitchen. It couldn't get much fresher than this.

A Simple Pleasure

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We cultivate gardens to be places where we grow great food and community. These lavender bundles are one of a thousand everyday gifts from the garden to be used for brightening our lives and the lives of the people we work with and serve.

Delishousness!

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These beauties are growing in our Wedgewood Urban Garden and just beg for sampling. Let's count the ways that black raspberries are delicious: sprinkled on salads, eaten by the handful, mixed into sauces, added to yougart... what's your favorite raspberry delight?

Growing, growing, growing...

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The Bhutanese gardeners at our Wedgewood Urban Garden are working hard planting, harvesting and setting up trellises for tomatoes and peppers. Come see for yourself how good these gardens are looking.

Hide and Seek

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Thanks to employees from the Nashville Predators for coming out to help at our Wedgewood Urban Gardens! They got to put their predatory skills to use by hunting for hard-to-spot snow and sugar snap peas.