Nashvillle Greenlands
2012 Megan Gilbreth Tristan Call Kate Savage D.J.Hudson KarlMeyer Trevor Bradshaw Inyang Edohoeket Jena Robinson & 2 chicks
Membership and Volunteer Opportunities
Nashville Greenlands is a residential agricultural community located in the central urban area of Nashville. Our main purposes and principles are as follows:
1) simplify our lives, reduce our consumption of world resources, conserve, reuse and recycle material resources,
2) practice right livelihood by designing our work carefully to be useful, avoid harming other living beings, conserve and restore the biological and physical fabric of Earth,
3) engage actively as advocates for justice in the social and political organization of the human world around us,
4) enjoy our own lives and leisure in a world of beauty.
What we do and how we live:
1) We own seven houses in a poor inner-city neighborhood of Nashville. We have room for twenty-four residents to share housing and housing expenses, plus a small room for short-term guests.
2) We own and cultivate about an acre of land around our houses to raise much of our own vegetables and fruit, using methods of organic agriculture and permaculture to improve and sustain the biological viability of soil, air and water.
3) We share the use of motor vehicles with the aim of using bicycles more and reducing use of gasoline and motor vehicles.
4) We host a Nashville chapter of the War Resisters League, and participate actively in movements for social justice and peace in Nashville and larger world communities.
We accept new residents on an exploratory basis, with the option of long-term membership by mutual agreement. We have occasional openings as people move on to other learning and action in a world of opportunities. We look for people who share our social and economic vision of a sustainable nonviolent way of life, based on reduced consumption and equitable sharing of world resources.
We are a non-sectarian community, not based in common prayer or religious doctrine. Our members hold a variety of religious and philosophical ideas and practice. However, we claim affiliation with the Catholic Worker movement because of many years of personal association, and a deeply shared ethical and social vision.
The structure of our community life is open and non-directive, seeking to enable and encourage the initiative of members who share compatible ideals. A minimum commitment to our common work requires contributing value equal to $450 per month for shared housing costs, in a negotiable combination of cash for expenses and work hours contributed to agriculture and housing maintenance. Labor contribution hours are presently credited at a value of $15 per hour. Beyond this, we pursue our own goals and support one another's work, as we feel cooperatively led to do so.
Our community sometimes sponsors one or more members to volunteer part time as interns at participating peace and social justice organizations in Nashville, for one year or more. In these cases we provide free room, basic food commodities, and a small personal spending stipend.
We welcome short visits from travelers interested in our vision and work. If you have a specific interest in joining our community or visiting us, the next step is to call Karl Meyer at 615-322-9523 for a mutual exchange on who we are and what we want. Or you can send a letter describing your background, vision and goals to:
Nashville Greenlands, 2407 Heiman St., Nashville, TN 37208-2415
Phone: 615-322-9523
Include a phone number where we can call you for further discussion.
Vegetable Beds - June 2001 and 2009
What Plants Can Do
With One-Sixth Acre of Arable Urban Yard, in Seventeen Years,
If We Give Them a Chance and a Hand Up
Two Nashville urban lots of 50' X 150' each, with one devastated house, in the central city two miles from the State Capitol, were mostly covered in mowed yard grass, with three deciduous trees, and several decorative shrubs, when I bought it all for $26,000 cash, in 1997, after traveling the country for six years in my gas-guzzling Peace House.
Two lots equal one-third acre. Orchard, berry patches, and vegetable beds now eagerly occupy about one-sixth acre of this land. These are peak food crop yields, by year of highest yield, from what we have planted and nurtured:
Apples, 2 trees, '12, 462 lbs/ Sour Cherry, 3 trees, '08, 75 qts/ Figs, 2 trees, '13, 204 qts/ PawPaw, 2 trees, '13, 63 count/ Peach, '08, 27 lbs/ Pear (table), '13, 50 count/ Pear (canning), '12, 152 lbs/ Chestnut, 2 trees, '12, 38 qts/ Blackberry, '13, 63 qts/ Elderberry, '08, 6 qts/ Gooseberry, '13, 26 qts/ Mulberry. '11, 25 qts/ Raspberry, Red, '09, 11 qts/ Raspberry, Black, '11, 13 qts/ Grapes, 3 varieties, '11, 73 qts/ Canteloupe '99, 70 count, Watermelon, '10, 135 lbs/ Tomatoes, '99, 2200 count/ Beets, '08, 640 count/ Carrots, '02, 530 count/ Garlic, '09, 366 clumps/ Radishes, '08, 680 count/ Turnips, '02, 182 count/ Onions '04, 1030 count/ Asparagus, '03, 408 stalks/ Green Beans, '09, 88 qts/ Soybeans, Edamame, '10, 30 qts/ Cucumbers, '09, 270 count/ Corn, '13, 42 ears/ Peas, '05, 29 qts/ Peppers, Banana, '11, 900 count/ Peppers, Bell, '09, 340 count/ Squash, Summer, '10, 80 count/ Squash, Butternut, '10, 69 count/ Fresh Greens, (Spring through early Winter), - Kale, Chard, Lettuces, Parsley, Basil, etc.
Average daily food crop labor input hours - .71 hours per day, ( or in Leap Years - .97 hours daily )
Average annual food crop cash expenditures - $ 203
The other one-sixth acre of this land contains the four bedroom house, decorative trees and shrubs, small wild meadows, and two small roof-fed ponds.
I have identified 62 species of wild birds (including a Bald Eagle flying over us), 6 species of wild mammals, 2 species of resident snakes, frogs arriving in our ponds without offering any explanation of how they got here, 20 goldfish in ponds, over 30 species of wildflowers, 30 varieties of domesticated flowers, 12 hens, and, in the four such houses that comprise our Nashville Greenlands community, 2 cats, 3 dogs, and 19 humans of a variety of genders, ages and races. We would have many more insects and pollinators than we do, if they were not killed off by years of poisonous practices in the world around us.
We have a beautiful symbiotic relationship with such a wide variety of other living beings here. We foster their growth to our advantage and to theirs. I would venture with considerable confidence that, apart from insects and microorganisms, there is far more diversity of biological organisms at our four properties, comprising a total area of about one acre, than has ever existed on this land in all the history of our mother planet Earth.
VISITORS WELCOME – contact - Karl Meyer, Nashville Greenlands,
2407 Heiman St. Nashville, Tn 37208 --615-322-9523.
Submitted to: The Catholic Worker Farmer, Ames Iowa 2-17-204
Published Winter/Spring/Summer 2014 issue.
With One-Sixth Acre of Arable Urban Yard, in Seventeen Years,
If We Give Them a Chance and a Hand Up
Two Nashville urban lots of 50' X 150' each, with one devastated house, in the central city two miles from the State Capitol, were mostly covered in mowed yard grass, with three deciduous trees, and several decorative shrubs, when I bought it all for $26,000 cash, in 1997, after traveling the country for six years in my gas-guzzling Peace House.
Two lots equal one-third acre. Orchard, berry patches, and vegetable beds now eagerly occupy about one-sixth acre of this land. These are peak food crop yields, by year of highest yield, from what we have planted and nurtured:
Apples, 2 trees, '12, 462 lbs/ Sour Cherry, 3 trees, '08, 75 qts/ Figs, 2 trees, '13, 204 qts/ PawPaw, 2 trees, '13, 63 count/ Peach, '08, 27 lbs/ Pear (table), '13, 50 count/ Pear (canning), '12, 152 lbs/ Chestnut, 2 trees, '12, 38 qts/ Blackberry, '13, 63 qts/ Elderberry, '08, 6 qts/ Gooseberry, '13, 26 qts/ Mulberry. '11, 25 qts/ Raspberry, Red, '09, 11 qts/ Raspberry, Black, '11, 13 qts/ Grapes, 3 varieties, '11, 73 qts/ Canteloupe '99, 70 count, Watermelon, '10, 135 lbs/ Tomatoes, '99, 2200 count/ Beets, '08, 640 count/ Carrots, '02, 530 count/ Garlic, '09, 366 clumps/ Radishes, '08, 680 count/ Turnips, '02, 182 count/ Onions '04, 1030 count/ Asparagus, '03, 408 stalks/ Green Beans, '09, 88 qts/ Soybeans, Edamame, '10, 30 qts/ Cucumbers, '09, 270 count/ Corn, '13, 42 ears/ Peas, '05, 29 qts/ Peppers, Banana, '11, 900 count/ Peppers, Bell, '09, 340 count/ Squash, Summer, '10, 80 count/ Squash, Butternut, '10, 69 count/ Fresh Greens, (Spring through early Winter), - Kale, Chard, Lettuces, Parsley, Basil, etc.
Average daily food crop labor input hours - .71 hours per day, ( or in Leap Years - .97 hours daily )
Average annual food crop cash expenditures - $ 203
The other one-sixth acre of this land contains the four bedroom house, decorative trees and shrubs, small wild meadows, and two small roof-fed ponds.
I have identified 62 species of wild birds (including a Bald Eagle flying over us), 6 species of wild mammals, 2 species of resident snakes, frogs arriving in our ponds without offering any explanation of how they got here, 20 goldfish in ponds, over 30 species of wildflowers, 30 varieties of domesticated flowers, 12 hens, and, in the four such houses that comprise our Nashville Greenlands community, 2 cats, 3 dogs, and 19 humans of a variety of genders, ages and races. We would have many more insects and pollinators than we do, if they were not killed off by years of poisonous practices in the world around us.
We have a beautiful symbiotic relationship with such a wide variety of other living beings here. We foster their growth to our advantage and to theirs. I would venture with considerable confidence that, apart from insects and microorganisms, there is far more diversity of biological organisms at our four properties, comprising a total area of about one acre, than has ever existed on this land in all the history of our mother planet Earth.
VISITORS WELCOME – contact - Karl Meyer, Nashville Greenlands,
2407 Heiman St. Nashville, Tn 37208 --615-322-9523.
Submitted to: The Catholic Worker Farmer, Ames Iowa 2-17-204
Published Winter/Spring/Summer 2014 issue.
Karl Meyer at Greenlands henhouse - photo: Grace Biggs
Agriculture and the
Catholic Worker Tradition
A Brief Summary by Karl Meyer
Material simplicity, handcrafts and agricultural communes were central to Peter Maurin's vision of a new society in the shell of the old. Urban houses of hospitality were only temporary stopgaps for unemployed people at the height of the Great Depression, when the Catholic Worker movement began. Peter thought each parish should have a small house of hospitality, and families should share available housing space with people who were temporarily unemployed, or mentally or physically disabled from a fully self-supporting role in the contemporary economy.
But, Peter said, there is no unemployment on the land, and we should raise what we eat, and eat what we raise. I never met Peter, but in personal conversation with Dorothy Day, in talks I heard her give to groups, and in her writing over the twenty-three years I knew her, Dorothy often lamented that the “Green Revolution” back to the land part of Peter's platform had not flourished or succeeded well when tried in the movement.
Because of her belief in the green revolution aspect of Peter's vision, Dorothy and the New York house purchased and supported a succession of satellite farms: Easton, PA (1936), Newburgh, NY (1946?), Staten Island, NY (1950), Tivoli, NY (1963), and finally the present farm at Marlboro, NY.
But these were more extensions of the urban house of hospitality, with modest gardens and not much effective cultivation of the available land (except at Marlboro), because, while there need be no unemployment on the land, it is quite possible to have laziness on the land. Dorothy sometimes complained that the only people working in the fields might be Peter Maurin alone, or “Farmer John” Filiger, while other residents would be lounging and socializing in the house or on the porch.
Other urban houses over the years also had satellite farms or pieces of land in the nearby countryside, for recreation, retreats or vegetable gardening.
In the 30s and 40s a number of CW inspired families or small groups of friends attempted farming communes out in the country, but these experiments often floundered and failed because of lack of practical farming knowledge and the capital needed to survive in the emerging mass agriculture economy of those years.
By the 60s and 70s when I was first active, there were few, if any, thriving farm experiments in the CW movement.
In 1994, while traveling with my “Peace House” motor home in the west, I visited CW subsistence farm communities at Sheep Ranch, California, and Maloy, Iowa, and three CW associated families on the land in Colorado and Nebraska. Observing their efforts and talking with them about the challenges of sustaining community and supporting families economically in small town rural America helped me to decide to attempt a model for agriculture based community using vacant houses and available open land in devastated core neighborhoods of American cities. This led to the beginnings of our Nashville Greenlands community sixteen years ago, which has thrived and grown continuously over the years since. A similar urban agricultural community was developing around the same time in Tacoma, Washington.
Over the last two decades, Catholic Worker associated farming experiments in the countryside and in the center of cities have taken off and grown in many more places, and our Catholic Worker Farmer gathering here is witness to that.
I know that Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin would be deeply thrilled by these developments if they could be here with us today, and of course their spirit and vision is here with us.
Prepared for February 16, 2013 gathering of Catholic Worker farmers near Dubuque, Iowa; about sixty people attending.
Karl Meyer, Nashville Greenlands, 2401 Heiman St.,Nashville, TN 37208 615-322-9523
Material simplicity, handcrafts and agricultural communes were central to Peter Maurin's vision of a new society in the shell of the old. Urban houses of hospitality were only temporary stopgaps for unemployed people at the height of the Great Depression, when the Catholic Worker movement began. Peter thought each parish should have a small house of hospitality, and families should share available housing space with people who were temporarily unemployed, or mentally or physically disabled from a fully self-supporting role in the contemporary economy.
But, Peter said, there is no unemployment on the land, and we should raise what we eat, and eat what we raise. I never met Peter, but in personal conversation with Dorothy Day, in talks I heard her give to groups, and in her writing over the twenty-three years I knew her, Dorothy often lamented that the “Green Revolution” back to the land part of Peter's platform had not flourished or succeeded well when tried in the movement.
Because of her belief in the green revolution aspect of Peter's vision, Dorothy and the New York house purchased and supported a succession of satellite farms: Easton, PA (1936), Newburgh, NY (1946?), Staten Island, NY (1950), Tivoli, NY (1963), and finally the present farm at Marlboro, NY.
But these were more extensions of the urban house of hospitality, with modest gardens and not much effective cultivation of the available land (except at Marlboro), because, while there need be no unemployment on the land, it is quite possible to have laziness on the land. Dorothy sometimes complained that the only people working in the fields might be Peter Maurin alone, or “Farmer John” Filiger, while other residents would be lounging and socializing in the house or on the porch.
Other urban houses over the years also had satellite farms or pieces of land in the nearby countryside, for recreation, retreats or vegetable gardening.
In the 30s and 40s a number of CW inspired families or small groups of friends attempted farming communes out in the country, but these experiments often floundered and failed because of lack of practical farming knowledge and the capital needed to survive in the emerging mass agriculture economy of those years.
By the 60s and 70s when I was first active, there were few, if any, thriving farm experiments in the CW movement.
In 1994, while traveling with my “Peace House” motor home in the west, I visited CW subsistence farm communities at Sheep Ranch, California, and Maloy, Iowa, and three CW associated families on the land in Colorado and Nebraska. Observing their efforts and talking with them about the challenges of sustaining community and supporting families economically in small town rural America helped me to decide to attempt a model for agriculture based community using vacant houses and available open land in devastated core neighborhoods of American cities. This led to the beginnings of our Nashville Greenlands community sixteen years ago, which has thrived and grown continuously over the years since. A similar urban agricultural community was developing around the same time in Tacoma, Washington.
Over the last two decades, Catholic Worker associated farming experiments in the countryside and in the center of cities have taken off and grown in many more places, and our Catholic Worker Farmer gathering here is witness to that.
I know that Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin would be deeply thrilled by these developments if they could be here with us today, and of course their spirit and vision is here with us.
Prepared for February 16, 2013 gathering of Catholic Worker farmers near Dubuque, Iowa; about sixty people attending.
Karl Meyer, Nashville Greenlands, 2401 Heiman St.,Nashville, TN 37208 615-322-9523
