Crabtree Farms + Wild Ones Community Book Club – “The Home Place”
6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Overview
The Crabtree Farms Community Book Club is a monthly gathering designed to foster thoughtful conversation around food, land, sustainability, health, and community. This program will expand Crabtree’s educational offerings by creating a reflective and relational space that complements hands-on workshops and farm-based growing and learning.
The book club will provide an accessible, welcoming environment for participants to engage with meaningful literature while connecting more deeply to the mission and work of the farm.
September 22: The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature
Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina, a place “easy to pass by on the way somewhere else,” has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, readers meet these extraordinary people, including Drew himself, who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be “the rare bird, the oddity.” By turns angry, funny, elegiac, and heartbreaking, The Home Place is a remarkable meditation on nature and belonging, at once a deeply moving memoir and riveting exploration of the contradictions of Black identity in the rural South and in America today.
Schedule
Meeting Time: Tuesday, September 22, 6-7:30 PM
Format (2 Hours)
• 5 minutes – Arrival & light refreshments (optional tea or seasonal farm sampling)
• 90 minutes – Guided discussion
• 15 minutes – Reflection activity or connection to the farm
• 10 minutes – Closing and preview of next month’s book
Participants must register monthly up to a week before the start date of the book club.
Themes & Reading Plan:
The club will rotate themes to maintain variety and seasonal relevance.
Books available via the Chattanooga Public Library: https://catalog.chattlibrary.org/GroupedWork/24596cdb-7756-013f-7cb5-4b3574fde7e5-eng/HomesearchId=8304868&recordIndex=1&page=1&searchSource=local&referred=resultIndex.
This title can also be purchased at: https://milkweed.org/book/the-home-place
Crabtree Farms Community Book Club members receive 15% off their order at Book & Cover by using the discount code CURIOUSCRB on their website: https://thebookandcover.com/. Books purchased are for in-store pickup.
About the Facilitator
Rogelio Cerezo serves as Director of Development and Administration at Crabtree Farms, where he supports the organization’s growth, partnerships, and community engagement. Rogelio has a passion for bringing people together through conversation and shared learning. An avid reader, he enjoys books that explore food, nature, culture, and community. Some of his happiest memories involve time spent in his family’s farm and in the gardens of different relatives, these experiences continue to shape his appreciation for the land and the stories that connect us to it. He’s excited to create a welcoming space for thoughtful discussion and connection through the Crabtree Farms Community Book Club.
Wild Ones promotes native landscapes through education, advocacy, and collaborative action. We inspire change through shared core values: Respect is at the heart of Wild Ones. We have respect for each other, for nature and for the earth. We’re an inclusive community. Diverse voices and backgrounds make us stronger. That’s why we welcome everyone to join us. We provide evidence-based information, because the seeds of change spread most efficiently when grounded in data. We monitor and share the latest evidence-informed strategies. We’re action and growth oriented. Just dig 
in! We learn, grow, and share our knowledge. Learn more and join Wild Ones here.