The Future of Farming with Sylvia Ganier, LeeAnn Cherry, and Christa Bentley. Moderated by Tasha Kennard

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am not going to be your host today. Today is a Le Dom Descafier Nashville Chapter Table Talk Series episode. So if you see that we do these episodes with Le Dom Descafier every once in a while and you wonder what it is, I will tell you. We worked with them, Adi Patel, who's the managing director at the Hermitage Hotel, was on the show and she was the president from Le Dom Descafier and I told her, I said, I would love to support you guys in whatever way that I can and she said, hey, we're about to have these series of conversations with Le Dom members and if you could share them, that would be amazing.

01:13And I said, absolutely, I would love, love, love to do that. So me here supporting Le Dom Descafier, I love what they're doing and I want to tell you a little bit about Le Dom Descafier. Here in Nashville, well, this is the Le Dom's mission, okay, so we're going to who they are, what they do, here it is, to inspire, advance and support women in food, beverage and hospitality to achieve excellence in leadership and philanthropy. So that is what they do in a nutshell. They have a Nashville chapter, Andrea Lensley is the president now and many, many, many amazing women are part of this group, they empower each other, they talk about leadership and how women can lead and I am here for it. So today's episode is going to be, the official title is, the conversation is, The Future of Farming.

02:14So today we're going to have four people give us insight and expertise about the importance of local farming. We're going to have Sylvia Gagner, who's the chief farm operator at Green Door Gourmet, Leanne Cherry, who's a co-owner at Bear Creek Farms, Krista Bentley, who's a co-owner at Sweeter Day Farms, she's also with the Nashville Food Project, and Tosh Canard of Southall Farms are going to be talking all about farming. This is such an interesting conversation because I think more and more today we forget where our food comes from and maybe you don't, but a lot of people just take it for granted. They expect food just to show up and there are actual people that are working their asses off to make this happen and today we get to talk to four of them that are doing that and just talk about what farming is like and the future of farming and a little insight into what their lives are like. So we're really excited to do this.

03:14We don't really do a lot of sponsors on these episodes, but since I have two female-owned companies, I just want to give them shout-out. Erin Mosso over at Sharpieres Bakery, that is a fantastic locally-owned and operated woman-owned company. Check them out at Sharpieres.com, that's C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S.com if you want to support her and them. And then also What Chefs Want, a lot of you know them as Creation Gardens or What Chefs Want. That is a female-owned company. I don't know if you guys knew that, but they're based out of Louisville. They have a Nashville office, a big warehouse here in Nashville. They work mainly with independent restaurateurs and they are doing amazing things out there every single day. So I wanted to give shout-outs to both of them, let you guys know there are woman-owned companies out there that you should be supporting right now. So without further ado, let's jump in with this Table Talk series, The Future of Farming. Today's webinar is going to feature insight and expertise about the importance of local farming from our LaDombe's Nashville chapter members and local farming pros.

04:23We have Sylvia Gaynor joining us. She's the chief farm operator of Green Door Gourmet and Leanne Cherry, the co-owner of Bear Creek Farm, and Krista Bentley, the co-owner of Sweeter Days Farm and the chief programs officer at the Nashville Food Project. You know, we all tuned in to hear from them and talk about the future of farming. So let's dig in and get this conversation going. Krista, why don't you tell us a little bit about you and your farm and how you got into farming? Yeah. Hi, everybody. It's good to be here. Like you said, my name is Krista. I co-own Sweeter Days Farm with my husband, Todd Bentley, who runs it full-time. And I really am farming on nights and weekends, I would say mostly. So it's been an adventure. We're about five years into our farm. I'm actually a Nashville native, so I grew up in Nashville, love Nashville, really feels like home for me. I went to school at UT Knoxville, so I love Mass General Store from Knoxville, Leanne, and studied environmental policy and got really interested after college and I think just like being outside a lot and really wanted my future career to make sure that I was spending a lot of time outside.

05:27Got really interested in agriculture. I mainly studied agriculture on the West Coast, worked on a bunch of farms there for about five years and then decided I wanted to move back to Nashville. So I moved back shortly after that, I met my husband who was in the military before I met him and had just left the military and decided he wanted to start a farm as well. So we met and sort of immediately jumped right into it and started Sweeter Days Farm five years ago. It's in Ashland City. So we sell to Clarksville and Nashville. We have diversified vegetables, flowers. We started a small beef operation. We had turkeys and chickens this year and are primarily selling that through a CSA. So we have a pretty big CSA that we run as well as restaurant wholesale. And yeah, I think that sums it up for me. Great. Thank you, Krista. Leanne, tell us a little bit more about you. Sure. So my name is Leanne Cherry. My family owns and operates Bear Creek Farm and Cherry Meat Company.

06:27Bear Creek Farm is a sustainable cattle and hog farm located in Williamson County and we have a farm in Murray County. So we basically farm 2,000 acres in addition to cattle and hogs, and you hear people say cattle farmers are grass farmers. So we grow grass in a lot of hay, well, wait a minute, not that kind, a lot of hay. That's taking care of the soil. That's huge. That's a common theme for the three of the farmer, the panelists today. That's so important to what we do as well. How I got into farming is interesting. I fell in love with the farmer and then fell in love with the land. My background was marketing and advertising and sales and that's been helpful in growing our business. But Bill and I got married in May and for those of you who know, you know, May is hay season. So I didn't realize that when we wed and I quickly learned that if I wanted to spend time with my husband and my family, I need to learn to drive a tractor and rake and tent and bale hay, baling is still not my strong suit, you know, learn how to ride a horse, learn how to help birth a calf and so did my kids, they had to learn that.

07:50That was in 2006 and we basically, you know, haven't looked back. Like Krista, we do wholesale accounts in Nashville. We have some business, some restaurants and butcher shops we work with outside of Nashville. We have the farmer's market in Franklin. We also have opened a farm store on our farm and a small garden this year basically for the family, but hoping to grow that. So that's pretty much our story and how that started and really excited to be able to share these things with you guys today. So thank you. I'm glad you met Bill. You've been such a treasure to our community and I'm glad that you've joined the farming community here in Middle Tennessee. Sylvia, you've got a little bit of a love story as well. Tell us a little bit about how you got into this. So my name is Sylvia Ganyer and I am the youngest daughter of a fifth generation dairy farmer in North Carolina. I grew up farming, but I went very far away from that path as a youngster.

08:54I ended up working in radio and a little bit of television and singing and all of that sort of stuff. I moved to Nashville, got involved in hospitality, married a Nashville guy that has a farm and here I am farming again. I made the statement when we first got married if I could have a small kitchen garden and my husband really doesn't understand middle ground very much. So it's all or nothing. So he fence nine acres as my small kitchen garden and that relationship after having been in the restaurant industry led to chefs and other consumers looking to buy products from us and that burgeoned into our farm on farm market, agritourism, working with bee keepers, growing heirloom crops of all different sorts of things, trying to bring back some we thought were extinct and we do a lot of specialty vegetables and cut flowers. So it was kind of a full circle experience for me coming from a farming background, going back into a farming background all because I married a Nashville native.

10:00Well, we all have key moments in our lives that put us on this path and towards our purpose and for some of us it's been well paved and others it's been full of twists and turns and I think everyone can see that the women on our panel have very diverse backgrounds and experiences but the love and resolve for feeding our community and their families is a common thread. So I want them to share a little bit more about their farming practices. These are very diverse farm operations and I learned a lot when we were prepping for this call about either how they're currently farming or how they were farming and how they've transitioned that over the years. So we'll start off with Leanne and if you want to tell us what's going on on your cattle farm and how you're doing it and then we'll go to Sylvia and then Krista next. Perfect. So our farming practices, to tell you a little bit about that, we do a rotational grazing and that's pretty self-explanatory but basically each pasture, as I mentioned before, there's over 2000 acres that we farm.

11:07Cattle will stay in a pasture and then they'll move to another pasture and then move to another pasture and that helps utilize their nutrition better, you know, for the fresh grasses. It also helps the land heal by getting them off the land for a period of time. So that's an important part of our farm and that's an integral part of our farming. That's one of our farming practices. The another thing that we learned, really the hard way because of the drought of 2008, was we implemented an automatic integrated watering system here at the farm. So all the animals have access to fresh clean water where before we were filling water troughs up with the water truck and in the winter of course that freezes and you have to break the ice. So it seems pretty archaic now but you know that was the way things were done. So we have implemented the watering system which is fantastic. Another part of our farming practice is just the immense respect and gentle farming methods that we have for animals and anyone that's raising cattle the way we do or any livestock would put that up with food and water because that it can really make a difference in just how the animal is treated in the end product.

12:32So like Sylvia's you know ribs we were talking about earlier. That was so important to us that in 2012 we bought a processing facility and our daughter Paige runs that and that ensures the humane handling all the way through. So there's nothing, there's no time is the animal out of our hands, out of your farmer's hands. And as far as like what's going on the farm now it's fall so we have a calving season and that's one of my favorite times on the farm of course the calves are being born. We have started, we have started an AI program artificial insemination not artificial intelligence and that has really upped our game with the genetics and genetics are super important with with what we do. It's right up there with the you know the health of the animal. Our son is an animal science major so we have a full-time animal science major on the farm and he's been very instrumental in helping with conditioning of our animals particularly the heifers which are first-time moms. Their body condition has to be at a certain level you know for them to become moms and that has been something a marching order that he's had and he's done a really good job and our other son is a business major and he is slowly taking over my job so which is a part of our farming practices utilizing all of our children.

14:03So that's been a great source of pride for me as well. Great Sylvia you want to tell us a little bit about the farming practices at Green Door Gourmet? Sure so when we started out of course we were very small we were doing everything organically because we were so small that was the only way to do it and we absolutely fell in love with doing those organic practices. We became certified organic and we stayed certified organic with the USDA for five years and then we realized that our customers had built such a level of trust with us that instead of involving basically 700 pages of paperwork every year we would drop the certified organic from the government and just farm in an organic practice and invite people to come out to our farm and that really helped us build the agritourism. We have an open door policy we're happy to show you around our farm and tell you about what we're doing at any point in time that led us into the next phase if you will working a little bit with some biodynamics but also focusing first and foremost now on regenerative agriculture and bringing that level of making sure we're doing the right rotations that we are not farming the same thing over and over again just as Leanne is doing rotational grazing we're doing rotational crops we're bringing some different grain we're working with other neighboring farms to to make sure that we're doing exactly what needs to be done to bring soil health and making that first and foremost onto our farm so that's super important to us we also added a manufacturing component into what we're doing because we saw that there was so much potential for waste one tiny bruise on something meant it was not salable from a consumer standpoint so we built a manufacturing kitchen where we can take over stock if you will or slightly damaged or bruise something and turn it into fantastic

16:04things that we can have in our farm store and and try to become as close to zero waste as possible on our farm and strive to be a very customer focused entity in in what we do that is as important as how we take care of the soil is taking care of our employees and taking care of our customers as well that's kind of how we do it awesome Krista tell us a little bit about sweeter days and what you're doing there yeah gosh sylvia is living the dream i would iterate a lot of what sylvia said about the soil health and all of that i mean i just think that's so important to having a sustainable farm i would say we're we're a little bit different so we really uh first of all we're on land that we lease so we own across the street from our farm but we don't actually own the the land that our farm is on so that takes just a huge commitment to the work to not own the land that we're on but i would say you know land access is such a huge issue right now especially with young farmers so we really started with like no resources we were very young and kind of just dove right in so we actually built our entire farm by hand at first we broadforked and used shovels and our backs and built a pretty big farm that way we finally did get some uh equipment in and about year three and got a walk behind tractor year three and then this year have just finally invested in um in a tractor which i love so i would just reiterate what what sylvia said i mean we're we're farming on about an acre and a half to two acres at most so the name of the game for us is really soil health to make sure that when we're turning over beds repeatedly we're really able i mean you see it when you're on that small of a scale the sins that you uh did last season are coming back to get you this season if you were not um really focusing on soil health so um we are constantly trying to add compost we're trying to decrease our fertilizer use also we do use some organic fertilizer um i would reiterate what sylvia said

18:09we have never been certified organic but would say that our practices are far surpassing that it really is an issue of time and money to get certified organic for us and just didn't feel worth it although similarly we really invite anybody to come out to our farm and i would say are inspired to grow really sustainably because of the customers we have we have customers who have been with us for five years who were pregnant the first year that they were with us and now we're feeding their children and i think that really pushes us to make sure that we're doing the best we can for the food that we're providing for them we have also started a little flower production and i think that has really helped planting some perennial flowers and and hedgerows to really support native habitat we put in a ton my husband loves birds so we put in a ton of nesting boxes and really try to decrease decrease pests in that way we invested in some animals to try to make our own compost and then we have even before tractors invested in some high tunnels and we just like absolutely love high tunnels i think they've really really supported our production in really incredible ways so i think that's a little bit about what we do thank you you've all come at this from very different backgrounds and you know had to find resources to either learn about the practices that you're employing on your farms or you know kind of catch up to speed to what maybe maybe the generations prior to you had been doing on the farm and was that presenting your farm in a way that was viable for the future health of of the soil and of the land and of the community around you and you know i hear a lot about networking and community building in the farm community and resource development silvia you've served as a as a launching pad for a lot of young farmers and a training ground where folks gather and you know do networking meetings and host

20:14their activities and go to beekeeping classes you've seen a lot of faces over the years as you've played host to this tell us about that journey and why why you've really positioned green door gourmet to uh to be a place where farmers can come to network and learn and then maybe dig into some of the labor challenges that your farm has faced at the same time well modern farming is situated inside the community that is the only way small to moderate farms are are going to survive that is a part of that whole integral sustainability and for us being a larger parcel of land inside the nashville city limits dealing with some of those challenges and figuring that out we thought what a better way to help the community than to begin with the people who are growing our food as many people probably listen to this know one percent of our population is now producing the food in our country and people are so far removed from it so if there's an opportunity for inspiration or knowledge education has to be the key we've been very lucky to host a lot of different field trips and also farm gatherings and that sort of thing to help people understand that it has to start with farming we all have to eat and that has been the driving force in what we try to do with the community if we don't have farmers we don't have food and that may sound like an old cliche but it's very very true and it also is important that we think about from the labor standpoint not a lot of people that one percent are willing to commit to do the type of work that it takes to be a farmer it is hot it is cold it is uh full of bugs full of mud all the things that most people say the proverbial e i don't want to do that anymore it's physically demanding

22:17it is mentally taxing when you never know what mother nature is going to give you so the opportunity for us to share even it's even if it's for a day of volunteering if you're thinking about being a farmer you probably know if this is going to be for you it is not for the faint of heart so if we are able to just give people a sneak peek into what that looks like challenge them a little bit and if they are interested continue on that's great we actually went from being very small to having about 35 on farm employees and now we're back small again so as we're figuring out how to deal with some of the labor challenges and issues that the pandemic and just finding what agriculture pay can pay those challenges we've decided that small is not a bad thing small but mighty and efficient is very good Krista as a new farmer you know you mentioned earlier that it's quite a journey to get access to land and also finding the resources to mentor you and you know learn how to farm what has that been like for you who did you turn to and then what advice would you have for the future farmers on the call who are looking to get started yeah gosh that's a good question I mean like I said at the beginning I think I'm a Nashville native so I'm really lucky and I think wouldn't have been able to do what we did without the resources and support system that I have and we have here in Nashville and I think we have an incredible farming community here which I think is really unique and beautiful and has not always been the case everywhere I've lived so I really love our farming community here I didn't talk about this much at the beginning but I would say my sort of support network is really the

24:20Nashville food project and has been sort of leaning on that community I have always had an off-farm job I think will continue to probably have an off-farm job for a long time so you know I think that community has really been what I've leaned on through these hard times of beginning farming I would say I guess I have a lot of things I wish I had thought about when we started and like I said I've said it a couple times we really just jumped in like we were just like ready to farm and I think really had sort of a romanticized I mean despite the fact that we had both been farming and both been outside a lot and had done a lot I think we had really sort of a romanticized idea of what the day-to-day looks like and you know I have this joke like really what we're doing is rubber banding vegetables all day we do very little farming but yeah I guess I would just say you know like understanding the realistic the reality of owning a farm is so important like talking to farmers who have been in it for a really long time and learning from them working on other farms and being ready to like work really really hard because ultimately that's what it comes down to is your labor and time and love for it is what you're going to put in and what you're going to get out I think you know planning ahead of time just like really having the right piece of land and and really thinking about the most efficient way to build up that piece of land is incredibly important for somebody who's getting into farming and then I think just like with everything in this life resilience is like the the most important skill that you can have as a farmer because there are really hard days and there are really good days and you do the hard days to get to the good days so I think that's a very small amount of

26:25what I've learned in five years and I'm sure I have a lot more to learn that's great you should write a beginning farmer little guidebook because those little nuggets are critical to someone just making it through that first year which is so difficult as as you all know Leanne you were sharing a little bit about how your farm is preparing to hand down to the next generation you know was that the expectation all along did your kids have an option to to opt in or out of the farm and then you know what is their plan B if someone decides to take a different path well you know I've been in farming now 15 years I know this sounds mauling but the the exit strategy is death I mean yes our children had of course options they could farm or they could farm but they my three kids love the farm my husband has two children so we have five together the other two are very successful in their careers and I think a lot of that has to do with the work ethic that they learn from from farming from living on a farm being exposed to that kind of work on you know I know Sylvia if you were on a dairy farm that I have a huge amount of respect that that's you know milking twice a day every day 365 days a year we have friends that have dairy farms and you know the first vacation he took he was 40 something years old they went to he and his wife went to Hawaii's first vacation he took he couldn't play sports it was farming all the time so the family farm in in trying to keep a family farm a generational farm is very difficult with the increase in land costs I mean if you think about it even if you can pass your land

28:29down and you put those systems in place in we have land in Williamson County and then your kids may go you know they can sell the land and make make money and in instead of farming luckily they're they love farming and that they have a passion in it it is difficult though to navigate that and we're continue to navigate that there's a lot of the most smarter people than we are of course that can help us figure out how to hand the farm down but if any of you guys have started that process it's it's not an easy process with it's interesting though because each of our children have a gift and a strength that the you know together it will be they will be able to continue this with our daughter running the processing plant which is a huge component to what we do and then our both our boys on the farm it it makes up for you know a good business plan for them and of course the option is yes there is an option you know you sell the farm and you do something else but we are trying to put systems in place that they'll be able to keep the farm we have a slew of grandchildren and they're interested in in playing on the farm and riding horses and throwing dirt so that might segue into a career in farming and I really like you know when I talk to young farmers it's important for them to know that it is really tough work and like Krista and Sylvia both said I mean being resilient and the weather is a huge factor you know it's it can get really cold and it can get really hot and and it can be very uncomfortable but it can be the most intrinsically rewarding work and I speak for myself and I'm sure the other panelists these lovely ladies can agree because they wouldn't be doing it it is the most intrinsically rewarding

30:32work I have ever done maybe except for parenting so we're we're just thrilled that we're able to continue farming and I was very fortunate that my husband and my husband's family had this gorgeous land that we could take advantage of. Well the last 20 months have have been difficult for for everyone and in particular for for farmers we've we've been up against supply chain issues we've been up against you know closures in commerce and navigating how to find find our customers when everyone was at home so let's let's go around around the panel starting with Sylvia and and talk about how the COVID pandemic impacted your operations and and if there was a silver lining in there for for your farm you know what was it and and what's what's coming out of the pandemic for your farm?

31:36Pandemic for us was a blessing and a curse it was 50-50 split where it impacted all the agritourism 5 000 students couldn't come for their field trip education no agritourism events at all an increased demand March a year ago was the the panic of oh my gosh there is nothing anywhere there won't be anything we've got to fill every freezer non-demand kind so the panic buying had set in and people couldn't find things in groceries and they wanted fresh soap people that we had never seen before now showing up to our farm hoping for something and with that that also brought out the best and the worst in humanity as well for the people who um were not prepared to deal with the pandemic um there were tempers and people not wanting to wait in line and not wanted to follow the rules and for us being a small farm we have to figure out how to keep people safe and what we have to do to make sure that happens so there was a lot of that oh my gosh how do we figure this out dealing with the with the public as a as a necessary business but then there was also the beautiful points of you would see uh you know a family drive up to the farm and they have the back seat full of kids and they're trying to figure out how they're going to piece together food because now they they can't work and they hand you four different credit cards and ask you to spread it you know have ten dollars on this card and maybe five dollars on this and so they can get enough groceries to last something fresh for the kids and then you figure out as a farmer okay what can I do you come back with a little bag of slightly bruised or damaged apples so the kids can have an extra treat because they're not going to get school lunch lunch is not there anymore so um the weight of that for farmers I don't think a lot of people thought about the impact of trying to make sure that our community can be fed so that was that was a hard challenge

33:40for us is not wanting to turn anyone away how do you spread the love and spread the food in the right way for for everyone to be able to sustain during that time and have fresh healthy food not just um you know click and have something delivered that was a pack of Twinkies so we wanted to make sure people were getting good nutrition as well so that was that was a big challenge for us navigating all of that and trying to keep the integrity of saying well I know you've had to cancel an event and how do we carry that forward and try to help you with that instead of saying well you know sorry your loss so a lot of um a lot of issues surrounding that impacted our farm as well but I do hope that our customers saw us in a different light as as a partner and not just someone who is in it for what I can sell to you but a community partner that would care about me. Krista how about you? Yeah um I would say 50-50 split is a good way to say it um you know being in farming in that moment was such a it was really intense because you know you have a business model that you think is um viable and all of a sudden that kind of gets flipped on its head meanwhile I think it really was just can you meet the demand because there were people sort of knocking I mean we had people pulling up to our farm we are not really a public farm so much we're at the end of a dead end road and uh you know people are showing up like here to get produce that you've never met before um and I think uh realizing for me at least uh you know I think we all sort of understand that food is essential as farmers but really realizing sort of the impact of a really fragile food system and how easily that can get kind of flipped on its head and all of the sudden you know this thing that you already knew was essential is becoming incredibly essential to

35:41so many in our community um so I think it was really this this question of how do we meet the demand and kind of build a new business model overnight to try and sell all this food and we were really lucky that we had a really incredible spring harvest that year so um that was really our biggest our biggest learning was uh changing changing everything overnight and how do you do that and and um and we were able to do that we actually ended up investing in some software that allows people to customize their csa boxes so we had you know you have your sort of like people who are csa members who understand that but we were having a lot of new people who had like never bought local food before and so we really wanted to make sure that they were able to get the food that they wanted uh from our farm so we did end up investing in that um and really you know focused on we're very lucky in that we have diversified streams of income so while all of the restaurants um closed down we were able to just really sort of focus on these individuals but also like our heart was aching for all of these like incredible customers that we've had and like the really horrible heart a couple years that restaurants have had um i think talking about silver silver linings um i mean i think last year was just sort of an aha moment for a lot of people as it as it comes to food system and understanding um where your food comes from and that it's not maybe always going to be in the grocery store just because it always has been um so i i think just sort of that that realization was really incredible to watch in a lot of ways and to be a farmer during that time in particular and be able to fill that need was really incredible um and then i think you know i also live in this world of

37:42food access all day at the national food project and i think uh seeing people sort of band together in a in a way like we weren't able to be together but there was this sort of sense of like overwhelming community that i feel sort of built up last year and supporting each other and helping each other through a really hard time um and i feel like that has stayed in a lot of ways uh we've been able to keep customers that we got last year who had never bought from local farms um and i think people just sort of realize these issues that are so intrinsic to how our systems are built um that aren't just going away overnight so i feel like that aha moment and that like kind of sense of community building despite not being able to be together were sort of my silver linings from last year i think you might be muted tasha i was just giving you big props um i know it was a big challenge to be a meat producer uh during the pandemic uh you know not just um from the restaurant supply um issues that that your farm was facing but also the processing component tell us a little bit about uh the unique challenges of your farm during the pandemic and um some of the ways that you guys have begun to overcome that yeah so um you know when sylvia was talking about the march i mean it was like tuesday march 12th uh we lost 80 to 85 percent of the business the folks we were farming with had to close their doors because we we pretty much you know work with the small independent restaurants and um and that was uh very uh i mean just tragic and i and i think i shared with you guys i was in atlanta on a i say tuesday everything happens on a tuesday i was in atlanta and um the restaurants i was delivering to i found out they closed down

39:49via instagram so um i remember calling i was on the phone with our team which is our family and uh they're like we're going to open the farm store tomorrow and we opened it up on a wednesday and um it was very uh i don't know humbling is the right word but the support of the community and of course as chrissa and we all remember there was a the food the food supply was dismal at best you know the the lack of food at the grocery stores the food that was there was i don't know exactly what it was if any of you guys saw it um in the panic um and all all of the those concerns that our community had and they came out and supported us at the farm store i mean cars were lying down the road and we too had people just showing up um and i what the story that silvia said does resonate too and you have folks showing up with you know their family in their car and and not the resources that perhaps they need to to nourish their family and i and i think most all farmers because we're so blessed with a bounty you know um you you share and um the the community the community really got us through and continue to uh you know it it's still a struggle uh you know with the increased um input costs for all of us um you know labor fuel uh if if you're putting any uh crops in i know corn's expensive so we continue to to see on the supply chain issues are continued to go on and on the so was bear creek farms and we were not diversified i mean i i've told talked to folks and there was no business model that ever suggested you need to be prepared for

41:53a pandemic you know we thought because we had diversified in different restaurants and different markets you know who's going to lose all their all you know who's going to lose 20 restaurants in a day well it happened so it did what it did have us rethink our business plan we didn't have a retail presence we have a little bit better retail presence we have a little bit more of online presence that's still an area for us to work on in agritourism that isn't something that we have either so we learned the hard way that we had not diversified efficiently and uh and we're building some new rungs on the ladder for that on the processing side page immediately started reaching out to other farmers because with the tragedy that happened in the pandemic it opened doors up for farmers to sell food to the community because there wasn't any and it also enabled you know because the bear creek farms like we didn't have it the business to harvest our animals so we just you know we just will continue feeding them i have a policy we don't harvest unless it's sold and so they got pretty big um so other farmers had the opportunity to come to cherry meat company harvester animals we had farmers offering to buy our animals for you know like if you have anything hanging we can help you sell it i mean the community came together it's christa and silvia both and i mean it's a very supportive community and we had the opportunity to help other farmers uh get their beef and pork and lamb to the community so that was very poignant to to be able to do that and that also showed us that we had a an opportunity at cherry meat company for an expansion because that's a an era of very difficult processing is is limited in our in middle tennessee there's just a handful of small processors

43:55and we're one of them and so we took uh the opportunity to apply for a grant and um uh expand almost double the size of cherry meat company it's still a still under construction i mean we're able to still work but you know the the other half of the processing facility should open up we have a year's waiting list um so that that's a real need there and so we're hoping that um as the community has embraced local uh agriculture i think more so the last year and a half because of the pandemic it you guys we've talked about a silver lining with the expansion of our processing facility i think we're going to be able to really help get uh more more local food into the community i hope you did a great job tasha before you move on the uh for the silver lining i guess the most important thing the silver lining for me was knowing what i did not want to do anymore that was just as important as knowing what i wanted to do but knowing what i didn't want to do just like leanne was saying she probably didn't want to go out and uh bust ice off water troughs for the cows uh i think we all learned what we we didn't want to do as much as what we wanted to do so i just wanted to put that in here well and that goes in line with some other conversations that i've been having uh with with folks across the state was just talking to keith harrison uh with the tennessee department of ag last week and uh we were talking about this grant program that came out of uh out of federal funding that was passed down to the state of tennessee that i believe you know leanne's farm benefited from i know when i was at the nashville farmers market we also benefited from that um that grant program to try to uh improve and innovate within the food system to um to create efficiencies in the local supply chain uh it sounds like more of that funding is uh is coming our way in tennessee

46:01in the near future and we're talking about you know 40 to 50 million dollars of investment that the tennessee department of ag is hoping to to put in the hands of farmers over the course of the next few months uh this this going off script a little bit but uh very quickly you know uh how could farms tap into this funding uh to innovate to improve marketing uh to utilize technology to create efficiencies you know do you have any anything that you want to share with the group uh as as we near the end of our conversation today leanne i'm going to pick on you first yeah so uh i definitely recommend for anyone that's in farming uh or or looking to uh to get into farming to to go to that and i don't have that link it's pretty easy to to find to navigate through the grant system of the grant program you know sometimes these grants will offer i know there's a farmer in fayetteville like they they were able to get like a large uh uh walk-in cooler and freezer on their farm so you you don't you really don't think about some of these other auxiliary expenses that you have or how you know maybe it's not buying a new farm or a tractor but it it can help keep uh so like you say you can get your animals processed or if you can get it you have your harvest in and you have this area to keep it cool or frozen if it's a meat product you know they can help pay for that um they're also uh and i don't have all the particulars about the grant program but they're also offering for if you wanted to open a what they call a custom processing facility where you could harvest animals for your family and other people's family not for resale there's the grant money for that and i know farmers that are taking advantage of that and getting it really close to usda in the event they can you know want to uh pull the

48:04trigger on that no pun intended um but there's a very a lot of grant opportunities and we've been remiss uh oftentimes not following up on those you know you get busy and the deadline is like but do uh you know do your research and look and see what is available even the ag extension program has matching funds that's how we got we got the watering system um you know we fenced off our creeks that was part of the the deal which we needed to do and we want to be sure that our water supply for humans is is intact and the integrity is still there and so you know that was a a good deal for us sure we got that fence and then we have this incredible watering system that we were able to take advantage of some grant programs for that so i don't have all the particulars on that one but i do know there's a lot of money that's going to become available and i think on you know the tennessee farmers need to to you know utilize that and and even you know new farmers can check into that and see you know it's a good way to get some revenue started up because you know christy as you know it's um those equipment that tractor's not inexpensive is it so yeah definitely uh look into that we had just we had just received an email and i'll be glad to forward that to to anybody um from the ag department on on some additional grant money that's becoming available for tennessee farms thank you so much leanne um we've just got a few minutes left and i i've got to get this last question in before we open up the chat room i know it's something that's important to all of us uh on this panel today uh you know in 2020 10 percent of american households were reported food insecure and that means they don't know where the next meal is coming from uh they don't have the cash to go to the grocery store uh or to go to the the

50:04farmers market or to find the farm stand um and you know i think all of us uh live in our hearts where we believe that there there's a world with uh access to fresh healthy food for everybody um so christ i'm gonna i'm gonna throw this softball up to you um you know knowing that you're wearing two hats today and and you've worked in food security and worked in farming um you know how can farms play a role to improve access to fresh healthy food for all in in our community yeah that is such a good question and i think it's a it's a complicated question but it's also so simple in a lot of ways um you use that statistic 10 percent um i think in nashville it may have been a little bit higher um specifically i think that what we talk about is just even just lacking access to proper nutrition i mean maybe you have the access but what you're getting is not is not um the best and you know as we all know here i think food is your health your food is your health um so i think that's just important but a statistic that we often use at the food project as well is that 40 percent of all food in the united states goes to waste um so when you line those statistics up um it really is this access of it's an issue of access and distribution um so how do we take this food that is literally being thrown away um and you saw that at the beginning of the pandemic you saw milk farmers throwing all of their milk away because they're dumping it out because school schools weren't opening and that was their their outlet um so it's this issue of how do we create access uh for the people who don't have access i think and farmers play a role in that for sure um i would say the food project you know we we use a lot of food from farmers and we're really lucky to have a relationship with a lot of local farmers that

52:04when there is an excess or you know sylvia's talking about these apples that have a little blemish on them we are happy to use those and make them into applesauce and it's just as good um so i think you know finding your local food bank and or um organization who's willing to take their native food is a huge piece of that for local farms um and i'll also just throw props out to society of saint andrew who will actually come and glean right off of your farm um so maybe you have a bunch of kale and you're about to turn it into uh back into the soil but uh there's still a bunch of food there and they'll actually come out and harvest it for you and then give it to somebody like the food project um so i think there are ways that we can really decrease our food waste um as local farmers and get that back into the community before we put in the compost i think it's it's such a uh we do live in this abundance as farmers of just sort of i don't want to say taking for granted but just sort of like having so much food that it really is easy to compost it um and i think if we can get away from that and really find the outlets for it then there are people who are working on that access side of things that's fantastic you know we we have a few minutes left and we want to make sure that uh that we open up our chat room and as we do that um you know it sounds a little bit like we've gone back to the future with with farming here uh you know a lot of the things that y'all have talked about are things that my grandmother would have talked about uh who grew up on a large dairy farm in Sumner County um you know many of the practices are the things that i've i watched her practice on her kitchen garden you know three acre plot behind her house um and it's it really goes back to honor and respect for the land and and guided by stewardship principles that um uh that that

54:08protect the land for the now and the present and the future so i i want to thank you all for the hard work that you're doing um you know the the future is is hopeful and optimistic here in middle tennessee at least with uh with the three of you at the helm of of farming in our community um and i'm sure that some of our panelists have some questions that they want to throw at you so we're going to check over to the chat room here if anybody has a question um feel free to uh to put it in chat here here someone did actually text me a question which uh which is awesome um and so the question that was texted to me was um uh how are farms uh well and it just came in through the chat room too uh how are farms responding to climate change uh and um how is your farm specifically addressing it so i'm going to throw that one over to sylvia for a quick answer well i think the most important thing we can do as farmers is know that um that we do with weather every day and as we see these changing weather weather weather patterns and climate change in general we may have to adjust what we're planting when we're planting it um using more hoop house and greenhouse growing so that we're able to protect from humidity and bugs and different things so i think it's using all the tools in your arsenal but also knowing you may just have to adjust to growing more asian style greens instead of cold weather greens so those are components that farmers have in their toolbox and also since a lot of climate change has been caused by large volume farming the more we can again work on having our smaller scale farms um being good stewards of our land versus just turning it all over to be conventional agriculture i think we're going to see a better

56:10reduction in those emissions and everything too another question that came in that's related to that uh i think it's a follow-up and a good one at that is um is anyone looking at carbon farming you've got you know all of these large corporations in america making commitments to become carbon neutral by uh by a certain time frame it are any of your farms looking at uh carbon farming at this time we're not yeah so you know i was just in a room uh last week again with a large number of farmers there were probably 100 farmers in the room and no one raised their hand when that question came up either i think it's too early um you know the the systems aren't set up for how it's going to be regulated um you know they're asking for long-term leases on on something that there's no process for right now so um you know i do think that that is in the future um very near uh and you know it there's a lot of kinks that need to get worked out and a lot of um knowledge and understanding that has to happen within the farm community and and even the corporate community or what's the real value of that and and how does that value translate to protecting farms well i want to thank everybody for uh for your time today uh thank you to our panelists i've learned so much from them in the past few weeks just getting ready for this call um highly encourage you to find these farms uh you know find them on their websites on their social media at their place of business whether they're at farmers markets or a farm stand uh on their farm make sure that we're supporting them and uh and i also want to thank laddam's nashville for uh for putting this on today uh as part of the series that's gone on throughout the year and again to the women's fund of the community foundation of middle tennessee please remember to uh to take the survey as it comes out to you later this afternoon and uh every time someone

58:12submits a survey that's one more registrant for our awesome prizes uh and those winners will be announced once the survey closes so uh with that said we uh we appreciate spending the afternoon with you and we look forward to uh continuing to do so in the future thank you thank you thank you bye everybody thanks bye all right thank you to you the listener for listening and thank you to laddam the scafia nashville and all of the farmers we got to hear today some very very interesting stuff going on right there i hope that you enjoyed it we have got two more episodes we've got a wednesday show this week a wednesday rewind and then we've got a breaking news kind of a fun episode coming up thursday it is a secret show and it's gonna be a bonus episode cannot wait to have this one go live so a little teaser there for you hope that you guys are doing wonderful hope you're being safe go get vaccinated or go get your booster and i love you guys bye