Food Forest Coalition of Chattanooga

09/09/2025

If you live in or near Flintstone, Georgia (which lies exactly due south by a mile or two from St. Elmo in Chattanooga) think about joining our Monday evening work sessions at the community farm and food forest behind Chattanooga Valley Church of the Nazarene, we got started yesterday continuing the work of getting the garden ready for fall and winter:

09/07/2025

Despite our one day rain delay we had good turnout this afternoon for our garden work at the Chattanooga Civic Center at Mountainside, refreshing the existing beds, pulling a ton of grass and setting in native perennial flowers and fruiting plants, prepping for other plantings come fall and winter. Very excited to see what happens in this space in the coming months!

09/07/2025

Check out this interview- and update on plans for new growing spaces at the Chattanooga Civic Center at Mountainside- with our director, Jonathan Parkes Allen, and with our friend, collaborator, and neighbor Lotus Chaney:

09/06/2025

Due to thunderstorms we've rescheduled this work day to tomorrow afternoon!

09/05/2025

If you're available tomorrow morning we'd love to have a little extra help for this garden (re)-build: we'll be refreshing some existing beds, starting some new spaces, and prepping sites for fruit tree planting this winter- an extra pickup truck could come in handy for hauling over some soil and woodchips. If you miss this one, don't worry- we'll be doing a bigger work day at this new affiliate site later this year, with, hopefully, more to come!

09/05/2025

Following up on our environmental history reading group last spring we will be offering monthly (potentially bi-monthly depending on everyone's availability and energy!) sessions on the theory, practice, and history of agroecology, an agricultural approach that "applies ecological and social concepts and principles to the design and management of food and agricultural systems." The practice and theory of agroecology emerged in the Global South, and as part of this series we will be learning about amazing agroecologial work that has been done and is going on all over the world, exploring how we can learn and practically apply the resulting ideas and practices while realizing solidarity with people and movements around the world.

We will most likely meet the second Thursday of each month, at rotating locations, outdoors while the weather cooperates; each session will also be a potluck meal, feel free to bring a dish or drink to share. If you plan on attending it would be great if you could shoot us a DM beforehand, but walk-ins are of course welcome!

09/03/2025

What started off as a one-off event for building and painting signs for community agriculture is now a once a month recurring gathering- we'll continue to meet the first Tuesday of each month to construct and paint garden and food forest infrastructure for as long as needs remain!

08/31/2025

Starting this week we'll be facilitating weekly morning sessions in the St Elmo Community Food Forest, volunteer coordinator Lauren will be on hand to lead in whatever tasks need to be done week to week so as to maintain and expand the food forest's productivity. If you'd like to come by earlier we'll have weekly tasks posted on the kiosk so you're welcome to start on them; if you'd just like to hang out and/or browse the food forest that would be great too!

08/30/2025

This morning we cleaned out and transported the contents of beds from the old Neema Garden- which unfortunately has had to close down due to forthcoming development- to a new garden build at one of the Chatt Foundation's permanent supportive housing site, a little warm out but we got it done!

08/26/2025

Coming up THIS SATURDAY: we are partnering with the CHATT Foundation to help build new garden beds for residents at their permanent supportive housing site- residents have already been gardening in what space they could find, so we're going to help them out by transporting some material from the closing-down Neema Garden and building elevated beds that should help with accessibility issues while expanding the residents' growing space. If you have access to a pickup truck we could really use your help transporting material- meet us at Neema at 9 or thereabouts. If you'd just like to help out on-site, meet at the CHATT Foundation's main location and we'll carpool over, as we are not publishing the housing location address out of respect for the residents' privacy.

If you plan on attending, it would be helpful to fill out the volunteer form: https://chattfoundation.galaxydigital.com/need/detail/?need_id=1097348. Thanks so much!

06/28/2025

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05/28/2025