The Nashville chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier announces its second annual fundraiser, Tour de Farm 2018, on Sunday, April 15 at 9:30 a beginning at Deer Valley Farm in Franklin. Two events in one, the fundraiser includes a day-long VIP Farm tour throughout Williamson County and a multi-course Farm-Inspired Feast. Tickets for the event are $195 for the tour and dinner or $95 for the dinner and are now available for purchase online.
“Tour de Farm is such an exciting event because it allows us to not only introduce the greater community to our nearby farms and farmers, but also allows us to support this great food community through direct grants and scholarships,” said Tour De Farm co-chair Erin Byers Murray. “Seeing the money raised from this event go right back out to those who will put it to good use throughout the community is incredibly rewarding.”
The VIP Farm Tour brings guests via the infamous Nash Trash Tours bus out to the fields of four Williamson County area farms, including stops at Delvin Farms, Tavalin Tails, Hatcher Dairy and Noble Springs for a rare, in-person meet-and-greet with farmers on their own turf. This portion of the event includes lunch, beverages, and transportation, as well as the dinner event.
The Farm-Inspired Feast, which directly follows the tour, is a seated, multi-course, dinner set inside Michael W. Smith’s Deer Valley Barn prepared by local chefs including Les Dames member Margot McCormack, chef and owner of Margot Café, chef Hal Holden-Bache of Lockeland Table (co-owned by Dame member Cara Graham), and pastry chefs Rebekah Turshen of City House and Lisa Marie White of Thompson Hotel. The meal will showcase ingredients from area farms, including those on the tour, and will include beverages paired with each course.
A registered 501c3, Les Dames Nashville raises funds for Scholarship and Community Investment. These areas include funds for women to further their continuing education in the fields of food, farming, beverage, and hospitality and co-funding summer internships for young women through Opportunity NOW.
Les Dames Nashville is pledging a large percentage of the proceeds of Tour de Farm 2018 towards Nashville’s Opportunity NOW initiative, which is an effort to put 10,000 Nashville youth, ages 14 to 24, into paid internships across the city. This will help address the city’s staggering poverty rate, which at 19% is one of the highest in the nation. The remaining money raised will go towards other scholarship initiatives.
