Summer Archives

Catherine Jackson Nashville, TN - The Nashville Food Project

"Just Keep Coming" - A Summer of Building

You may be thinking, “Catherine, I thought you worked at some kind of food place. What do you mean that you had a summer of building?” Well, this summer was not about physically building houses, tools, or fish farms. This summer was about building relationships. I know that sounds very “HOD” of me, but it is true. During my time at The Nashville Food Project (TNFP), I learned that this summer project was more than just working for 8 weeks at an organization. For me, this summer was about building partnerships, friendships, and community. The Nashville Food Project is “bringing people together to grow, cook and share nourishing food, with the goals of cultivating community and alleviating hunger in our city” every day. I had the opportunity to join this organization from May - July in the process of building community through my Ingram Summer Project.

This project has roots that extend back to high school. Most Saturdays, my mom and I would go to the farmers’ markets in Nashville. I could walk into the market and immediately be in a better mood. Even then, the relationships with farmers and the sense of community made the markets one of my favorite places to be - I even had my senior pictures taken at the farmers’ market! During my freshman year, my love for the farmers’ markets and service evolved into an idea that became my summer project. I wanted to increase access to farmers’ market produce for the entire Nashville community, but I also wanted to continue supporting the farmers that I had grown to know and love. So, I piloted a model where shoppers bought produce from the farmers and donated it to the local food bank I was working with.

This summer, I chose to implement a similar model with TNFP. My project evolved from collecting donations to “gleaning” at the markets. “Gleaning” means gathering something in a gradual or careful way, but it simply means food recovery for my purposes. I continued the shopper donation part of my project through a “buy one, give one” campaign. But, I also asked farmers at the end of the day if they had any produce I could glean. This process was not easy – I had weeks where I collected bins of produce and weeks where I collected barely any. I learned a hard, but important, lesson from one of the farmers who supported my project: sometimes, the best thing you can do is just keep coming back. Farmers experience the same thing at the market – slow and fast days. But, they keep coming to the market every week to continue building relationships. So, that’s exactly what I did. I “just kept coming” to build gleaning partnerships; I “just kept coming” to build relationships with farmers; I “just kept coming” to build community through TNFP.