Rooted in Southern Appalachia
Weaving
community
through food
Caja Solidaria builds and strengthens community-based food systems rooted in Southern Appalachia. We grow and share food, operate shared infrastructure, develop partnerships between farms and healthcare, and help organizations design and sustain programs that work.
Our work connects hands-on experience with research, education, and systems thinking—turning what we learn locally into practical solutions that other communities can use.
Find Your Place
in the Weave
For neighbors, volunteers, farmers, food entrepreneurs, and community participants. There is no membership, no minimum, no right way to show up. Pick a thread and pull.
- Find our food
- Register for a free nutrition class
- Volunteer at the farm(opens in new tab)
- Use the shared-use kitchen(opens in new tab)
- Rent the event space(opens in new tab)
- Enroll a patient in Food is Medicine
- Borrow tools
- Help plan next season's restaurant(opens in new tab)
- Join the Food is Medicine coalition(opens in new tab)
Build With Us
For healthcare organizations, funders, community organizations, institutions, and other partners.
What the weave holds
Together, we are growing a healthier, more connected community through food, land, and shared resources.
since we started counting
- 32,000
- services delivered to neighbors
- 672
- households fed and connected
- $5M
- invested in local farmers + vendors
- 100
- meals cooked every week
- 8
- kitchen entrepreneurs launched
- 3.6
- acres in production in Mills River
A stronger community, thread by thread.
What we build. What we learn. What we share.
Our farm, kitchens, food programs, and community partnerships are more than individual projects. They are places where we develop, test, and improve approaches to making local food systems work.
We bring those lessons into research, training, sustainable financing, participatory planning, and technical assistance—helping other organizations build on what we've learned.
Strategy & Technical AssistanceCommunities can govern and care for shared resources effectively when they have the relationships, knowledge, and ability to shape the rules together.
Learned from the work of Elinor Ostrom
“What we practice at the small scale sets the patterns for the whole system.”
adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy
We build change at the scale of relationship: rooted in place, governed with community, and connected across communities.