Alumn practices his faith at Trevecca Urban Farm

by Montgomery Sparrow

Carlson Grae is finding the Trevecca Urban Farm to be a great place to practice his faith while he’s earning his master’s degree in religion.

Grae, the part-time farm hand, joined the staff last fall.

He provides assistance to Jason Adkins, Trevecca’s Environmental Projects Coordinator, with general activity on Trevecca’s Urban Farm and also is a creative force to create programs to enlist more volunteers.

“I don’t know how I would run the farm without him. He is a creative thinker, a heavy lifter, and a hard worker.” Adkins said. “To be a farmer, you have to be a total person, and Carlson is one of those total people that you hope to come along.”

Grae has a specific passion for the goats. He knows all of them by name, knows their character types and has favorites. At the end of the morning chores, he will sit down in their pens and socialize with them- either allowing them to play on him or petting and talking with them.

“He loves the goats and has taken them home to spend the night if they need bottle-fed,” Adkins says.

For Grae, working on Trevecca’s Urban Farm is a participation in active pacifism and a practice of his Christian faith, he said. Grae believes non-violence is a product of his Christian beliefs and pacifism for him is not just a moral issue, but a faith issue.

“Pacifism, a lot of times, is talked about in passive forms or what we cannot do,” Grae said. “Community development and sustainable agriculture are ways you can be actively non-violent.”

Grae understands the theology meaning of the land and the caring for the land and the animals as a Christian vocation, Adkins says.

Grae graduated from Trevecca in 2013 with a degree in Music Business.

He has worked with Hands-On Nashville and Martha O’Bryan Center.

He plans to stay with Trevecca’s Urban Farms for a couple of years, and in the future, he desires to build a natural burial ground for Middle Tennessee.

He is married to Kylie Grae, an alumni of Trevecca.

His pass-times are writing poems, watching the Office and learning the violin.

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