Urban WWOOFing in Nashville, Tennessee

Nashville, Tennessee

I spent over a week WWOOFing at Castanea in Nashville, a small collective of individuals and houses only a mile from downtown.  Rather than doing my WWOOF work at my host, Jason’s, house, I spent all of my time working at Trevecca Nazarene University.  With his master’s in religion but with ample life experience in issues of sustainability and environmental justice, Jason was asked two years ago to help create and direct an Environmental Justice major and the sustainability branch of the Plant Department.   

What is happening:

·         Garden (that, among other things, grew 1000's of lbs. of tomatoes and over a dozen varieties of corn this year!)

·         Vermicomposting (worms and compost)

Sifting corn kernels from chaff before grinding

·         Composting Cafeteria scraps (as well as leaves, cardboard, etc.)

·         Animal Husbandry (chickens now, hopefully soon to expand with goats)

·         Business of food sales (eggs from organically fed chickens and vegetables)

·         Greenhouse

·         Fruit perennials covering the campus

·         Gardening program at local public schools

·         Four-tier vertical Aquaponic system

·         Solar dehydrator

·         Bicycle powered grain mill

·         Bike shop

·         Biodiesel lab to turn cooking oil into power for work vehicles

Only two years into creating the program at not what one would call a progressive university, this list is fairly impressive!  When he told me that he would like to teach students cottage industry skills, like shoemaking, for example, I gleefully responded, “Jason, that is subversive!”  He smiled contently and said, “I’m glad you recognized.”  Students learn every step of food production from sowing to preserving, as well as about the global food system and the social (gender, color, class, etc.) inequalities in it.  How much further from the standard college education can you get?  The vast majority of college graduates in this country have been taught skills to make up a tiny piece of a very big system but almost no skills to fend for themselves, and here he is teaching students how not to need to participate in our economy. 

A mural that I painted while at Castanea!  

Hands On Nashville

Another worthwhile program to see in Nashville is Hands On! Nashville (HON).   Hands On organizes a home energy saving program for low income housing; directs waterway restoration and recovery; partners with local nonprofits and matches volunteers with volunteer opportunities; has a recycle a bike program; and among many other projects, this past year began an urban agriculture program.  Based on a model of the Boston Food Project, the urban agriculture program is using flood plain area leased from the city to create urban garden space for food production and education.  For two weeks at the start of summer, HON educates student apprentices who then are able to lead a free, five week camp for other students in field work and sustainable agriculture education.  In the next year they will begin an Urban Agriculture Internship for high schoolers and potentially expand out to more farm locations.  This is definitely something to check out when and if you visit Nashville!  

Castanea is an intentional community.
Among other things and while currently
designing a shared living space, they
share meals several days a week.

Feeding neighborhood kids at their
Sunday meal.

Nashville street musicians, Free Dirt!

Nashville is sometimes called The Athens of the South.  Nashville gets the name because of its large number of universities, also
having had the first public school system in the South.
Here Children scale the wall of a full size Parthenon in Centennial Park.

Urban WWOOFer: Rebuilding Communities

Rebuild Foundation

The nonprofit Rebuild enlists a team of artists, architects, developers, educators, and community activists to together redevelop abandoned properties for cultural and economic redevelopment in generally under-resourced communities.  They integrate arts and alternative entrepreneurship to create the "community-driven process of place making and neighborhood transformation".  

Upon visiting their St. Louis spaces, I was floored by how through great design, simple elements and reused materials they are able to create a space that is both dignified and inspiring.  It reminded me of a Ted Talk I saw years ago by an innovative designer, "Creative Houses from Reclaimed Stuff" who argues that any piece of junk can be turned into an artistic element with repetition and balance.

This Hood of Ours

Through grassroots community organizing, This Hood of Ours reclaims abandoned and foreclosed upon houses in neighborhoods with a large number of them.  The mission of This Hood of Ours is to inspire, empower and mobilize people to improve their own lives by improving their own communities.  They come into a neighborhood and create community shared space; facilitate clean-ups and group working days to create a community of mutual support and shared investment in working together; and facilitate resident-led improvement in the quality of life of the neighborhood.  After rehabilitating uninhabited houses, through "fix to own" laws that they worked with the government to get recognized in Detroit, they bring families in to the homes and eventually move on to a new neighborhood or space in need.  

What inspiring organizations!  I had the opportunity to offer my hands to both of them while in Detroit and St. Louis and to be influenced by the inspiring people working with them.  In Detroit, the Superheroes camped for several days in a neighborhood where the inspiring community activist Jasahn of This Hood is Ours was working.  We fixed, cleaned,  composted, painted faces and played with kids, and painted abandoned houses with the people in the neighborhood. In St. Louis, I happened upon Rebuild through a Sunday brunch potluck organized in one of their spaces.  Dayna, the organizer, gave us a tour of the current projects and showed us the community space that they are creating around children, arts and education.