For Kim Bryant, becoming co-owner of Two Chicks and a Farm is a reinvention of a career whose previous focus was first as a plant nursery worker and then as a social worker. For her partner Jen Russomanno, it’s an additional career as she continues to work in the public health field while farming and pursuing her doctorate in public health at the University of Tennessee. As if that doesn’t keep them busy enough, they also organize a Garden Delivery CSA with eight other vendors that serves customers at six weekly drop-off locations. They recently added 150 chickens (all have names) to their operation to provide eggs to their inventory, and they also recently purchased an additional 18 acres of land on which to grow produce, making their total available planting capability 49 acres distributed in three Jefferson City/New Market locations. More: East Knoxville to get farmers market beginning Sunday at Tabernacle Baptist Church Growth of the farm came naturally “We started in 2012 (with two high tunnels) to have a sustainable way for us to grow our own food and then realized we had quite a surplus left over, so we started selling at the Dandridge Farmers Market. It took off from there. People responded to the products we were selling. In the last six years we have grown 400 percent or something close to that,” Russomanno said. She credits Bryant with being the “brains of the operation.” “Kim grew up in East Tennessee on a farm with her dad and owned a greenhouse and nursery business back in… [Read full story]
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