Howdy-Ho, Neighboroonies!

It’s Monday, which I’m certain has become your favorite day (clearly for no particular reason.) This week, we’re talkin’ about all sortsta stuff! From deep soil to fresh starts, this one’s all about passing the good stuff along. Whether that’s a vintage dress, a compost tea recipe, a meteor wish, or the perfect Chattanooga song.

We’re diggin’ in (literally) with Alter Eco Farms, slingin’ deals at Statemint’s Fall Sale, and even tossing a little musical flair into the mix with our first Chattynooga Music League round. So grab a glass of sweet tea and let’s see what sprouts from the stories this week. 🌼

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Today's Issue Includes:

• This week's Front Porch Partner: 1440 Media

• Chattanooga's Upcoming Events

• Hand-Picked Community Spotlight: Statemint’s Fall Sale!

• Stuff I Saw on the Internet: Music League

• The Power of Poop & The Wisdom of Worms: A Yap Session with Alter Eco Farms

• Clementine’s Corner: Meteor Showers Bring Fun for Hours

• Wrap Up

Before ya keep scrollin’, make sure ya pop on this issue’s theme song!

This Week’s Front Porch Partner: 1440 Media

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What’s Goin’ On in the Scenic City?

Community

• Chattanooga Taco Week
  July 28 – Aug 3 @ Various Locations
  A full week of $4 tacos across the Scenic City. Wear stretchy pants.
  🌮 Check out the Taco Tracker here!

• The Other Ochs Brothers Exhibit
  Opens July 28, Reception on Aug 2 @ Downtown Chattanooga Library
  Local history’s secret siblings are finally getting their spotlight! Swing by to learn about the lesser-known Ochs Brothers and the stories unearthed by Olivia, the coolest archivist.
  📜 Library Lore Awaits

• Farleycon Pop Culture & Comic Expo
  August 2 & 3 @ Camp Jordan Arena
  Cosplay, comics, panels, and pop culture icons — East Ridge turns into nerdvana for two whole days.
  🦸🏻 Con On, Baby.

Music & Entertainment

• Puff & Paint at The Dragon
  July 29, 6PM – 8PM @ 508 Broad St.
  BYO creativity, and maybe yer vape pen. Cover at the door gets you a drink or a dab and the chance to turn your smoke sesh into a masterpiece.
  🎨 Paint High Art

• Tease, Tease, Tease: A Sabrina Carpenter Night
  August 1, 9PM @ Barrelhouse Ballroom
  It’s Sabrina szn. Come dressed cute and caffeinated to dance through all your pop queen eras: Taylor, Ariana, Billie, Olivia, the whole gang.
  ☕ Espresso Yourself

Outdoors ‘n’ Stuff

• Dazey Skate Station Finale
  July 31 – Aug 2 @ The Chattanooga Choo Choo
  It’s your last chance to roll at Dazey before they shut it down! Go out with a spin at Latin Night, EDM Night, and the Final Blowout with DJ Shoey! $10 entry + $4 rentals.
  🛼 Skate While You Can

• Bumble Bee Atlas Workshop
  August 2, 9:30AM – 2:30PM @ Reflection Riding
  Get buzzed (academically) with the Xerces Society and help map Tennessee’s bee population!
  🐝Bee the Change

• Christmas in July at Chester Frost Park
  July 29, 11AM – 2PM @ Chester Frost Pavilion
  Holiday crafts, movies, games, food, and Santa — because why shouldn’t Christmas come with sunscreen?
  🎅🏻 Jingle All the Way

• Back to School Bash (Hamilton Co. Schools)
  August 2, 10AM – 1PM @ TN Riverpark (Hubert Fry Center)
  Free supplies, health screenings, and community resources to kick off the school year with a backpack full of support.
  🎒Bash & Learn

• Not Your Ordinary Back 2 School Bash
  August 3, 2 – 6PM @ Miller Park
  Free supplies, health screenings, and community resources to kick off the school year with a backpack full of support.
  🏫Backpack & Bounce

Got somethin’ cookin’ that the Scenic City oughta know about? Wanna talk about how cool your weekend was? Tell us all about it! We’d love to yap it up and holler all about it from the porch! Just reply to this message, or send a separate one to [email protected]!

Hand-Picked Community Spotlight: Statemint’s Fall Sale!

Hello, my name is Clementine McBride, and I love a shopportunity. A shopping opportunity that is such an amazing deal that you just have to go for it. Next week, one of Chattanooga’s favorite shopportunities is rolling in in the form of a pop-up consignment sale that’s gonna knock your socks off. It’s time for Statemint Chattanooga’s Fall Sale!

Statemint is a massive consignment sale carefully curated to be a whole style shindig! I’m talking boutique brands, trendy finds, vintage treasures, and more! The thing that makes Statemint extra special is that the clothes for sale all come from real people right here in our community. Local sellers get to clean out their closets and you get to give yours a fashion update. Talk about a win/win! It’s a super sustainable way to recycle old clothes, so I guess that really makes it a win/win/win!

Kindahl and Carly are the sister super-duo behind the sale, and they’ve taken extra care to make sure that this fall’s sale is the best Statemint Chattanooga sale ever! Here’s everything you need to know.

• When: August 6–8, 2025 from 9 AM–7 PM and August 9, 2025 (Half‑Off Day!) from 9 AM–4 PM

• Where: Restoration Southside, 3146 Broad St, Chattanooga, TN 37408

• What they’ll have: Name‑brand men’s and women’s clothing, shoes, accessories, and more curated from local closets all over Chattanooga

• Anything else?: Come support local small businesses while you shop! We’re talking art, music, coffee, snacks, the works! Check out Statemint Chattanooga’s Instagram to keep up with all the local vendors and when you can catch them.

Bonus: You can shop the Charity and Teacher presale EARLY on August 5! Charity presale tickets are $20 and teacher ID’s are required. Proceeds from the charity sale will benefit The Kidney Foundation.

Well there you have it, folks. Statemint is THE shopping event of the season. I know it’s a sale for grownups, but listen. I snuck in last year and found myself a pair of orange and white checkered stretchy pants that any Tennessee girl would be proud to wear. Trust me. YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS IT!

Stuff I Saw on the Internet: Music League

Ever wish your group chat came with a playlist? Enter Music League: a game where you and your pals submit songs to a themed playlist, vote on each other's picks, and crown the music mastermind among you. We just kicked off a Chattynooga league with Round 1: Songs that remind you of Chattanooga. Think Krystal drive-thrus, riverside dance parties, and maybe a little Dolly. Get on in here and play with us! Winner of the league might win a little somethin’ somethin’. 👀 

The Power of Poop & The Wisdom of Worms: A Yap Session with Alter Eco Farms

If you’ve ever stared at a pile of compost and thought, “Well that’s just stinky dirt,” allow me to kindly inform you: It ain’t, Buster. There’s a whole microscopic city, and the folks over at Alter Eco Farms in Hixson are the architects, mayors, sanitation crew, and research & development all in one.

These ain't typical farmers, but storytellers of the soil, rewilding the earth beneath our boots — not just growin’ food, but healing the land it springs from. Their mission? Regenerate soil to the condition it would reach in an old-growth forest, teeming with life and free from the damage of over-farming, compaction, and chemicals. One where fungi, bacteria, protozoa, and nematodes do the heavy lifting, and humans just get the joy of growing food on top of it. However, that means turning compost into community care, and treating soil as the sacred backbone of ecological restoration.

Microscopes, Not Machines

Alter Eco Farm’s co-founder, Krisi Olivero, didn’t start in agriculture school, but came to soil through a winding trail of storytelling, film, biology, and big questions about what makes work meaningful. They trained at the Soil Food Web School, where they learned that soil is a living web — not just a medium to grow plants, but an ecosystem of relationships.

They brew compost like it’s a fine tea (seriously — they use a cone brewer and rainwater), then test it under a microscope to make sure it’s full of the good stuff: microbes that feed your plants, not just fertilize them. They call it “inoculating the soil”, which is a fancy way of sayin’ they’re reintroducing what should’ve been there all along.

Soil Is Alive (and Full of Poop)

Alter Eco will tell ya, “1 teaspoon of forest soil has more living organisms than there are humans on Earth.” Tiny tardigrades, amoebas, fungi, bacteria – all workin’ together to break things down, and poop out nutrients in plant-ready form.

Speakin’ of poop: some of the highest-quality compost on the farm comes from the backsides of their beloved llamas and alpacas: Little Debbie, Oatmeal Creme Pie, and MoonPie. These fluffy fertilizer factories produce waste that’s rich in nitrogen, making it the perfect ingredient for boosting microbial life and plant growth in their piles.

Their compost process – complete with hot piles, pitchforks, and “cooking cages” – kills the bad pathogens, but keeps the good microbes alive and wriggling. In two weeks, that waste becomes wonder. I also ain’t leavin’ out the fact that their naming system follows a long list of obscure Muppet names that they pull from Wikipedia, which I just love.

Backyard Solutions for Big Problems

Although the folks at Alter Eco are doin’ some wildly amazin’ things for our little town, ya don’t need a whole background in soil science to make a difference:

• Mulch with natural stuff like leaves, grass clippings, or old chipped trees. Put it back in nature.

• Be honest about yer ability: if full composting ain’t feasible, start small!

• Tell someone what a nematode looks like. Seriously.

• And support small, regenerative farms who are already doing this kinda work.

Wanna Get Involved or Learn More?

• Attend a class or workshop (yes, they’re fun, yes you’ll learn weird facts about protozoa).

• Book a soil consultation for your home garden or project.

• Refer a city project or business working toward more eco-friendly practices to Alter Eco Farms!

• And most importantly, be proud of yer own growin’! When you see a sprout, show that thang off. Post about it. Talk about it. Make regeneration cool.

So go outside, turn your compost, tell someone about the power of poop, and remember: No soil, no humans.

But good soil? That’s a whole new beginning.

Clementine’s Corner: Meteor Showers Bring Fun for Hours

You ever get that feeling you’re just a tiny little dude trying to do your best on a giant blue-green space pebble that comes with WiFi and squirrels? I think about that a lot, and this week we earthlings are gonna get a glimpse at big, ginormous outer space right in our own backyards. No, it’s not an alien invasion… It’s even better. Oh yeah, we’ve got ourselves a meteor shower, folks!

Actually, to be astronomically accurate, we’ve got two meteor showers, and they’re overlapping to give us a shooting star show like none other. The Southern Delta Aquariids and Alpha Capricornids are both peaking tomorrow night and early Wednesday morning!! Even better, the moon is in waxing crescent right now, which means it won’t be super visible. This is good for us because it means the moon won’t get in the way of the show.

Now you might be thinking, “Clementine, I slept through meteor shower day in science class, what the heck are you even talking about?” Well listen up, because Miss McBride is about to go Miss Frizzle on y’all. Basically, a meteor shower is when a whole bunch of meteors show up in the sky. You might’ve heard them called shooting stars before, because that’s what they look like. But they’re not actually stars at all. They’re tiny pieces of space rock and cosmic dust that burn up when they hit Earth’s atmosphere. When a comet is bopping around space (as comets do), it leaves behind a trail of debris. When Earth crosses through that trail and those space rock particles hit the atmosphere (at crazy fast speeds), they burn up and voilà! Meteor shower!

This one’s especially cool because we get to see two totally different types at once! With the Delta Aquariids, we’ll be seeing lots of meteors - up to 20 an hour! They’ll look like fast streaks across the sky, and get this: they’ll have glowing tails!! We won’t see as many with the Alpha Capricornids (about 5 per hour), but the ones we do see are gonna be worth it. These meteors will look like GIANT FIREBALLS that light up the whole sky!!

So now that you know what’s going on, let’s talk about how to make the most of this galactic fireworks show:

• First of all, the best time to see the meteor showers is super early Wednesday morning (between 2 and 4am), so set your alarm clocks.

• Go somewhere dark if you can — city lights make it harder to see. Look south, and give your eyes time to adjust.

• Don’t get discouraged if you don’t see anything right away. Try to hang out for at least an hour, because these meteors tend to show up in bursts.

So yeah, sometimes I do feel pretty small and insignificant on the spinning space rock we call home. But there’s something amazing about laying back and watching ancient comets blow up above me and knowing the world has been turning for a long, long time — and it’s gonna keep turning for a long, long time. I’m just happy to be along for the ride.

And hey! Maybe they aren’t stars, but you know what they say: “When you wish upon flaming space dust, your dreams come true!”

Welp, we got Mudpies with our name on ‘em.

Whether you found joy in the dirt, delight on the discount rack, or a new song that sounds like home — thanks for stickin’ around. Every little share, click, and chuckle helps us keep the porch light burnin’.

'Til next time, keep passin’ the sunshine on. 💛

— Bubby & Clementine