Carefully Crafted Cuisine and Community Care

Bounty & Soul’s 10th Anniversary at the Farm to Fork Event

By Hannah Van Vlack

Farm to Fork, the signature fundraiser for nonprofit Bounty & Soul, has a special meaning this year: the organization is celebrating 10 years of serving the greater Asheville community. On Wednesday, September 18, from 5:30-8:30 p.m., guests will enjoy a meal crafted with local ingredients by highly regarded Asheville chefs. Farm to Fork will take place at Yesterday Spaces, an outdoor venue that will immerse guests in the moonlight and stars while they enjoy local fare, connect with one another and celebrate all the work Bounty & Soul has done over the past 10 years.

“Bounty & Soul started very small at a community table in Black Mountain, which would offer a free meal to anyone in need while promoting community fellowship,” says founder and executive director Ali Casparian. “It really came out of my own lived experience with food insecurity; when I would visit the table once a week and sit with others, we would talk about food, and the conversation always turned to health.”

Casparian started volunteering for the table and was invited to go pick up food from the food bank. Once there, she saw fruits and vegetables, which she was told were going to a pig farmer because nobody wanted to eat them. “That started it for me,” she says. “Next week, at the welcome table, I got those fruits and vegetables and set them up like you would see at a farmers market. People started helping and it became a community thing; we kept rescuing food, a farmer at the welcome table would donate stuff, and I brought in my camping stove to teach people how to cook.”

Over the years, Bounty & Soul has transformed from a humble table of rescued produce to an organization serving 17,000 people a week. “We all deserve to eat the way we want to eat, and most people want to have access to and be able to afford fresh, local, healthy food,” Casparian says.

Bounty & Soul works at the intersection of food, farmers and health. Services offered by Bounty & Soul include weekly farmers markets in Black Mountain, Swannanoa and Fairview; a volunteer-run food delivery program; health and wellbeing classes; and a farmer’s alliance program where volunteers plant, harvest, cultivate and more for 75 community farmers.

“We purchase food in two ways,” says Casparian. “We provide a market for Grade-B produce, which just means the produce is not perfect, and it is sold at a discounted rate so we can get more of it. We also pay full retail price for some crops, like culturally aligned foods that align with our demographics. Farmers donating produce can get a tax write-off from us, and we promote farms, letting the community know, ‘This is your farm and this is where it is.’ We have a deep relationship with farmers, knowing them personally by name.”

Farm to Fork goes beyond recognizing the numbers of people or pounds of food, focusing on how Bounty & Soul has made a difference in the lives of individuals. “Farm to Fork is a really great way to put your money towards a greater impact,” Casparian says, “not only supporting greater food security but the local food system that we work in tandem with.”

The phrase “We Choose Love” is a powerful part of the Bounty & Soul manifesto. “When you are a part of this organization in any way, love is around you in different ways, like how a farmer grows peppers for us, when someone gives a hug with gratitude or the flowers grown and cut to put on our tables,” says Casparian. “We are centered in love in everything we do.”

Yesterday Spaces is located at 305 Sluder Branch Road, Leicester. A shuttle will be available from Swannanoa to the venue and back. Tickets are $200 or $210 with shuttle. To purchase tickets or learn more, visit BountyAndSoul.org. Hannah Van Vlack is a senior at Western Carolina University studying Writing and Editing in Professional Environments and Music.