Some wonderful news here, start to finish, all the way down.

To begin, we're thrilled to announce the next Little Coyote-Food as a Verb Speaker Series event.

On Thursday, April 17, the nationally-known Shannon Mustipher will travel from Brooklyn to join us for a spirited afternoon.

Shannon - a spirits educator and cocktail creator - is a bartender-mixologist-writer who's elevated rum and tiki-culture in meaningful, tremendously delicious ways.

Shannon will guide us in a discussion on the history and vast significance - culturally, nationally, personally - of rum, which is America's foundational drink - rum was poured at Washington's inauguration - and, globally, the most diverse spirit on the planet.

"I can say that with confidence," she said. "By virtue of the number of geographic locations it can be produced."

The afternoon will include four different cocktail pours along with a special toast from Shannon, who will discuss each drink we're enjoying.

Then, for the rest of the night, Little Coyote will offer a bar menu takeover - created by Shannon and Garth Poe, beverage director for Little Coyote, Easy Bistro and Main Street Meats - that features Privateer rum, the drinks from our afternoon with Shannon and more.

Tickets are $35 and can be purchased here.

Beginning at 4.30 pm, the event will follow our normal format - I'll lead a conversation with Shannon around 5pm, then Q+A with you all - plus a few new twists.

We're calling it: "A Conversation and Toast with Shannon Mustipher."

Not long ago, Shannon had little rum experience. It's ok if you feel the same. Does rum seem synonymous with cruise ships and Jimmy Buffet shows?

Get ready to encounter - and taste - rum in an entirely different way.

"It's the most flavorful spirit in the widest variety of ways you can imagine," she said. "I look at it as a giant pandoras box of flavors."

Shannon is the author of the award-winning Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails. She's also the first Black bartender to author a bartending book in a century.

"The best bartender is the bartender that cares most about the guest," she said.

Again: Thursday, April 17, beginning at 4.30 pm.

Cost: $35 and tickets can be purchased here. Along with four cocktail tasters during the afternoon, Little Coyote will offer a cocktail-menu-takeover and its full dinner menu.

• Next, the Farmland Protection Fund continues to move through the Nashville legislature.

Last week, thanks to many of your calls and emails, the House subcommittee voted yes which sent the HB1325 bill to the larger House Ag. Committee yesterday.

On Tuesday, the House Ag. committee voted yes, sending the bill onto its next stop with the Government Operations Committee.

More on that vote soon.

• Mary Taylor's coming to town for one of the most special nights of the year.

And she's bringing some really special folks with her.

On Friday, April 11, Mary Taylor - founder of Mary Taylor Wine - travels to St. John's Restaurant accompanied by 20 growers from Spain, Italy, Portugal and France.

That evening, we can talk with these growers. Drink their wines. Shake their hands, which work in the faraway soils and vineyards in some of the most beautiful places on earth.

"This block party is the wine event of the year," said Caleb Kneip, wine director at Imbibe, "especially for people that want to experience a sort of 'farmer's market' for wine, and get to know the passion, care, and love behind the bottle with the makers themselves."

The 'wine-block-party-farmers'-market' is formally called the Poor-Man's Paulée.

A wine tasting begins at 5 pm, followed by a five-course dinner accompanied by an array of Mary Taylor Wines.

Mary, who lives in Connecticut, works with small-scale European growers who are producing rare, intimate wine based on place, soil and region.

"To me, it’s the beautiful complexity of European wines that makes them so enjoyable," she says on her website. "Even after all these years, I’m still endlessly fascinated by way each village’s expression reflects its own unique “terroir,” or sense of place."

There's also a sense of urgency.

Proposed or current tariffs threaten to alter or upset both these European growers and importers and wine stores, like Imbibe, which carries nine of these wines.

"There's no replacement," Mary said. "We have a history of relationships with Europe wine that goes back to the signing of the Declaration of Independence."

Mary has been working in the wine industry for three decades; Mary Taylor Wines is the "largest, independent, female-owned grassroots-no-investor wine, completely self-made wine importer in the country."

Not only can we meet her, but we can meet European wine producers, too.

"These are winemakers that have no kind of empire or dynasties in the wine world -- they are mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, sons and daughters that put bread on their table by making wine and selling it in our market.  They have no big marketing teams of corporate offices, they have their soil and their work ethic and their dreams," said Caleb. "And we get to be part of that with this party."

Tickets and info can be found here. A portion of sales benefits the Chattanooga Area Food Bank.

• Finally, Alysia Leon and Bird Fork Farm reached the semifinals of the Tennessee Valley Federal Credit Union's Idea Leap Grant 2025.

Now, it's time for the People's Choice vote.

Selected from 375 applications, only 10 small businesses have been selected as semifinalists, each competing for $75,000 in entrepreneurial funding.

Bird Fork Farm is one of those 10 small businesses.

Alysia farms two acres on Cagle Mountain and sells at the Main Street Farmers' Market and also hosts farm days and visits. (Click here to read our feature on Alysia.)

"Certified Naturally Grown and/or Ethically Wildcrafted," her website states. "Bird Fork Farm (BFF) is a small woman-, queer-, & Latinx-owned and operated farmstead. We use no synthetic herbicides, fungicides, fertilizers, pesticides, or GMOs. In addition to growing herbs, fruits and vegetables, our Bird Fork Farmacy line offers small batches of herbal products with seasonal, ethically foraged or naturally grown plant allies."

The People's Choice winner will move onto the finals. Voting is open until Friday, April 4, at 5 pm.

Click here to vote for Bird Fork Farm.

Warm weather this week. Everything's turning green.

See everyone Sunday.

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This story is 100% human generated; no AI chatbot was used in the creation of this content.