There are moments in history that quietly remind us of things we should never have forgotten. For many Americans, the past several years have been one of those moments. Empty grocery shelves, interrupted supply chains, and rising food costs caused many people to ask questions that had long been overlooked. Where does our food come from? Who grows it? What would happen if it failed to arrive tomorrow?
For some, those questions became the beginning of a much deeper journey.
They discovered that food is more than a commodity. It is culture. It is community. It is stewardship. It is one of the oldest ways neighbors have cared for one another.
That rediscovery has helped breathe fresh life into the modern homesteading movement—not as a retreat from modern life, but as a return to enduring principles. Across Tennessee and throughout the South, families are planting gardens, raising chickens, preserving harvests, shopping at farmers markets, and supporting local growers. They are recovering skills that once seemed ordinary but now feel surprisingly rare.
At its heart, this movement is less about self-sufficiency than it is about remembering our dependence upon one another. Healthy communities are built when growers know their customers, neighbors share abundance, and the distance between the garden and the table grows shorter.
For decades, Wendell Berry has quietly argued that the health of a people is inseparable from the health of its land. Through his essays, poems, and novels, he has reminded us that when we neglect local agriculture, we also diminish community, memory, and our sense of belonging. Caring for the land is ultimately an act of caring for one another.
That conviction is what draws me to local farm stands.
They are more than places to purchase tomatoes or jars of honey. They are gathering places where stories are exchanged, seasons are celebrated, and relationships are formed. Every farm stand tells the story of someone who has chosen to steward a particular piece of ground, and every purchase becomes a small investment in the future of a local community.
When I visit a farm stand, I rarely leave with only vegetables. I leave with names. With conversations. With stories.
I remember who grew the tomatoes, whose bees produced the honey, and which family has spent generations caring for that patch of Tennessee soil. Perhaps that is why these small places matter so much.
Every basket of produce purchased locally keeps more than a farm alive. It helps preserve knowledge, strengthens community, and reminds us that the health of a people has always begun close to home.
My own contribution to this movement is modest—a few raised beds, a compost pile, a growing collection of herbs, and the dream of a small neighborhood farm stand where abundance can be shared with friends. It is hardly enough to change the world.
But perhaps lasting change has always begun this way.
One garden.
One family.
One farm.
One story at a time.
That has become something of a guiding principle for me: Do what you can, with what you’ve been given, exactly where you are.
The harvest belongs to God. Stewardship belongs to us.
Southall Farm Stand in Franklin, Tennessee
Southall Farm & Inn is a vast expanse of farmland-325 acres-with greenhouses on one side, and rows of heritage crops, orchards, and gardens on the other. It’s a resort center, a working farm with an inviting inn. Dining and spa experiences honor the cycles of nature and incorporate its bounty. The Farm at Southall is the heart of all that they do; it provides fresh ingredients for the cuisine and a connection to the land for its guests. Though the resort inn is for private guests, the Farm Stand is open to the public. My favorite thing from this stand: bee pollen from its own bee hives.
Martin’s ‘The Stand’ in Clarksville, Tennessee
The Stand in Clarksville is mostly identifiable by the goat stencil on the mailbox as it is not visible from the main road. Fresh and dried herbs, spices, vegetables, honey, sorghum, preserves, fruits, all the seasonal offerings are available. This is actually a working goat farm and the goats can be easily accessed behind the fence. My favorite thing from here: herbal tea blends.
Williams Produce in Frankin, Tennessee
Williams Farm Stand is family owned and operated and stocks consistent summer and fall vegetables, fruits, flowers, herbs, plants, and all kinds of homemade preserves, sauces, pickles, and other goodies. My favorite thing: green beans by the case (for canning) and pickling cucumbers.
Neighborhood Farm Stand
Last year some neighborhood friends and I started a Neighborhood Food Growers Association in our Franklin community. The idea was that we would learn to grow together, supporting one another, each growing whatever food our families wanted to eat.
This year I am trying to figure out the logistics of doing a neighborhood farm stand as a way for us to share our excess bounty with our neighbors. The idea was that the portable potting bench, doubling as a produce stand, could easily be rolled out to the edge of the driveway (under an umbrella) on a certain day of the week for a couple of hours and neighbors could come by and pick up whatever they wanted from the garden. I’m still tweaking that process but I think the general idea is a sound one.
I am thankful for people like Wendell Berry and Joel Salatin and countless others who, for many years, have been laying the foundations for such a movement to gain momentum at this crucial time in history. I am thrilled to learn from these people and the many others out there that are doing the practical work necessary under the belief that small farmers/growers are the antidote to the tyranny of the corporate hierarchies that dominate America’s abhorrent food practices.
The smallness of my own beginnings into this movement are not daunting to me. Quite the contrary, my own motto these days goes something like this: “Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are” and even that sentiment did not originate with me.
