We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tera Ashley a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Tera, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about serving the underserved.

Have you ever received a meal kit subscription from Hello Fresh? Or Green Chef? Or Blue Apron? It’s a pretty great feeling – fun ingredients, fresh produce, a recipe booklet – all neatly packaged in a box and delivered to your door. Families in need are often given a box when they visit food banks. As they move through the pantry, the box is filled with nonperishable items and little produce, if any at all. It’s startling when you first realize it: Both wealthy families and families in need receive their food in a box, those boxes just look very different. While we can’t always change a family’s financial situation, we can change what kind of box they receive.

Enter Sweet Radish, a 501(c)3 nonprofit founded in March 2022. Sweet Radish’s mission is to serve both small, regenerative farms and underserved communities by matching locally-grown CSA food boxes with refugee and immigrant families in Nashville, TN. Through donations, our partner farms are paid in full for their CSA shares, ensuring income for their indispensable work. To relieve the burden of food insecurity, the CSA shares are given to families at no cost.

Tera, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I first began my farming career as an AmeriCorps*Vista Member, serving for over two years as an organic, urban farmer for Trevecca Nazarene University’s J.V. Morsch Center for Social Justice. After participating heavily in Nashville’s local food and food justice movement, I decided that I would best serve the cause as a career organic farmer. I apprenticed at Caney Fork Farms in 2016 and 2017 before going on to manage vegetable operations across Middle TN, including my own operation, Magpie Farm. I returned to Caney Fork Farms as the Vegetable Manager in early 2021.

Wanting to combine my passion for farming that heals the land and food justice, I founded Sweet Radish in 2022. Sweet Radish serves two common gaps in our food system: freshness and consistency. Oftentimes, IF produce is offered by a food bank, it is inconsistent and has been donated because the farmer may have had difficulty selling it. While these programs are important and necessary in our communities, I wanted to create an organization that focused on families receiving consistent, fresh produce, always grown using organic and regenerative practices. Each CSA share purchased gives one family a box of farm-fresh produce every week of the growing season, between 24-28 weeks. But that is just one part of our mission. Another part of our mission is to lift up farmers who leave the land better than how they found it. Through donations, we purchase the CSA shares at full cost from small, regenerative farms, ensuring that they receive full payment for their hard work. The last part of our mission is to work with other organizations as much as possible – we believe that the way forward is collaboration. Our current partner organization is Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC). TIRRC is able to identify families in our community who would most benefit from a CSA share. They then provide a drop-off location for the CSA shares and a point of contact for those families. As our organization grows, so will the number of families that we serve, as well as our number of partner organizations!

It’s important to me that people understand that food justice IS social justice IS racial justice IS environmental justice. When one person in our community lacks access to healthy, local food — all of our access is in jeopardy. Sweet Radish aims to increase that access in our community.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I’m going to change the question a little bit because I run a nonprofit, not a business. :)

I wasn’t at all surprised by the number of regenerative farms that immediately got on board with the concept of Sweet Radish, because I am a regenerative farmer, myself — these are my people. I understand the long hours they put in, how hard they work, and the lack of disposable income they often have because our society as a whole doesn’t always value the work of farmers. When regenerative farmers first begin farming, they dream of changing the world. They dream about growing healthy food and getting it into the hands of people who didn’t before have access to it. After they start farming, however, they realize that in order to make a living, they have to market to chefs or take their produce to farmer’s markets in wealthy areas of the city. When the farmers are able to get their produce to those who lack it, it is often because the produce needed to be donated, and they don’t receive payment for it. Sweet Radish gives farmers both full payment and a full heart knowing their food is accessible to those who need it most.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I think I’ve had to unlearn how I originally thought fundraising worked. I used to think that if an organization had a great idea that people could get behind, the donations would just roll in. But I’ve had to learn how to fundraise more creatively. Donating gives people good feelings, but so do experiences. When Sweet Radish combines donating and experiences to create benefit events (even if those events take more effort up front) we are much more successful in raising funds.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sweetradish.org
• Instagram: @sweetradishtn
• Facebook: Sweet Radish TN

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