Roots of All Roads (ROAR) is a mobile farm stand connecting communities with locally grown produce, facilitating education and creating opportunities to come together through the shared experience of food and nourishment. Shaped by the principle that a healthy and sustainable lifestyle is a basic human right, we strive to foster an environment of self-reliance through reconnecting with the cultural wisdom abundant in each of our histories. Making fresh produce more readily available, paired with at-market education, in a way that will promote independence and long term sustainability. For more information about this program contact Rachel Tefft at [email protected].

ROAR is a program of Community Arts Create, a non-profit based out of southeast Seattle which strives to build community through self-discovery and shared experience.  We work to enhance a richer way of life by creating harmony through creative expression within Seattle’s very diverse culture. Simply put, CAC partners with the community to create cultural competency through art of all forms.

Roots of All Roads is supported by the generosity of the HumanLinks Foundation, helping Washington State communities make systemic improvements in education, health care and sustainable agriculture. HumanLinks strives to strengthen voices and connections to make these essential systems more effective and responsible.

Meet the Team!

Rachel is a registered dietitian and director of Roots of All Roads.  She has a passion for working with nutrition as a vehicle to empower and connect individuals to their food, body, environment and community. Through nutrition education and skill building, she works to encourage others to take an active role in their health by addressing various barriers present. Rachel believes in considering the holistic impact that our food choices have. She is also very drawn to exploring the healing traditions of different cultures centered around practices that nourish the body through not just what foods are consumed but also the way inwhich they are cultivated, prepared and shared.

Ben, director of Community Arts Create, has worked in the food industry since high school.  His experience extends from cooking in various Seattle restaurants, an educating youth through Taste International, co-creating a community park and garden and preparing many community meals offered at the Hillman City Collaboratory.  Feeding people is one of his greatest passions. In 2014, Ben started the process of bringing ROAR into CAC’s programming, pairing it with the already established Taste International.  For ROAR’s tenure, Ben has acted as an advisor, volunteer, and full fledged supporter.

Born and raised among the slugs and cedars of Cascadia, Claire engages food justice as an ecologist, an organizer, and a woman of faith. A lifelong gardener, her only greater joy than digging in the dirt is bringing others to the work. She holds a BA in Community and Environmental Planning from the University of Washington, and an M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, where she served with the Edible Churchyard program, bringing communities of faith to a deeper connection with food and land through scripture and theological reflection. She is excited to share the region’s bounty and co-create community with the ROAR team this summer.

Raised in Texas, Elliott is now a Master’s in Public Health candidate at the University of Washington and he also works with a local family foundation. He believes in the power of food to build community, and he’s an avid gardener, cook, and canner of local goods. He has lived in Hillman City for almost two years and if he were a vegetable, he’d be a artichoke.

Kai has been a volunteer at the Hillman City Collaboratory over the past year.  She enjoys learning where her food comes from and believes in helping her community in any way she can.   She graduated high school this year and will be attending school for cosmetology this fall.  Kai will be helping run the weekly neighborhood BBQs this summer in the Hillman City Park and Garden.

When she left her suburban Seattle home at 18 and headed to the heart of the Willamette valley, Donna had no idea know just how fond she was of the country lifestyle.  After a few years of country living, she headed back to Seattle to pursue a holistic nutrition and herbal degree from Bastyr University.  Since then she has lived in Port Townsend learning about raw foods, Arizona as an culinary instructor and New Zealand as a permaculture farmer, harvester and farmers market educator. She is is excited to be back in Seattle still reveling in the bounty of fresh locally grown produce and excited to taste each seasonal fruit and veg, straight from hand to mouth.  This photo was taken in Highpoint west Seattle , with mulberry juice stained hands after a harvest!

 

Review of our first season

The pilot season for ROAR took place the summer of 2014, running for 10 weeks and operating at four different sites. The mobile farm stand purchased fruits and vegetables from Washington farmers who are practicing sustainable farming techniques. The farm stand traveled weekly to four different community sites in the 2014 season. The produce was sold at a 20% mark-up, keeping the costs low enough for an economically diverse following to develop at the weekly markets. What was not sold at market was then sold to the Rainier Valley Food Bank, at wholesale cost, bringing this produce to members of the community with the greatest need. Alongside the mobile farm stand, we hosted various education and community building events at each site. These events were developed in collaboration with the organizations we were partnering with and the communities we were working with.

Thank you to our friends at the South Seattle Emerald who helped tell the story of our first season!