All the great parts of life were there, all compressed in a few hours' of warm food, generosity and community.

In February 2024, the CEO of a Tennessee food bank emailed a high-ranking Tennessee Department of Agriculture (TDA) employee from her iPhone. The subject line? LFPA Plus.

Bill Hull is the in-house wine expert - "the wine guy" - at Pruett's Market, the Signal Mountain grocery store.

When your heart breaks its leash, Let it go. Let it run.

Roy and his daughter Rebecca run their 1100-acre Jones Farm in north Alabama. Their main crop? Fruit, with some vegetables, grown on 15 acres. During prime season, they need a dozen workers, sometimes more.

Our story spotlights a wholesome, intentional relationship between farmers, processors, butchers, animals and restaurant owners. In life and death, these relationships are built on respect. They benefit all involved.

Standing tall in a family of meat-eaters, Kelsey Vasileff was 10 when she made her announcement: I'm going vegetarian.

Today's feature is written by Dr. Robin Fazio, long-time farmer, educator and founder of Baylor School's gardening program and Mechanics' Club.This is a story of authenticity and confidence, not shiny bluster.

It is a mid-morning Monday on the 65-acre Boyd Buchanan campus and a dozen students in Melissa Owens's Agriscience class are planting yellow onion sets, moving zinnia transplants to the greenhouse, checking on - really, cuddling - the lop-eared bunny, tilling new beds, making plans for a fall flower sale.

What do you need to know in order to farm?That's the question being asked by Southeast Tennessee Young Farmers and Crabtree Farms, who are planning to offer free, farmer-led workshops on sustainable-ag topics next year.

On Thursday evening, as Smash Boyz served last-call burgers from the grill and folks downed their second or third drink - Coors in a can, peach LaCroix, 16 oz. Liquid Death - while kicked back on folding chairs inside a Red Bank garage, Tyler Sowrey stepped out from behind the silver-sexy Slayer espresso machine and carried forward two cortados - half steamed milk, half espresso - poured into small, snow-white cups.

We are strolling through Flying Turtle Farm, the 68 acres in Cloudland, Georgia, where Dorris Shober and husband John care for pigs, Brangus cattle, a spiral garden, vegetables and flowers - like celosia and zinnias, which Dorris gently talks about like they're dear friends - when this one question almost jumps out of my mouth.

Since 2005, Erik and Amanda Niel have been exquisitely intentional about taking care of Chattanoogans, building their restaurant careers here on this very premise."We've made them feel comfortable," Amanda said. "If you're really good at it, people have an emotional connection."

Today? We're exhaling, non-laboring for Labor Day and hope you will, too.

For our one-year birthday, we welcome to our new website home. We hope you love it. We sure do.

The more I talk with our local farmers, the more I realize: it's all generosity. It's all grown with love.

Claire Sims found the garden all the way from Wetumpka, Alabama, some 200 miles away. She grew up in a very strict church, whose beliefs – women can't preach in the pulpit or speak with authority – pushed her even farther away.

Fifteen years ago, maybe longer, Miriam Keener had an idea."We need a farmer-run market," she said.

It's a strange, dizzying time for Highland Park and the 37404 zip code that stretches down Dodds Ave., across the foot of Missionary Ridge, onto the lively Main Street.

Thursday morning, as he slid eight loaves, each stenciled and scored like artwork, into the Niedlov's Bakery & Cafe ovens, Erik Zilen – a little flour here, a lot of vision there – reached the end of a long journey.

Eighteen-hour days and back again the next morning. Your back aches, brain feels like mush and you can't remember the last time you slept eight hours, had sex or watched Netflix – just one episode – all the way through.

We're losing 10 acres of Tennessee farmland every hour of every day.

In the fall of 2017, Stacy Martin was living in Atlanta – she'd soon move to Chattanooga – when she got the news: her mom was diagnosed with stage IV uterine cancer.

Every day for the last 42 years, Sammy Norton has milked cows. Every morning, at 4.30. Every afternoon, again at 4.30.

Letty, Judy and Jane have known each other for seven years now, but it feels like a lifetime, the three bonded in ways only the heart understands.

It's good to say thanks, good to let people know how much they mean to you. Gratitude fills the heart like a big red balloon. Softens the mind like an afternoon breeze.

Once, Nate Carter begins, a man bought a birdcage. Inside, it was full of birds, but the birds were all locked up in this cage.That's why he bought it.

From their 400-acre Chili Pepper Ranch in Apison, Tenn., Jim and Amy Jo Osborn sell cuts of beef from over 200 head of cattle to hundreds of customers from Seattle to Miami to LA, all of whom ordered more than 60,000 pounds of meat last year.

Meet Uncle Jim. Get soaked in the rain. Savor greens that took two years to perfect at a restaurant without any recipes.

Not long ago, we went to one acre of Red Bank land for a routine afternoon interview with Carmen Joyce, a local beekeeper and owner of Nooga Honey Pot.What we found instead felt like a miracle.

People begin arriving by 8.30 am. By mid-morning, there are two, three dozen cars and trucks in line. Tags from North Carolina, Florida, Georgia.They're here for one reason: Aubie Smith's strawberries.

In early March, Jeannine Carpenter, director of advocacy for the Chattanooga Area Food Bank, estimated there was a 20% chance that the missing $7.2 million would get restored. Maybe 25%.

On Thursday afternoon, as it passed its $52.8 billion budget, Tennessee lawmakers voted to restore $7.2 million in lost funding for small farmers, families and food banks.

It takes five days to make croissants at Bread & Butter, the beloved bakery in Red Bank. Five days. By hand. You mix on a Monday, laminate on Tuesday, freeze, then shape, and by Friday, you bake. Five days.

When you walk into a dinner hosted by Sujata Singh, you enter a warm, welcomed space complete with flowers, beautifully set tables and air filled with the the most delightful spices and herbs.

It was during COVID and St. Peter's Episcopal Church was worshipping outside. As Kelsey Aebi – St. Peter's lay minister – set up the altar, communion table and chairs, the warm sun fell on her shoulders and the birds sang from overhead trees and she realized:I love this. I love worshipping outside.

After hours, days and weeks of talking with Nashville legislators, explaining to them how and why the state lost $7.2 million in funding for Tennessee farmers and food banks, the director of advocacy for the Chattanooga Area Food Bank may be witnessing this most beautiful event: a selfless, bipartisan response.

Imagine if we graduated agriculturally literate students who, in the words of the National Research Council, could "understand the food and fiber system and this would include its history and its current economic, social and environmental significance to all Americans."

The USDA says it sent six separate funding notifications. Tennessee missed them all.

It feels like teenage Kenyatta – "skinny as a rail," he remembers – and his six siblings – one brother is 6'5", another 6'4" – are eating 100,000 calories a day. His mother, with some loaves-and-fishes power, is somehow able to provide. But she can't prevent brothers from being brothers.

Working the land restores this connection in ways few other parts of modern life can. The very materials and methods present within farming are each wise teachers, each seed containing tiny scripted messages for us on life and how to receive it.

Welcome to all our new readers and friends. Thanks to Kristen Templeton's marvelous headliner story in Tuesday's NOOGAToday, our community at Food as a Verb grew a lot bigger overnight. 

Four years ago, Brad and Tara Smith were neck-deep in two careers – he was a landscape architect and planner; she, an elementary school principal – living near the Space Coast in historic and hip Ocala, Florida.

Ella Livingston's story could start with that moment – her moment – in Japan. Before Cocoa Asante became Chattanooga's luxury chocolate brand known across the world, Livingston was studying in Tokyo, 2013, when her entire perspective turned.

The distance between Medellin and St. Elmo is not as far as you think.

This year, the Chattanooga Area Food Bank will deliver, provide, donate and offer more food for hungry families and individuals than ever before in its 51-year history.

For me, there was cantaloupe sliced in half-moon pieces with knives sharp enough to split hairs. And pimento cheese sandwiches on white bread served on plates the color of egg yolk. The crystal was high on shelves, out of reach, never used. Glass bottles of Coke and Lays chips and homemade chocolate sauce poured warm from pint Mason jars over peppermint stick ice cream.

This is the story of our city's urban farm looking backwards – its land, leaders say, was a place of horrific forced removal and plantation slavery – in order to shape the future.