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We’re in the mood for some holiday cheer (and are always looking to get excited about the next big meal), so we asked some of our meals team about their favorite Thanksgiving dish. Hopefully, the answers get you excited about your own gathering — which we would love to be a part of in some small way!
In the midst of our annual Volunteer Celebration Lunch, an event to show gratitude to all of the many hands and hearts that help sustain our collective work toward community food security, Maggie Atchley reflects on her first couple of months working as the Volunteer Engagement Manager for The Nashville Food Project.
When Joe Hodgson decided it was time to retire, he knew he would have to find something to keep him busy. And it seemed like at every turn, an apple orchard would show up. He and his wife, Penny, interpreted it as a kind of sign — and with his background as a landscape architect, tending trees didn’t feel too unfamiliar. They bought several acres in McMinnville and got to planting.
Now in its fifteenth growing season, McGruder Community Garden is a space where people from all walks of life gather to find connection, learn from one another, and grow food for themselves and their communities. The garden includes several colorful raised garden beds, a pollinator garden full of fresh flowers, and a small orchard of fruit trees, and is lovingly tended by community members in partnership with The Nashville Food Project. Recently, a team helped us install 12 more raised beds, expanding our production capacity by 50 percent.
In part three of this series, Director of Food Access Tera Ashley evaluates how public transit systems may or may not meet the needs of its city's residents, and explores improvements to these systems that could also improve food accessibility for low-income, low-access residents.
Simmer, our chef pop-up dinner series, is meant to bring people together over good food and good conversation. With the generous support of our community, on Friday night, local vegan chefs Ryan Toll, chef-owner of Season and formerly of the beloved vegetarian restaurant The Wild Cow, and Mariah Ragland, chef-owner of Radical Rabbit, did just that.
The Giving Grove, a Kansas City-based nonprofit serving communities experiencing a lack of access to fresh food, recently announced that it will expand to Nashville, TN, through a partnership with The Nashville Food Project. The Nashville Food Project will help community members plant new orchards and also inventory and support existing community orchard sites.
In part two of her blog series on public transit's impact on food availability, Director of Food Access Tera Ashley evaluates the affordability, variety, and quality of produce typically available in low-income, low-access areas. While many might draw conclusions that there is not demand for as much produce in these areas, anecdotal evidence indicates otherwise.
In the world of communications, knowing your organization inside out is crucial to telling its story. As a communications intern for The Nashville Food Project I have enjoyed telling our stories, but more importantly, I enjoyed having the privilege to learn by experiencing them myself. The Nashville Food Project’s mission is to bring people together to grow, cook, and share nourishing food, with goals of cultivating community and alleviating hunger in our city.
Earlier this month we hosted our 14th annual Nourish, presented by Kroger. We are humbled and so incredibly proud to announce that this was our most successful Nourish to date, raising over $260,000! However, beyond a fundraiser, this night is one we always look forward to as a special time to share connection over a beautiful meal with so many friends, volunteers, and supporters.
Our food access partner Water Walkers has a mission of tearing down the boundaries between urban youth and outdoor adventure — and in the summer, that mission takes them straight to the lake. But what’s a boat day without a picnic? Thanks to Sweet Peas Summer Eats for Kids, sponsored by Jackson National Life Insurance Company (Jackson®), Water Walkers can count on daily deliveries of made-from-scratch meals that keep these young bodies nourished and able to learn, grow and play while on the water.
FeedBack Nashville (FBN) spent the month of June hosting a series of Community Listening Sessions to understand how people are experiencing food in Nashville and get feedback on the findings of the FeedBack Nashville food system survey: a city-wide survey that received more than 600 responses. FBN partnered with Network for Sustainable Solutions to meet with community members throughout Nashville to share the initial themes from our city-wide survey, and receive community members’ feedback and suggestions on preliminary findings.
To combat food insecurity among low-income, low-access households without vehicle ownership, the availability of public transportation is paramount. The increased mobility that often comes with efficient, reliable public transportation may affect the accessibility of fresh fruits and vegetables in three ways: increased affordability, increased variety, and elevated quality. Director of Food Access Tera Ashley explores how food access and transportation are related in the first installment of this three-part series.
We already know the vital role that food plays in health. But how does that affect communities where the most easily accessible foods are processed and plastic-wrapped items in corner stores? For patients at Matthew Walker Comprehensive Health Center in North Nashville, which has historically been a food desert, uncontrolled hypertension is a direct consequence of this issue.
Last December, Kayla Hall wandered into The Nashville Food Project at the same time as over a hundred other Nashvillians to celebrate the launch of FeedBack Nashville, a citywide initiative to evaluate and reimagine the local food system. It was her first time in the building, and although the main room was packed to the brim, she had a vision for what the space could be. So she asked to see the kitchen.
Every Wednesday during the summer months, a local grassroots organization gathers neighbors together on the front lawn of Woodbine United Methodist Church, which faces the neighborhood’s busy Nolensville Pike corridor. Cosecha Community Development's market thrives as a vibrant hub of community and commerce in South Nashville, hosting a small but mighty range of businesses and nonprofits as diverse as the Woodbine neighborhood’s own dynamic cultural landscape.
On May 11, we celebrated the second annual Reggie’s Urban Ag Day, hosted at the Community Farm at Mill Ridge. The event’s organizer and namesake, Reggie Marshall, convened a variety of peers, professionals, lenders, and local vendors including Pathway Lending, SUDA, NRCS, Farm Service Agency, Farm Credit, Zysis Garden, Reggie’s Veggies and his nonprofit venture, Reggie’s Helping Hands. The goal? To provide resources for aspirational farmers hoping to get their start in urban agriculture.
We all know the old adage: practice makes perfect. And when it comes to culinary education, there really is no better place to learn than the kitchen. A group of culinary training students experienced this first-hand recently during an 8-week pilot course co-facilitated by The Nashville Food Project, Catholic Charities, and GT Service, the workforce development arm of Slim & Husky’s.
Begin Anew has been a fixture of the community for over 20 years, with a mission to empower individuals to overcome the obstacles caused by poverty through education, mentoring, and resources. They offer cost-free courses for adults who are learning English, pursuing their high school equivalency diploma, or seeking computer and job skills. Significantly, their campuses across Middle Tennessee — in Franklin, Madison, Woodbine and downtown Nashville — are tailored to the specific needs of the communities they are embedded in.
Nashville Launch Pad operates out of spaces across town to create a network of temporary, safer, street-free sleeping shelters for unhoused young adults which are open and affirming to LGBTQ+ individuals and their allies. They currently do this in three ways: through an emergency shelter program, a mobile housing navigation center, and an independent-supported living program.
It’s National Volunteer Appreciation Week, and we’re celebrating the incredible folks who show up daily to chop veggies, shovel compost, mix dressings, and even sharpen knives! These simple, sometimes un-glamorous tasks are the backbone of the Food Project — but the community members that lend their hands to this work each day are the heart.
FiftyForward is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting adults aged 50 and older in Middle Tennessee through a variety of programs and services aimed at promoting health, well-being, and community engagement. Their programming is extensive, but is ultimately focused on developing community and purpose. Currently, The Nashville Food Project delivers about 560 meals each week to support this focus.
Thanks to our friends at Tito’s Vodka, we now have a greenhouse on the Growing Together farm! Before the project last October, Growing Together was near its production capacity due to limitations in the site’s agricultural infrastructure. Farmers weren’t getting much exposure to starting plants from seed in a greenhouse — the greenhouse available to them was a shared space over 10 miles away from the farm.
On February 22, FeedBack Nashville hosted a day-long Food System Forum at Green Door Gourmet, a 350-acre organic farm on the outskirts of Nashville. The event brought together 25 individuals working in our city’s food system.
This week, MacKenzie Scott’s Yield Giving announced The Nashville Food Project as one of its Open Call awardees working with people and in places experiencing the greatest need in the U.S.. The Nashville Food Project received $1 million.
Butternut squash mac and cheese has become something of a staple around here. This time of year especially, our kitchen is overflowing with squash donations from local farms, and this is one of our favorite ways to use it...
Changing our current food system into this better food future is not a simple task. It is a long-term, relational process that requires all of us—from nonprofits and corporations, to public offices and individuals—to share our experiences and perspectives with one another and work together to identify and co-create many different transformational actions.
There’s something to be said for things that grow steadily over time — like a well-tended garden. And just like the garden requires patience, care, and dedication to show up again and again, so do partnerships that create lasting change. For the last three years, Love, Tito’s, the philanthropic heart of Tito’s Handmade Vodka, has supported The Nashville Food Project as part of their Block to Block program.