Issuu

Nourish

Spring is a time of renewal. As the season unfolds, the Chattanooga Area Food Bank welcomes the vitality, color, and freshness it brings to our work. While our operations remain strong year-round, spring brings an abundance of fresh produce to nourish our neighbors. In this issue, explore how our fresh produce and farm-to-food-bank initiatives are ﬁlling neighbors’ plates with healthy, vibrant food and renewed energy to families across our region.

-Shannon

Moore, Chief Communications Ofﬁcer

The food bank’s newest program is Fresh Food, Families, and Finance. We started it last year after receiving funding from the State of Tennessee’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) grant. The program takes a two-generational approach to help families navigate ﬁnancial and nutritional challenges.

In 2025, we built garden beds at Avondale Community Center, East Lake Academy, and Cleveland City Schools Family Resource Center

Nestled in the Cumberland Plateau, Sequatchie Cove Farm spans 300 acres. As a family-run farm, they have always had the mindset to leave their land and their local community better than they found it.

from Farm from Farm

The program consists of two major parts: a ﬁnancial education course and a youth farmer’s market. The concept of budgeting ties everything together. Our ﬁnancial partner, Builtwell Bank, hosts a short session about budgeting, building credit, and saving for emergencies. Then the kids are presented with a bundle of play money and tasked with “buying” groceries for their family, testing how far they can stretch a dollar. Every family walks away with the same amount of food, but only after the money has been spent and the children are given some advice about grocery shopping.

We source fresh groceries from local farmers and producers, including Bee Creek and Sequatchie Cove Farms featured in this issue. We offer local bread, honey, cheese, and vegetables to create a colorful spread from which families can make many different meals.

Kelsey Keener’s parents started the farm in 1993, and he is now a second-generation owner. Sequatchie Cove supplies farm-fresh eggs for our Fresh Food, Families, and Finance program.

“Supplying food for the families that the food bank supports really means a lot to our operation,” he says. “We love knowing that the food that we work so hard to produce is going directly to families in our community who need it the most.”

We annually grow half a ton of produce in our garden for distribution across our network

The farm has donated excess product to the Chattanooga Area Food Bank for many years, and they were excited to start a more involved partnership once the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement (LFPA) funding was released in 2024 by the USDA. (The USDA allocated funds for states to purchase locally-produced food for local feeding programs like food banks.)

To learn more, visit sequatchiecovefarm.com.

As a small family-run farm, Kelsey is most proud that he has been able to grow the business enough so it wholly supports his family and provides jobs in his community.

Bee Creek Farm in Crossville, Tennessee, is a local vendor for our Fresh Food, Families, and Finance program. They supply local, high-quality meat for families participating in the program’s farmer’s market. Bee Creek is a regenerative farm, and they deeply care about the connection between their land and the nutritional value of the products they sell.

Laura Robinson, our Youth Market and Garden Program Manager, has been at the food bank for ﬁve and a half years. During that time, she has grown alongside the organization and taken on many new responsibilities, playing a key role in expanding programs that connect youth, food, and community.

One of her biggest accomplishments has been helping get the Fresh Food, Families, and Finance program off the ground.

Regenerative agriculture is often deﬁned by what it is not: The land is not overused, and the animals are raised without harmful chemicals. The farm, in a sense, gives back more than it takes. For example, Bee Creek’s cattle heard is moved four times a day across their 240-acre property to mimic the natural process of intense grazing, which allows the land to naturally regrow. In the end, a more environmentally conscious and healthier meat is produced.

To learn more, go to beecreektn.com.

Many of her favorite memories over the years come from gardening with kids. At Battle Academy, the kids were amazed to harvest sweet potatoes and see them come out of the ground. And over at the Avondale Community Center garden, a student around 10-12 years old eagerly tried different greens—chewing each one and then spitting it out. While he didn’t swallow anything, his willingness to try new foods was inspiring. Building eight raised beds with sixth-grade math students at East Lake Academy was another highlight, particularly when one student said, “This is the best math class I’ve ever had.”

Last year, we donated 2000 seedlings to community gardens and foxwood guests

Laura says the variety of projects and programs makes working at the food bank a unique experience.

foxwood

“Every day is different and presents new challenges. It’s never boring around here!”

to Food Bank to Food Bank

Former food bank employee and certiﬁed Master Gardener Katie Bishop oversees a garden that donates 100 percent of its produce to the Chattanooga Area Food Bank. The garden at the UT Extension Ofﬁce in East Brainerd was built in 2019 by Master Gardeners of Hamilton County. The garden demonstrates what is possible with raised-bed gardening. From the beginning, Katie says, the vision was clear: Every harvest would go directly to families in need.

The garden features six raised beds and produces crops across three growing seasons, yielding more than 375 pounds of fresh produce each year. Now retired, Katie devotes much of her time to tending the UT Extension Ofﬁce garden and volunteering in the food bank’s garden at our Main Warehouse.

“I’ve done a lot of gardening all around Chattanooga over the years,” she says. To her, seeing the food she grows nourish families in the community is what makes the work especially meaningful.