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.