Crabtree Farms takes the concept of urban farming to brand new heights
With the food scene in the South booming to uncharted heights over the past several years, lots of focus is being paid to the exquisite natural ingredients available in America’s new culinary hotspot.
The days of Southern food being implicated solely as deep-fried, heart-clogging junk are dwindling quickly. A new age of chefs, artisans, and farmers have inadvertently become trailblazers as they begin the journey to develop our place on the global scale.
This reincarnation has caused the need for locality in ingredients and “purveyorship”. People are tiring of the monotony of unhealthy food options, of endless rows of soulless chain restaurants serving the same five or six frozen dishes. They are pushing back against large-scale monocropping and unkind animal slaughter factories.
A new desire is igniting to rekindle relationships with the South of the past, the food of our ancestors, and the recipes of our great grandparents. Enter Crabtree Farms: a true bastion of locally sourced ingredients.
When I arrived for my first visit last year I thought for sure that I was lost. This isn’t the first time that my conniving GPS has led me astray. But there it is, a full-fledged farm right in the middle of Chattanooga’s Clifton Hills neighborhood. The scene is ambrosial. It’s like stepping into a different world, the South of the past.
A two-story barn, which serves as an office space and produce storage facility sits at the head of the farm. There are three greenhouses and two hoop houses. Of the 22 acres, only four are currently used to actually grow food.
This number strikes me as a surprising statistic. How do you manage to grow 100 different heirloom focused varieties of fruits and vegetables on only four acres? It makes me wonder how much more I could do with my modest yard.
As Executive Director, Sara McIntyre knows all of these statistics with enthusiasm, but her real passion explodes with ardent excitement when I ask her to talk about what Crabtree means to her. She began her life in the farming world as a student in California where she joined a CSA and started a garden at the middle school where she was teaching.
“I came to love local food through the lens of ecology,” she explains. “I was impacted by a class about carbon footprints. The three biggest footprints are coffee, meat, and dairy. I was vegetarian for many years back in my poor college kid days as a result.”
She sidesteps to mention the newest addition to the farm. The Evelyn Center is a 2,500 square foot wooden-clad building with a full demonstration kitchen, covered porch, event area, roll-up garage door and two restrooms. It’s available for rent and is a great way to integrate the feeling of a working farm into special events. Since its completion in 2014, the building has hosted weddings, cooking classes, business meetings, and birthday parties.
Following the path of most employees, Sara began in 2011 as a volunteer. As a new Chattanoogan, she found a home at Crabtree.
“I always felt welcomed here and embraced by the farm,” she remembers fondly. “As a transplant, it helped me develop a sense of place. While working in the fields, the seasonal rhythms of this new place became embodied. I felt like I had found my tribe. The folks at Crabtree emboldened and supported my sense of self and love of food and nature. Seven years later, Crabtree is still that for me.”
Among the many ambitions of the farm, Crabtree takes immense pride in its education programming. Their approach is one of immersion.
“I want to make food not so hard; gardening can seem really scary,” she says. “We want to make it not scary. At the farm, we take your hand and literally put it in the dirt. None of our current farmers had any background in agriculture before they started here. Now, they lead groups, answer questions, farm like champs, and are always learning.
“One of the great strengths of Crabtree is we can take you where you are, follow your curiosity, and support you on your learning journey. I want to take the big ideas of food and farming and make them accessible without being too erudite in the process. The farm is an empowering place where folks can be comfortable with vulnerability. If you’re willing to say that you don’t know how, or are curious as to why we are doing something, you’ll get much more from the experience.”
Crabtree Farms considers education important at any age. They have programs for pre-K and up. This year, the farm will host around 2,000 students on various field trips. They also travel to schools and give presentations on farming education and host cooking classes for children at Chattanooga’s Creative Discovery Museum.
Crabtree has an extensive volunteer program and they host classes and workshops for adults where they welcome all experience and interest levels. McIntyre sums up the experience of being involved with elegant poise: “It’s a matriculation space. Volunteers come here and connect with us and with the farm.” Sounds simple enough.
As we sit in Sara’s office my excitement about Crabtree takes off. Everyone here speaks my language. From my travels and life experiences, food has become a strong passion. A place like this can bring people to the realization that being involved and in love with food can lead to a fulfilling and healthy life.
Sara goes on to tell me about the soul behind the different programs at the farm. “Our programs cause people to pause and notice themselves as eaters in the environment. Our current food system is so easy. It enables us to be consumers without being involved with our food. We can just eat the food that appears in grocery stores or restaurants and never pay a bit of attention to what we’re putting into our bodies.
“Instead, Crabtree lets us be present as both consumers and producers. Every person is in a different space with their food consumption. Why do I eat? is a question that people don’t often think about, but it’s important. What I eat literally builds my physical body. As with anything, if I use higher quality materials, the better the end product.”
Over the next several years, Crabtree Farms plans to double their producing acreage. Through efficient land use and smart building practices, the farm will be able to produce in greater variety and quantity. Currently, the farm provides produce to some of Chattanooga’s leading restaurants. St. John’s, The Flying Squirrel, Easy Bistro, Terra Mae, and Niedlov’s Breadworks all have strong symbiotic relationships with the farm.
Executive Chef Rebecca Baron of St. John’s is a leading proponent of Crabtree Farms. She was nice enough to give me a few minutes out of her busy schedule. “My favorite things that we get from Crabtree are the microgreens that Andy and Mike painstakingly grow for us,” she says.
“They also started doing some really cool spinach, which isn’t actually a spinach at all. It’s called Malabar spinach and it grows as a vine so you get these amazing little curly tendrils of crisp greenness. It grows really well in the heat. I’m so happy that we have a farm so close to us in the city and that we’re able to have such a close relationship with our farmers.”
Through increased production, places like Crabtree Farms will be able to continue this tradition, which will lay the groundwork for more and more chefs and restaurateurs to open amazing places in our lovely city.
With this added production, the farm will pursue their goals of community involvement to an even greater level. What better way to support this goal of amazing local food than stuffing your face with a pig roast at the farm on September 30th?
To support their education program, once a year, the farm holds their special “100 Dinner” to celebrate the season’s prosperity. Here, some of the top chefs in Chattanooga come together to create a truly special menu for the 100 guests lucky enough to acquire a ticket. Think 9+ courses, a chill inducing bluegrass band, a gorgeous outdoor setting, and some fantastic community-driven company.
Crabtree Farms is a sustainable agricultural teaching and learning farm. It’s a local, small-scale farm and therefore relies heavily on the greater Chattanooga community for support. I encourage everyone to take the short drive and spend a few hours (or even a few minutes) visiting.
The staff is incredibly knowledgeable and can point you in the right direction for any questions that you might have. Think gardening isn’t for you? Too much work? The farm hosts two CSA’s, one that runs May through November and a second that is four weeks long between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Donations can be made atcrabtreefarms.org. Follow them on Instagram and Facebook. Be sure to check out their Fall Plant Sale and Festival on September 16th and again April 5th through 8th to get ready for a bountiful summer.
Get involved with your food, your health, and your community!