By Michelle Price
UCBJ Managing Editor
COOKEVILLE – SeedFork of the Highlands will host its third annual Farm to Fork dinner on Saturday, Aug. 25 in Dogwood Park featuring locally grown food and regional beverages.
“Cookeville is at the beginning of a local food revolution,” said Cassidy Phillips, media manager for SeedFork. “This is an opportunity to sit down with 250 likeminded people to dine and discuss the local food movement.”
Most of the food will be sourced from local farmers that you can find at the Downtown Green Market. These include but are not limited to: Shiloh Farm, Little Creek Farm, Pomona Hill Farm, and Harmony Lane Farm. Meats for the evening will be provided by Stockton Farms.
Local chefs will be preparing the meal including: Chad Combs from Seven Senses/Blue Rooster Canteen, Andrew Ellis from The Blue Pig, Bill Hedderick from World Foods, and Jim Stockton from Stockton Farms.
SeedFork has made the dinner a buy one-give one event. For every ticket sold to the dinner, SeedFork will give one ticket to a community member who would otherwise not be able to attend. This includes farmers, students, and many who work in areas related to our local food economy here in Tennessee. When purchasing tickets online, folks have an option to designate to which organization they would like to donate a ticket.
SeedFork’s mission is to educate locals to grow their own food and learn to cook it. In 2018 they started three community gardens in Cookeville. They chose to locate these gardens in areas that are populated by low-income citizens because they don’t generally have access to fresh foods, relying instead on cheaper foods that are typically heavily processed. The food grown in these community gardens stays in the community except for 10 percent which will be shared with the rest of the city.
During the dinner, SeedFork will update the diners on their achievements throughout the past year and their goals for 2019, which include branching out to schools and starting a veterans’ garden.
Tickets are still available at the Backroom Bistro or at seedfork.eventbright.com. Tickets are $75 each or VIP tickets are $100, which includes a pre-dinner gathering at the Backroom Bistro featuring an exclusive variety of pre-dinner appetizers prepared by Chef Rodney Laulo with beverages by Hix Farms Brewery.
