Terrain V01 - Journal - Page 22
20 | Sterling College
Ashland Tann ‘21
A Narrative Written by Marialisa Calta
Wendell Berry Farming Program
As a student passionate about food and agriculture, Ashland Tann
learned quickly that when he spoke about this passion, “people’s
eyes would just glaze over.”
“But if I cooked them something,” he says, flashing an energetic
grin, “they started paying attention. I started making progress when
I started cooking.”
Ashland started life as a city kid, born and raised in Baltimore. But
his mother, from rural St. Mary’s County, Maryland, took him back
to her childhood home frequently, where he visited farms and farm
markets. It was there, he said, that he began “internalizing” the connection between farms, farmers, and food. “I learned respect for
the land and people,” he says. His junior year of high school found
him in North Carolina, where, after graduation, he went on to study
political science at Elizabeth City State University. “I wanted to understand the way the world works,” Ashland says of his chosen major. “I want to leave the world a better place.”
He became a “Local Food Ambassador,” a position designed to encourage local food education on campus and support local foods in
campus dining. That’s when he realized that, in essence, a plate of
food, like a picture, is worth a thousand words; that if you want to
send a message about food, you had better start cooking. He did
just that. “People started sniffing – hmmm, the hall smells different,”
he says. “Suddenly I was getting random knocks on my door.” As
his passion for food grew, so did Ashland’s determination to learn
as much about it as possible. “Everyone thought I was crazy, but I
was like ‘hold on, I’ve got to go to culinary school.” And he was off to
College of the Albemarle in Edenton, North Carolina. He remembers
months of juggling classes and restaurant jobs, snatching an hour
or two of sleep in his car, and soaking up all he could about food.
As Ashland dug deeper into issues of food sustainability, Sterling
College began popping up on his radar. He was, he says, “blown away”
by the fact that Sterling grows 30 percent of its own food, sources
another 34 percent from a 150-mile radius, and has been ranked