Introducing new Nashville Food Co-Op Blogger, Ariana Hodes
New Nashville Food Co-op blogger Ariana Hodes is going to take you on a journey. Look for her blog posts twice a month on our website and announcements for when they post on our socials. Let’s get this story started with a self-penned introduction.
Enjoy the story!
My Nashville Beginning
Hi, I’m Ariana. I moved to Nashville in June of 2014, so yeah, I only heard tales of the flood and how cheap East Nashville was. I’m a theater artist and singer by training, and I’ve been taking photos and using real and digital darkrooms since high school. Bartending and restaurant work has paid the bills, and I love crafting a great cocktail. I’ve seen first-hand over and over how personal connections are started, forged, and deepened by a shared drink and/or amazing meal.
A Change in Plans
In 2019 I went to NYC to start a MA in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship at The New School. In March of my first year, the pandemic shut everything down, and my plan to bartend over the summer while hosting events in small intimate spaces to bring people together and support artists went the way of so many in that time. I ended up back in NH working on a friend’s 40-acre natural farm, first working the farm stand and then working as a field hand. Toward the end of the season my folks and I played a gig on the farm and had people bring chairs, stay distant, and enjoy the fresh air in —for many of us—our first group event in months. It was very powerful and felt truly nourishing.
Since then I’ve been working out ways to combine arts and food and health, because I see how the first two lead to a complete definition of the latter.
Since then I’ve been working out ways to combine arts and food and health because I see how the first two lead to a complete definition of the latter. Nourishment is physical, mental, and spiritual. Connection is the root of it all. This is the place I’m writing from: hope and an invitation to use your voice for good with me. To connect.
Connection in Cooperative
I connected with the Nashville Food Co-op through Instagram…that algorithm sometimes really gets me, I hate to admit it, but it got me good with this one. I was excited to be a part of something from the ground up—to express my opinions and maybe have them matter where it matters. Where will the co-op find space? Can it be in a food desert? How will the co-op make natural food accessible to those who haven’t always had access? These are issues I want to have a hand in figuring out, alongside my fellow co-opers who I know care deeply as well about these and other issues. Maybe you care about conservation, regenerative farming, and supporting other passionate people who grow and make, and connect us all more deeply through their efforts. Come on with it, let’s make this place together.
Land Acknowledgement
The Nashville Food Co-op acknowledges what we call Nashville, Tennessee was and is the traditional homelands of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Shawnee Peoples, stewards of the land and waterways, and their various inhabitants, and who are still here in this place.
About the Author
Ariana Hodes is a performing artist by training—acting and singing since she could walk and talk. She is a photographer, videographer, writer, traveler, bartender, reader, and imbiber of media except for horror. Not gonna do it. She finds spirit in nature and thinks it was no coincidence she ended up working on a small natural farm in NH during the height of the pandemic learning from the best kind of 3rd-generation steward of her land. Land acknowledgment: that land and waterways that was and continues to be stewarded by the Abenaki and Penacook peoples. This is land that was more than likely commandeered, and it’s important to remember that legacy whenever we’re talking about land and caring for it.