Skip to main content
Sunday, November 15, 2026Nov 15

This story is exclusive to subscribers.

Hixson’s Agora Food Club and the quest for a parallel society

Staff photo by Lyric Lewin / On Oct. 2, 2025, Joshua Longbrook points to the area that was used for gardening at The Agora Food Club property in Hixson.
Staff photo by Lyric Lewin / On Oct. 2, 2025, Joshua Longbrook points to the area that was used for gardening at The Agora Food Club property in Hixson.

On Fridays, Joshua Longbrook drives out to the Amish and Mennonite farms.

It’s about a 45-minute drive.

He will open his truck door, the car engine rattling as the air conditioning in the cabin struggles under the heavy sun.

He will stand with the farmers in the humidity that envelopes a Southern landscape in the late summer. He will ask the farmer, just checking again to be sure, “What have you been feeding the pigs?”

Grass mostly.