Episode 2652

- [Narrator] From the farm to the table, Matt Kerske introduces us to Nashville Grown, a non-profit connecting farmers to wholesale buyers to create a strong local food economy. Then, Marty DeHart highlights the historic and the extraordinary of this public garden of the Middle Tennessee Iris Society. Join us. First, enabling farmers to farm, and creative chefs to obtain the freshest of ingredients.

- [Matt] As the city of Nashville grows, so too does its need for locally produced agriculture. I'm really excited today because we get to go behind the scenes at a local non-profit that sort of acts as a food hub, connecting farmers and chefs and supermarket owners, making sure that the slow food movement continues to grow in our city. And I'm here with founder Alan Powell of Nashville Grown. Alan, this space is pretty incredible, lot of stuff going on, flurry of activity, especially at this time of the year. You have shipments coming and going, and all, and tell me a little bit about kind of the founding moments of Nashville Grown and how all this came to be.

- Well, 12 or so years ago, I was working for a farmer that a lot of people know, because he is featured on this show so often, Jeff Poppen, the Barefoot Farmer. I was working directly for him and helping him distribute vegetables in his CSA program.

- [Matt] Okay.

- And through that process, I started making connections with farmers and chefs both. And so when Jeff encouraged me to get out and try and make inroads to sell some more of his product out into the world, I started calling the chefs I knew, and it was a very natural process, it started with Jeff's stuff and a couple of restaurants. And then, I took on another farm, and then the next year after that, another one. And then, this girl came into town, talking about this concept called a food hub,

- Uh-huh.

- which I hadn't heard of at the time, but she said, essentially, it's what you're already doing. It's making food more available from the local farms into either the consumer or restaurant scene. Now my business happens to be all wholesale, but that was just because that's what was lacking here in our market.

- [Matt] Right.

- But, it is a very nice little way for chefs to get access to a hundred different farms worth of products on a single website, and that, of course, means one delivery,

- Yep.

- One invoice, and one check cut.

- Right.

- And then we take care of all the legwork on the other side, we move everything around, but we also redistribute the money, so that everybody else, farmers can farm, chefs can cook, and we do all the crazy in between.

- So, you're kind of like the lubrication that keeps all this real-time food reaching from the farms locally to chefs and the supermarkets that want to work with you, in a sense, and business is good?

- [Alan] Business has been very good. We've been growing in leaps and bounds. Last year, our growth was about 150%.

- [Matt] Wow, that's huge.

- [Alan] Which is substantial, and so we are anticipating continued growth along those lines. It is a really important business. The US government now has managed to recognize how beneficial these food hubs are around the country to the local economies of all of these different places.

- [Matt] Kind of helping with legislation that kind of helps foster non-profits like this?

- [Alan] Well, the legislation is helpful, too. I mean, fortunately, farmers are considered a very respect worthy group in this community. So, it wasn't as hard to work with the legislature here, but it is true that are a lot of things that still need to be done, paving the road, like if you remember the chicken thing, a few years ago.

- Yes, policies, yeah.

- So here we are, nobody is able to raise chickens and everybody says we want to raise our backyard chickens. Well, the Food Policy Council, at the time I was on that council, we were writing white papers to do just those kinds of things. It's very much up the alley of what Nashville Grown wants to do, continue to pave the road for a more lucrative and viable farming business community, and if we can create a nice, robust local food system, we have created a great, kind of, shield against economic shock, right? So the stronger our local food economy, the better we fare if the national, or international, economy nosedives like it did in 2008. I mean, we are running what's called a consignment model for food hubs, there's lots of different models of food hubs out there in the world. And, the reason we're a consignment model is that we actually warehouse very little, right? The stuff that's in there now, came in today, and it'll be gone tomorrow.

- [Matt] Wow.

- There's no real length of time we're holding onto anything, so farmers are listing products on order days, restaurants order. The next day would be aggregation day, that's the day where either the farm brings it me, or I go out and get it from them. And then the third day would be delivery day. And so, we have these two periods twice a week. We have an order day, followed by an aggregation day, followed by a delivery day. And then we do it again.

- Wow.

- We do that twice every week, and that allows things to move very quickly, but the beauty really, when you're talking about trying to maintain freshness, if you place an order on Sunday, and Monday morning it gets harvested, picked up and delivered to me, and by Tuesday morning, it's in your hands, there is no fresher produce.

- That's right.

- Hitting any market anywhere.

- That's incredible. To be able to that much mass, that much weight of produce, all in such a short amount of time, and so, some of it comes into the cooler, does some of it go directly from the farm to the restauranteur, or is it always passed through here first?

- Well, there's definitely a series of possible exceptions, I mean, we do have sometimes farms that would like to make the delivery themselves, but most farmers want to stay on the farm, and do their thing.

- [Matt] That's right.

- And so, if they want to, if they're trying to make sure that they put a face to their farm name, and make a connection with the chef, because there are a lot things that are borne out this direct communication, and we tried very hard when we designed our business, to allow chefs and farmers to communicate without Nashville Grown getting in the way, but still utilizing all of our services, so that everybody can have their time best spent where it's best spent.

- That's right. Keeping everybody doing what they do best.

- Exactly.

- Mass producing the most, but yet, allowing everybody to just to kinda get it done at the end of the day, in a very quick fashion.

- Yes.

- Nice, nice, nice. Alan, talk to me a little bit about some of these challenges you might have with the end users being the chefs of some of these nicer restaurants, or any of the restaurants here in Nashville, and how the seasonality and the menu changing has an effect on your business here.

- Well, because our business is relying entirely on locally grown food, there are definitely limits that we tend to refer to as seasonality, so you don't expect to get a head of lettuce in the middle of July or August, grown outdoors. Most people would say that's just not gonna happen, it's gonna burn up and try and bolt, or go to seed. And so, what ends up happening is, you get people who are filling nitches, they're experimenting with season extension, using hoop houses and things like that. And then you have hydroponic growers, which have become really popular lately. And with the hydro growers, they are filling a lot of gaps that previously, were just empty, you know? So, I can now sell tomatoes in the middle of the wintertime.

- [Matt] Expanding your offerings, essentially.

- Right, so, yeah, we're now expanding our offerings which broadens out seasonality, but seasonality is a rather interesting concept for a lot people in America, because we have all been raised with this idea that we should have access to anything, all the time, when we want it.

- Uh-huh.

- And, a chef who grows up with that mindset, and has worked in a restaurant kitchen using that mindset, when they try to switch to a business like ours for a food procurement,

- [Matt] Yep.

- What they find is that they run into things that they are asking for in the wrong season.

- [Matt] In the wrong season.

- And they just have to be, mostly, educated in that we have to kind of like remind ourselves that when it's 90 degrees outside, really tender things are not likely to grow.

- Right.

- On the other hand, when it's really cold outside, you have the same kind of problem, in reverse, and what we have now, is we have people saying, well, how do I extend the season of something that kind of, so it at least it's cutting down on how few months, or how many months, it's just not available.

- Right.

- And so now, we're getting to this point where I have a lot of products that I didn't think would ever be available off season, but they are now.

- [Matt] Starting to open up?

- Yeah.

- And you're seeing chefs being able to work with you and open up their palette, and their menu to being more able to change with the seasons a little bit better, and chefs are starting to appreciate that it is local, but it does have a seasonal availability?

- Yeah, and I mean, the chefs that really like that kind of cooking are really into it. I mean, they find that, well, one, the freshness and the flavor and nutrient density of the food is all at it's peak.

- [Matt] Right.

- So, they love that, because all they want to do, they want, most chefs want two things: they want to be known as producing food that just wows people, and they want to be known as doing something different than the other chefs. So, if you provide them with unique product, and fresh product, then chefs are really happy. In fact, it's kind of funny, to see a chef swoon over vegetables. But it happens all the time.

- Right.

- And, you know, you think, wow, it's just a vegetable, but this is, this is their life.

- But then it gets appreciated by the very end consumer, which is us, which are the drivers of the commerce all to begin with.

- Yeah, when you go to a restaurant, and put something in your mouth and it really does make you go wow.

- Wow.

- That's what they're looking for.

- Good. I'll be back.

- And I am trying to increase the likelihood that that's gonna happen, because there is no better flavor that comes from fresh picked produce. I mean, that's where it all is, right there.

- Right. Right. Well, I'm excited to take a look around a little bit more, and go see what kind of shipments that you have going out for tomorrow.

- Yeah, that's all for tomorrow.

- Alright.

- So we've got just a bunch of collections for the day's shipments that are coming in?

- Yes, right. So you can see that I've got them organized by delivery location in here, and that way tomorrow morning I'll do one final redundant check just to make sure that nothing got omitted and everything's where it needs to be before it gets loaded onto two trucks and heads out into the world.

- Well, Alan, I can tell you're a really busy man nowadays, in the season. And I just really want to say thank you for letting us see inside of your world, and I just wanna just say you're doing a great job keeping everybody connected in the local food scene.

- Thanks, Matt, appreciate it.

- [Annette Shrader] In the world of iris, there's the Louisiana iris, and then there's the tall bearded iris, and there are Siberian and Japanese iris, but today, in my garden, this is what's blooming. This is the Spuria iris, this is standing close to four feet tall, and it actually roams about as it grows, but you won't find it in very many gardens, and this is called Antigua.

- [Marty] Well, it's early May and that it means it is iris time in Tennessee, the state flower, by the way. And we're here today at the Iris Garden at Ellington Agricultural Station, in Nashville, and with me, right now, is one of the founders of this garden, this beautiful place, Eleanor Boyson. I would love to know how this place came to be.

- [Eleanor] It was a dream of one of our members, she wanted a public garden somewhere in Nashville, and I don't know how many places she looked before she found Ellington, with this nice, flat area. And talking with the Commissioner of Agriculture, she actually got a deed, that we don't pay for, but we have access to this, and I've forgotten how many years it was, but this was all begun in her head in 1983. But, there were three of us that were the backbone, basically that started it. I used to drive a pickup truck, and I did most of the hauling in. We sold t-shirts, sweatshirts, bags, aprons, anything Catherine could come up with, in order to raise the money to do the beds with stone, to build that beautiful gazebo.

- [Marty] Wow, it is beautiful.

- [Eleanor] And any other thing out here, and her husband was very instrumental in helping, he hauled the stuff around for us all the time, and some of our former members, mowed the grass out here, this was all our upkeep for a long time.

- [Marty] So, just the club basically.

- [Eleanor] Right.

- [Marty] The society was responsible for all parts of this.

- [Eleanor] All of this was our members.

- [Marty] Wow. It's just so beautiful, what you guys have done. Must have done a lot of research on the various varieties to bring in, too.

- Research. I don't know how much research you do, you look at a catalogue, oh, that one's pretty. Does it grow well?

- That's how I shop.

- But now, we do have two beds over there, originally we just had one, with the Dykes Medal Winners,

- [Marty] Right.

- [Eleanor] Now, the person who's responsible for getting the Dykes bed recently totally dug out, fresh soil mix, replanted, one of our good members today, and she's chairman of this garden, and that is Ginny Russell.

- [Marty] Oh, well it's just such a treat. We're gonna take a walking tour, I think with Ginny,

- [Eleanor] Okay.

- [Marty] So, thank you so much for sharing your insight.

- [Eleanor] You're quite welcome.

- [Marty] I loved hearing the history of the place, its lovely.

- [Eleanor] Thank you. It's been a lot of hard work, but enjoyable.

- [Marty] I bet. I am loving this historic iris garden, and just seeing the different colors and some of these go back, how far?

- 1612 is our oldest one.

- Wow, 1612, people have been gardening with iris for a long time.

- [Ginny] Long time.

- [Marty] And you can see on these old ones, these smaller flowers and the narrower forms.

- [Ginny] The old form.

- [Marty] Yeah.

- [Ginny] This is Quaker lady.

- [Marty] That is a famous old one.

- [Ginny] Yeah.

- [Marty] Almost gray, yeah. So let's go look at some modern breeding, now.

- Alright.

- Over in this next bed.

- You can't miss this one.

- No.

- [Ginny] It stands so erect, and just..

- [Marty] It's like a beacon.

- [Ginny] Yeah.

- [Marty] It's just gorgeous.

- [Ginny] It's a 2015 introduction.

- [Marty] Wow.

- Yeah.

- That is, that just shows you modern breeding, right there.

- Absolutely.

- I mean, just ruffles and laced.

- [Ginny] And much bigger.

- [Marty] Mm-hmm. All parts of the flower are bigger.

- [Ginny] All parts.

- [Marty] And another thing I see in this bed, are re-bloomers, like this one.

- Oh, yes.

- Oh, my gosh, that look at the color of that Stargate?

- [Ginny] Stargate, by Betty Wilkerson.

- [Marty] Now, isn't she..

- [Ginny] From Kentucky.

- [Marty] Kentucky? Right.

- [Ginny] Well, she actually passed away last year.

- [Marty] Oh, I didn't know that.

- [Ginny] But that was her big thing was re-bloomers.

- [Marty] Well, and what I love about this kind of stuff, yeah, these are hers.

- [Ginny] Yeah, yeah.

- [Marty] Are that they are locally, sort of, so you know they're going to grow here.

- [Ginny] Oh, yeah.

- [Marty] This is beautiful.

- [Ginny] The soil is apt to them.

- [Marty] Well, you can see these modern ones have stiff stems, which is another breeding thing that they've been doing.

- [Ginny] And not only are they, but the stalk, you want the buds to be straight in line, but they're aiming for to get seven buds to a stalk.

- [Marty] Wow. So you get a really long season. It's really beautiful. Ginny, we're here with some more modern hybrids, and I see this bed is mostly Mid-America iris breeders, which is Paul Black and Tom Johnson. They've won all kinds of awards, I know.

- Yes.

- They produce them, and this one is just, oh, delectable, it looks like blue whipped cream, or something. They really produce some vigorous looking plants, too.

- [Ginny] They do, and here again, notice the budding, come up the stalk, nice and even.

- [Marty] And how sturdy that stalk is, it's really quite beautiful.

- [Ginny] We had quite a windstorm here late yesterday, and they're standing nice and tall for you.

- [Marty] Let's go over to this next bed and look at some more.

- [Ginny] Alright.

- [Marty] You can see why they call it iris, you know, the rainbow flower, it's just, every possible color, this gorgeous peachy pink, and bi-colors, and just so beautiful. Now, let's talk about growing iris. I see no mulch.

- No mulch. They do not like mulch at all.

- And I know one of the things people do, that can be done wrong, is planting too deep.

- Yes. As a rule, if you can leave the rhizome right above the ground, that's best.

- Okay, so the root's right down into the surface of the ground,

- It's right there.

- And the big fat root sitting right at top of the soil.

- That rhizome right at the top.

- Okay.

- Now, you'll see here, some of them are kind of in the dirt.

- Yeah.

- But, over time, that happens.

- Right, they'll pull themselves to the place they wanna be.

- Right, they'll be fine, they'll be fine. But when you plant them originally, you don't want to bury them.

- Okay.

- And if you put it in the ground, and then you get you get your dirt all spread, pull it up just a little bit, and pour a little water right over the top, so you can see that rhizome.

- Okay, you want to be able to see it. Half in, half out of the ground is a good rule of thumb.

- [Ginny] And notice this one:

- [Marty] It's a space age.

- [Ginny] It's a novelty iris.

- [Marty] Yeah, with the little beard with...

- [Ginny] With the little horn coming out there

- [Marty] There's another one.

- [Ginny] And notice that beard is tri-color.

- [Marty] Yes, is it, oh, my gosh, isn't that something. Iris are a tough plant, I mean, they are great plants for people who don't garden much.

- [Ginny] Right.

- [Marty] Yeah, because they'll just do their thing, without a lot of care.

- [Ginny] And you can drop one and ignore it, and before long, the next year, you may find it coming right back up.

- Wow.

- And it's multiplied.

- That's crazy.

- And it doesn't matter whether it's a raised or flat.

- Well, I have quite a few varieties in a small area, because I love them so much. I love the re-bloomers, and that's a great thing, to my mind, there just, there are some that just give you so much pleasure for so long.

- [Ginny] Yes, yes.

- [Marty] Well, I wanna thank you for sharing your expertise, and your gorgeous garden. Man it's so beautiful.

- [Jeff Poppen] I am often asked, what is the difference between organics and biodynamics? Both contrast drastically with the conventional, chemical agriculture so common today. They both rely on rebuilding the soil's humus content, and organic matter, and strictly forbid the use of chemicals. Their similarities are much more numerous than their differences. After World War I, the weapons industry started selling their wares, potassium nitrates, and phosphorus, for fertilizer. But this hurt the soil life. Dr. Rudolph Steiner gave a lecture course in 1924, talking about the need to refrain from using these chemicals and instead rely on soil building humus techniques, such as composting. His work, later termed biodynamics, influenced Sir Albert Howard and Robert Rodale, and other promoters of the organic movement a few decades later. How a farm maintains fertility, is at the heart of the agricultural question. On a biodynamic farm, the livestock supply the fertility for the farm, and all the feed for the livestock is grown on the farm, just as all the feed for the people that work on the farm is grown there. It becomes a self-contained system, where everything that's needed, even to making the compost piles, comes from within the farm itself. Everything we do on our farm allows us to be certified organic, but the reverse is not true. Biodynamics has stricter rules about what you can use on a farm, and also has further requirements. An organic farm has a whole list of materials they can use to fertilize with, such as fish emulsion, cotton seed meal, potassium sulfate, calcium nitrate, a whole lot of stuff. And they can also use non-synthetic insecticides, such as pyrethrum, and rotenone. Now all of this is better than what commercial agriculture uses, but in the biodynamic method, we don't use any of these things. We find that building a soil humus, with good quality compost, is sufficient to grow crops and also to have healthy crops that don't require any kind of insecticide. This potato field has no Colorado potato beetle infestations at all. And that's oftentimes a big problem around Tennessee. Some biodynamic practitioners burn insects when the sun is in the constellation of Taurus, and then they use that ash, and sprinkle it on the land, to help give a signal that that species of insects isn't welcome on that piece of land. Modern organic farms also use compost and manures, but they don't have to be generated on the farm. Many biodynamic farms keep other livestock. We love to have the birds and the bees. The requirements of the biodynamic method are the use of specially prepared materials utilizing organic substances along with animal organs. This is horn manure, and this is manure that I stuffed into a cowhorn last winter, and it's changed into a humus product. We potentize this horn manure by stirring a little bit of it in three gallons of water, stirring it vigorously for an hour. I'm going to sprinkle it on an acre of freshly tilled garden soil, right before planting time. The horn manure preparation helps the earth and water forces to create a stable humus. Another preparation we make is ground up quartz crystals, such as Arkansas crystals, local geodes, that we find in the creeks around here, and these are ground up and buried in a cow horn during the summer months, again, are stirred vigorously for an hour and sprinkled on the plants, as they're growing, to help the sun and the air forces to ripen the plants, and make the food more nutritious. Here we have another biodynamic preparation that I just dug up, it's chamomile flowers that I made sausages with last year, this is the intestines of a cow, that I put the chamomile flowers in. This resulting humus product will then be used in small amounts in all of our compost piles. The yarrow flowers are clipped off, so just the little bitty florets are used. They're sewn up in a bladder of a stag, that's a male deer. I hang it up in the sun during the summer, and then bury it in the winter, and the humus product that is formed is used in small amounts in all of our compost piles. This is dandelion flowers sewed up into the mesentery of a cow, as this preparation will be buried in the soil for a year, and then when it's dug up, it will have formed a humus product. Stinging nettle is another herb we use to make a preparation for the compost piles. Valerian is an herb that we use. We simply take the flowers, the little florets, off the ends of the flowers, and we make a tea with them, and this is used in the compost piles. We also make a preparation out of white oak. Again, small amounts of the ground up bark are specially prepared, and then the humus product that forms is put into the compost. We have found that these preparations are very simple and easy to make, they come from within the farm itself, and they create a truly superb compost that grows really healthy crops. Food, like wine, has the sense, or taste, of the place where it's grown. By using all of our fertilizers from within the farm's borders, we can develop a unique farm individuality. That what a farm can export, must be generated from within the farm itself, seems to be the main difference between modern organic agriculture and the original model of biodynamics.

- [Narrator] For inspiring garden tours, growing tips, and garden projects, visit our website at volunteergardener.org, or on YouTube at the Volunteer Gardener channel, and like us on Facebook.