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November 17, 2024

Meet Bill the Wine Guy and the Willamette Valley

There's nobody like him - or his 60-foot aisle of Pruett's Market wine - in Chattanooga.

Words by
David Cook
Photos by
Sarah Unger

Bill Hull is the in-house wine expert - "the wine guy" - at Pruett's Market, the Signal Mountain grocery store.

dig in
There's nobody like him - or his 60-foot aisle of Pruett's Market wine - in Chattanooga.

Bill Hull, Pruett's Market

Niedlovs, Chattanooga, TN
November 10, 2024

How to Bake a Post-Election Loaf

A poem for uncertain times.

When your heart breaks its leash, Let it go. Let it run.
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Smith-Perry Berries Farm, Ooltewah, Tennessee
November 3, 2024

Without them, we don't eat: a few thoughts on labor.

These are loud days. Two farmers offer perspective.

Roy and his daughter Rebecca run their 1100-acre Jones Farm in north Alabama. Their main crop? Fruit, with some vegetables, grown on 15 acres. During prime season, they need a dozen workers, sometimes more.
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Jersey cow, Bear Creek Farm, Williamson County, Tenn.
October 27, 2024

Know Your Burger: a true farm-to-table story

Meet your local butcher, farmer, processor and cow in this special Food as a Verb presentation.

Our story spotlights a wholesome, intentional relationship between farmers, processors, butchers, animals and restaurant owners. In life and death, these relationships are built on respect. They benefit all involved.
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Southern Squeeze, Riverview, Tenn.
October 20, 2024

Help Heal the System: the Southern Squeeze story

They lined up outside her college apartment. Now, it's Riverview. Kelsey Vasileff's life - and recipes - make others healthy.

Standing tall in a family of meat-eaters, Kelsey Vasileff was 10 when she made her announcement: I'm going vegetarian.
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Alco Cox, Robin Fazio, wheat threshing, contributed photo (Robin Fazio)
October 13, 2024

"Ain't No Power in Paint"

Memories and wisdom from a long-ago wheat threshing.

Today's feature is written by Dr. Robin Fazio, long-time farmer, educator and founder of Baylor School's gardening program and Mechanics' Club.This is a story of authenticity and confidence, not shiny bluster.
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Wednesdays

Our Wednesday stories are a little bit different. Find all of our Wednesday stories here.

DIG IN
Boyd Buchanan, Chattanooga, Tenn.
October 6, 2024

The Ground Beneath Us: Boyd Buchanan Teaches Agriculture for the 21st century

"It's my favorite part of school."

It is a mid-morning Monday on the 65-acre Boyd Buchanan campus and a dozen students in Melissa Owens's Agriscience class are planting yellow onion sets, moving zinnia transplants to the greenhouse, checking on - really, cuddling - the lop-eared bunny, tilling new beds, making plans for a fall flower sale.
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Farmland, Hamilton County, Tennessee
September 29, 2024

Hamilton County's agrarian crisis: only 1,274 acres of cropland remain.

Hamilton County's lost 5,000 acres of farmland since 2001. And you can't farm without land and money. Where are our county leaders?

What do you need to know in order to farm?That's the question being asked by Southeast Tennessee Young Farmers and Crabtree Farms, who are planning to offer free, farmer-led workshops on sustainable-ag topics next year.
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Judging Table, Sprodeo, CMSCo, Red Bank, TN
September 22, 2024

Welcome to Sprodeo: a love letter to Chattanooga coffee

What happens when Chattanooga's best baristas compete?

On Thursday evening, as Smash Boyz served last-call burgers from the grill and folks downed their second or third drink - Coors in a can, peach LaCroix, 16 oz. Liquid Death - while kicked back on folding chairs inside a Red Bank garage, Tyler Sowrey stepped out from behind the silver-sexy Slayer espresso machine and carried forward two cortados - half steamed milk, half espresso - poured into small, snow-white cups.
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Lupis, Broad Street, Chattanooga, TN
September 15, 2024

Welcome to Lupi's: a story of the simple things.

There was a time you couldn't get a good slice + beer in this town. Dorris Shober changed that.

We are strolling through Flying Turtle Farm, the 68 acres in Cloudland, Georgia, where Dorris Shober and husband John care for pigs, Brangus cattle, a spiral garden, vegetables and flowers - like celosia and zinnias, which Dorris gently talks about like they're dear friends - when this one question almost jumps out of my mouth.
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Amanda and Erik Niel, Little Coyote, St. Elmo, Tennessee
September 8, 2024

Tall boys, $9 burgers and life-changing hospitality:

An honest conversation with 
Erik and Amanda Niel

Since 2005, Erik and Amanda Niel have been exquisitely intentional about taking care of Chattanoogans, building their restaurant careers here on this very premise."We've made them feel comfortable," Amanda said. "If you're really good at it, people have an emotional connection."
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Dave Roberts, Ft. Payne, Alabama
September 1, 2024

Our Labor Day edition:

Easy like Sunday morning

Today? We're exhaling, non-laboring for Labor Day and hope you will, too.
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Alex DeHart, Rudy Bohannon, David Cook, Sarah Unger
August 25, 2024

Happy Birthday, Food as a Verb friends

Our party is your party, too.

For our one-year birthday, we welcome to our new website home. We hope you love it. We sure do.
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On the edge of the world
August 18, 2024

The meal that tastes like letting go

A story on moving your first-born into college.

The more I talk with our local farmers, the more I realize: it's all generosity. It's all grown with love.
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St. Mary's, Sewanee, Tenn.
August 11, 2024

Fixing the broken parts: nuns, lavender, a mountain garden.

"I would rather be here than anywhere else."

Claire Sims found the garden all the way from Wetumpka, Alabama, some 200 miles away. She grew up in a very strict church, whose beliefs – women can't preach in the pulpit or speak with authority – pushed her even farther away.
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Main Street Farmer's Market
August 4, 2024

Our city's true market: a few rogue farmers and an idea that changed Chattanooga.

Happy Birthday, Main Street Farmers' Market.

Fifteen years ago, maybe longer, Miriam Keener had an idea."We need a farmer-run market," she said.
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Former Food City, East 23rd St., Chattanooga, Tennessee
July 28, 2024

What happens to a neighborhood without a grocery and pharmacy?

Highland Park is a food-medicine desert.

It's a strange, dizzying time for Highland Park and the 37404 zip code that stretches down Dodds Ave., across the foot of Missionary Ridge, onto the lively Main Street.
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Rouge, Erik Zilen, Niedlov's Bakery & Cafe, Main St., Chatt., Tenn.
July 21, 2024

The best damn loaf: the journey to bake Chattanooga's first local bread.

Welcome to Rouge, the city's first truly local bread.

Thursday morning, as he slid eight loaves, each stenciled and scored like artwork, into the Niedlov's Bakery & Cafe ovens, Erik Zilen – a little flour here, a lot of vision there – reached the end of a long journey.
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Jess Revels, Mac's Kitchen & Bar, Rossville, Georgia
July 14, 2024

A tough industry, a tougher woman: Rossville's own spitfire pastry chef.

The story of Jess Revels and the women who shaped her life.

Eighteen-hour days and back again the next morning. Your back aches, brain feels like mush and you can't remember the last time you slept eight hours, had sex or watched Netflix – just one episode – all the way through.
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Farmland for sale, Hamilton County, Tennessee
July 7, 2024

One million acres in jeopardy: once gone, you don't get it back.

We're losing 10 acres of Tennessee farmland every hour of every day.

We're losing 10 acres of Tennessee farmland every hour of every day.
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Seahorse Snacks, Chattanooga, Tennessee
June 30, 2024

Find the Gift

One spectacularly strong woman and her Seahorse Snacks.

In the fall of 2017, Stacy Martin was living in Atlanta – she'd soon move to Chattanooga – when she got the news: her mom was diagnosed with stage IV uterine cancer.
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Holstein cows, Norton Farms, Meigs County, Tennessee
June 23, 2024

The last days of one of the last small dairy farmers.

For 15,330 days, he's milked cows. How many days are left?

Every day for the last 42 years, Sammy Norton has milked cows. Every morning, at 4.30. Every afternoon, again at 4.30.
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Letty Smith, Circle S Farm, Rising Fawn, Georgia
June 16, 2024

Love Connects This Whole Thing Together.

A story of sisterhood.

Letty, Judy and Jane have known each other for seven years now, but it feels like a lifetime, the three bonded in ways only the heart understands.
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River St. Deli, Chattanooga, Tenn.
June 2, 2024

Chattanooga's Unofficial Ambassador and the 1000-star review.

You can take the boy out of the NYC deli, but you can't take the NYC deli out of the boy.

It's good to say thanks, good to let people know how much they mean to you. Gratitude fills the heart like a big red balloon. Softens the mind like an afternoon breeze.
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Jamichael Caldwell, Troy Rogers, Nate Carter, Dylan Bryant, Correy Craddock, Westside, Tenn.
May 26, 2024

Everyone Wants Freedom.

Meet the Men Breaking Chains Across the City.

Once, Nate Carter begins, a man bought a birdcage. Inside, it was full of birds, but the birds were all locked up in this cage.That's why he bought it.
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Wagyu, Chili Pepper Ranch, Apison, Tenn.
May 19, 2024

The most tender steak ever?

A story of top secret grain, Japanese cattle and the preciousness of life.

From their 400-acre Chili Pepper Ranch in Apison, Tenn., Jim and Amy Jo Osborn sell cuts of beef from over 200 head of cattle to hundreds of customers from Seattle to Miami to LA, all of whom ordered more than 60,000 pounds of meat last year.
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Cynthia Wood, Antonia Poland, Davis Wayne's, Ooltewah, Tenn.
May 12, 2024

You Choose to Love

A Davis Wayne's + Mother's Day story.

Meet Uncle Jim. Get soaked in the rain. Savor greens that took two years to perfect at a restaurant without any recipes.
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Honeybees, Red Bank, Tenn.
May 5, 2024

A miracle swarms in Red Bank: how the biggest smallest thing changed our lives.

Oh, Pooh Bear. You were so right.

Not long ago, we went to one acre of Red Bank land for a routine afternoon interview with Carmen Joyce, a local beekeeper and owner of Nooga Honey Pot.What we found instead felt like a miracle.
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Aubie Smith, Smith-Perry Berries Farm, Ooltewah, Tenn.
April 21, 2024

Aubie Smith's strawberries and the many sweet reasons we buy them.

Folks start lining up early. It's easy to see why.

People begin arriving by 8.30 am. By mid-morning, there are two, three dozen cars and trucks in line. Tags from North Carolina, Florida, Georgia.They're here for one reason: Aubie Smith's strawberries.
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