Sarah and Tea Jay were eating lunch on the Vuck farmhouse porch, gazing out over the valley and dreaming of leasing that land to grow more crops. Suddenly the wind brought to their ears the voices of a realtor and client, parked across the street talking development plans. Sarah contacted the owner, a rancher and wildlife enthusiast who wishes the property to continue as a farm, and secured a contract with 20k earnest money. Humbly, gratefully, we now ask our supporters, believers in conservation and local food, for $55k in order to close the deal. No donation or gesture of support is too small, and investors are welcome!

Healing needs for our Environment and Food Systems:

1. Compromised habitats, lawns, planting of non-native species is the norm.
2. Very few regenerative cattle operations in the region and fewer vegetable farms. Most food travels long distances, losing nutrients and relying on fossil fuels.
3. Americans are increasingly disconnected from the sources of their food.
4. Small scale farmers are aging out with no successors, further corporatizing our food supply.
5. Farmland and habitat are rapidly being lost to development as new residents flock to Tennessee.
6. Many of these new residents are drawn to a slower pace and connection to the land, desiring natural and organic inputs for their gardens that are not available here in smaller volumes, if at all.
7. Folks new to a land-based life may lack the knowledge and skills to achieve their goals.

Corresponding Paths to Healing: 

1. Support stewardship with native plants sold onsite and mail order to individuals and landscapers.
2. Support the local food economy by expanding crop production space and paddocks for regenerative livestock grazing.
3. Support agricultural connection through agritourism activities such as U-pick and farm-to-table.
4. Support the need for more farmers with an expanded farmer training program.
5. Establish a conservation easement for agricultural use and wetland preservation.
6. Support gardeners and homesteaders by providing organic and natural inputs in accessible quantities at our farm supply at the nursery, which provides all manner of edible plants and starts as well as natives.
7. Expand our offerings of workshops, practicums and hands-on experiential opportunities.

Although I live in a rural neighborhood five minutes from I-75, every time I walk this valley nature reveals herself in yet another astonishing way. Ridges rise up to meet a magnificent open sky. Bluestem grasses wave from rolling meadows. The spring fed wetland shows evidence of beaver, muskrat and otter. There are bullfrogs, minnow and other marshy secrets among the reeds and rushes, willow, sycamore and hornbeam. And the birds! Songbirds, herons, hawks, and the beloved sandhill cranes on their winter migration. Winding through it all is Spring Creek: sometimes a brown bottomland lake, sometimes a deep canyon pushing fingers of destruction through the fields, threatening to create an oxbow. An island. A constantly evolving shape. On this land, there is a sense of being held by sun, wind, grasses, trees, flowing waters and living soil. I have watched and contemplated this land for three years from my front porch and south-facing windows at Vuck Farm.  

Four cars pull into the farm store lot for U-pick, but the most capricious of our goats has jumped her fence across the street at Vuck Farm in search of me. Grabbing her by a horn I walk to our guests, hand off their gathering baskets and point them towards the berry patch. Turning to deliver my goat back home, I see a family picnicking in our young orchard that contours the opposite ridge. In the valley below, sunlight glints off the creek, barely perceptible through riparian underbrush that is now shielded from grazing animals. Roots of the sycamore are protected from rushing springtime waters. A boardwalk trail winds through perennial grasses that slowly pull rain down into our aquifer. A patchwork of crops and grazing paddocks paint the high meadows. Leaving the overlook, I hear bullfrogs bellowing and cattle lowing as a gentle breeze flows around me. I arrive back to Vuck Farm as our interns wheel out a cart of blueberry shrubs, destined for our new farm store and nursery.