Grow Appalachia announces 2025 Appalachian Foodways Practitioner Fellows
February 18, 2025
BEREA, Ky. – Grow Appalachia, a Strategic Initiative of Berea College, is honored to announce four regional foodways practitioners selected as 2025 Appalachian Foodways Practitioner Fellows. The program is designed to honor, celebrate and support foodways tradition bearers in central Appalachia who have made significant and long-term contributions to sustaining and supporting the foodways heritage of their respective communities.
The Appalachian Foodways Practitioner program is a collaborative initiative between Grow Appalachia, Mid Atlantic Arts Central Appalachian Living Traditions Program and the Appalachian Studies Association. Each year the program awards $5,000 to fellows to support their ongoing learning and community-based foodways programming. Fellows must be located in counties within Appalachian Regional Commission’s (ARC) service area. Since stewarding the program in 2023, Grow Appalachia has been honored to recognize 10 Appalachian foodways practitioners representing a broad geographic region including North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, West Virginia and Kentucky. Fellows have ranged from seed savers to food-justice advocates, community chefs specializing in Chilean empanadas, to farmers and foodways-centered organizations.
The 2025 Appalachian Foodways Practitioners Fellows are:
Chris Smith
Chris Smith lives in western North Carolina and is the executive director of the Utopian Seed Project, a crop-trialing nonprofit working to celebrate food and farming.
Within this work, Smith collaborates on The Heirloom Collard Project, hosts a seasonal Trial to Table event series and publishes Crop Stories, a crop-specific multimedia project. His book, “The Whole Okra,” won a James Beard Foundation Award in 2020, and he is the co-host of The Okra Pod Cast.
In 2023 Smith received the Organic Educator Award from The Organic Growers School and was named a Champion of Conservation by Garden & Gun. Learn more at www.utopianseed.org.
Marcus West
Marcus West is from Cowee West’s Mill Community in Franklin, North Carolina in Macon County. His family roots have been in the Appalachian Mountains since the early 1800s in western North Carolina. His family ties are the West family of Cowee, North Carolina; The Mingus family of the Oconaluftee Community in Cherokee, North Carolina; the Powell family of Bryson City, North Carolina; and the Rogers family of Cullowhee, North Carolina.
He and his father, Adam West Jr., still carry on their family’s farm traditions today. He is 40 years old and is blessed to have his 81-year-old father with him who taught him how to butcher and raise beef and grow crops to survive.
Ronnie Marie Tartt
Described in Black By God - The West Virginian as “her ancestors’ wildest dream,” Ronnie Marie Tartt is a shining example of the culmination of love, resilience and ingenuity in human form. She is a woman who has become a mother to her entire community through her food, instruction and example.
As a wife, mother, homemaker and caretaker in McDowell County, West Virginia, Tartt gleaned from the matriarchs in her family that food is far more than sustenance, but more of a testament of strength, resilience and creativity. She honors her elders by continuing the foodways practices of growing her own food, such as okra, beets, greens, beans and tomatoes. She preserves them by canning and drying to ensure her family and the surrounding community are well fed, well prepared and understand the necessity of food sovereignty in her often-under-resourced region of central Appalachia.
Tartt’s greatest strength is her willingness and eagerness to share these often-forgotten foodway practices with her community by sharing her skills and knowledge with anyone willing to understand the critical role of food in health and family. In her most recent role as an entrepreneur, Tartt has launched the inaugural product, Mama’s Sauce, with Appalachian Gold, a Black-owned company dedicated to celebrating the rich agricultural and culinary cultures of Appalachia.
The New Opportunity School for Women—Sam Cole
Sam Cole is a proud native of Lee County, Kentucky, where she learned about planting by moon sign as a young child from her farming grandparents and parents.
She began working for the New Opportunity School for Women (NOSW) in 2024 as the development and communications coordinator, a welcome addition to the NOSW staff after an impactful term as a board member, helping to guide the organization through the changes brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.
For almost 40 years, NOSW has been working in the region to uplift and preserve Appalachian culture. In addition to teaching gardening, nutrition, health and canning, NOSW also helps women strive for their own goals. Such skills are vital now more than ever. Cole holds a Bachelor of Arts with a concentration in Appalachian literature from Berea College, which helped her better understand not just the region, but the importance of her own culture.
Cole enjoys cooking, gardening, reading, writing and good music.
The Appalachian Foodways Practitioner Fellowships are made possible in part by Mid Atlantic Arts’ Central Appalachia Living Traditions program and in partnership between Grow Appalachia, Mid Atlantic Arts and the Appalachian Studies Association.
To learn more about the fellowship program, visit https://growappalachia.berea.edu/appalachian-foodways-fellowship-program/ .
About Grow Appalachia
Grow Appalachia, a strategic initiative of Berea College, began as a partnership in 2009 between Berea College and JP’s Peace, Love & Happiness Foundation with a mission to help as many Appalachian families grow as much of their own food as possible. For more than 15 years, Grow Appalachia has been working throughout central Appalachia with a vision of a vibrant regional food system where healthy food is accessible to all. Grow Appalachia partners with organizations, communities and families in Appalachia to create healthy, resilient and economically viable food systems. Since 2009, Grow Appalachia has partnered with more than 8,000 gardening families who’ve produced nearly 7.5 million pounds of organic produce, while also providing technical assistance to more than 500 beginning and small-scale farmers. Through its Social Enterprise, Grow Appalachia has built 150 high tunnels across the region, structures designed to support year-round production for growers. Since 2016, Grow Appalachia’s Berea Kids Eat program has served more than 1.7 million meals to local youth and families through its summer meals program. Learn more about its initiatives at growappalachia.berea.edu.
About Mid Atlantic ArtsMid Atlantic Arts nurtures and funds the creation and presentation of diverse artistic expression and connects people to meaningful arts experiences within our region and beyond. Created in 1979, Mid Atlantic Arts is a private non-profit organization closely allied with the region’s state arts councils and the National Endowment for the Arts. It combines funding from state and federal resources with private support from corporations, foundations and individuals to address needs in the arts from a regional, national and international perspective. To learn more about Mid Atlantic Arts, its programs and services, visit its website at www.midatlanticarts.org.
