Volunteer Stories WNC

Nutrition is community. It brings generations together. It is the foundation of public health.

Nutrition is at the core of everything I do now. In 2005 I took a course in Barcelona, Spain, and I ended up living in Barcelona for 11 years. I gained firsthand experience that the Mediterranean diet is the best of both worlds. Foods come from the mountains and foods come from the sea. My neighborhood market was a three-minute walk from my apartment, and I never went to the grocery store to stock up. I made four small trips to the corner market. I knew I was eating healthy, but I still had a health scare and a grave diagnosis when I moved back to the United States, and when I moved to Murphy, I had to spend a year receiving cancer treatments. I decided to attend WCU’s Nutrition Program. Part of my goal was health solutions for everyone.

I was blessed to join my family in the Murphy area in 2016. One of the first places I noticed that had volunteer opportunities was Mainspring Conservation and Mountain True. Sometimes volunteering has to be the right timing and the right distance. Sometimes the opportunities that they had available, I wasn’t available for. Around 2018 I met Marlena Baker, the Extension Agent of Family and Consumer Sciences with the NC State Cooperative Extension office. Because of my nutrition studies at Western Carolina University, it seemed like a shoe-in to start volunteering with the extension office, and participate in their master food volunteer program. It’s the equivalent of the master gardeners, and there were three of us that have earned that title. Now it’s ongoing to learn about food safety and do food demonstrations at farmers markets and at the annex office. Marlena also introduced me to a group of people that were trying to come up with a way to strengthen our local food system. They were able to get established as a nonprofit, and it developed into the Cherokee Clay Food Alliance. When Hurricane Helene destroyed everything around us, we were the last route going into the greater Asheville area. We were a young organization that was just certified enough that we were able to come together quickly. It started off with a food drive in a parking lot. Then collecting food at the Andrews airport and moving it out of the area to Black Mountain. Then it was working with Manna on the Cherokee County student weekend wellness bags helping address more food insecurity in the area. Then it developed into more. We had always been trying to put on events at the Murphy Farmers Market, which turned into a local grower’s farm stand. The first year we were buying food on consignment from local growers, and that was kind of difficult. So last year, Megan Lambert (Cherokee Clay Food Alliance) and I spent over 500 hours together working at all four farmers markets. We purchased food from over 60 local growers, and over $8,000 of local food went back into the system. The organization is now going forward with a local food hub in Andrews.

Now I’m trying to stay in the Brasstown area and develop a community garden that will satisfy the goals of food pantry and youth education for groups like the Appalachian Wildling school group that we are hosting sometime in May. We are adjacent to the Brasstown Farmers Market, between Jenkins branch and the Little Brasstown Creek. In one portion of the garden, we have a 20 by 30-foot area to cultivate potatoes and rows of corn, beans and squash, which are known as the three sisters of companion planting. We’ll also have some other vertical beans growing areas. The idea is that the majority of the yield will go to the Brasstown Community Center Food Pantry. On the opposite side of the crop area, we hope to have a pollinator garden established this year. If my dreams come true, we may have an above ground structure added to the area this year, but next year it’ll be more developed. That’s the dream for this initial year.

We are looking for volunteers to help with weeding and extra tending to the garden area. If you would like to help text me at 828-541-3194 or email at cherokeeclayfoodalliance@gmail.com.

I’m trying to do my paternal grandparents proud. They were farmers in Wisconsin. They had 88 acres in southern Wisconsin. I’m hoping that it’s in my blood, and I can to do them proud.

–Angela Henningfeld, Brasstown Community Garden, Cherokee Clay food Alliance and NC Cooperative Extension Cherokee County Center, Master food Volunteer