The possum sat right where it shouldn’t be – settled under a tarp in a dim corner of a barn, guarding a sewing machine as if it belonged to him.
It was late – around 10 p.m. – and Eric Hanson was doing what most husbands eventually do: stepping outside on a small errand at his wife’s request.
He strapped on a headlamp, walked into the barn, lifted a tarp and found himself face to face with the animal.
The possum rose, bared its teeth and hissed.
There was no heroism in what happened next.
“I lowered the tarp, turned around and walked back into the house,” Hanson says.
His wife, Ellie Jenkins, listened to the story and decided the sewing machine could wait until morning.
In time, that moment of rural initiation and unexpected comedy became the name of their new project: Hissing Possum Farm.
A market takes shape
Now, months and seasons removed from that encounter, Hanson stands beneath a pavilion at the Highland Park Commons. Around him, customers drift from table to table at the opening of the Highland Park Local Market, chatting with about a dozen food vendors who are eager to explain what they’ve grown, baked or made.
It’s the kind of market that encourages conversation. A customer picks up a bundle of radishes and asks Hanson how they were grown. Another leans in over a pile of greens and asks about shelf life. Hanson answers easily, often with stories attached.
Behind his table sits a double bass, a silent reminder that farming is not the only life he leads.
From music to farming
In front of Hanson are neat arrangements of arugula, lettuce and kale, their greens layered in shades. There are also green onions and radishes, their reds and whites cutting through the display.
Everything was harvested the day before.
“We’re both professional musicians, and we’re both college professors,” Hanson says. “And now we have a small organic veggie farm.”
The path to that table is not direct. Hanson and Jenkins spend much of their time in academic and performance spaces, teaching at Dalton State College and Berry College in Rome. Hanson has also taught at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
His performance schedule moves fluidly between cities and orchestras, recently including the Chattanooga Symphony, the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and an upcoming engagement with the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra.
Just last week, he performed Verdi’s “Requiem” with the CSO, a demanding, large-scale work. Today, he sells lettuce.
The contrast is not as stark as it sounds.
“When we bought our property, we were looking for five acres,” Hanson says. “We wound up with 10, and we didn’t want to be bored.”
Before that, they lived in a subdivision on the south side of Dalton. The lot was large, but the proximity of neighbors was unavoidable. Out in the country, the distance creates a different kind of space - physical, mental and even creative, Hanson says.
“One of the things we like about being out in the country is walking outside and not having somebody lean over the fence and say, ‘What are you doing?’” he adds.
On their land, one acre became the farm. Although a small footprint by traditional standards, Hanson approaches it with intensity and precision. Hissing Possum operates on a high-density planting model, designed to maximize yield from limited space.
“We produce a lot of vegetables off of it,” he says. “Part of it was that we were looking for something to do that would add to the community and benefit us.”
The vegetables themselves follow the seasons but also an aesthetic.
“We have collards in the ground that will be ready in the next week or two,” Hanson says. “We also have chard, carrots and turnips coming. And we have summer squash, cucumbers and tomatoes on the way.”
He then adds something that feels less like a farmer’s note and more like an artist’s.
“One of the things for me with all of that is the color. My dad was an art teacher, so color is interesting to me. As much as we eat for taste, we also eat for how things look. The different colors draw us in.”
A no-till approach
That attention to detail extends below the surface, into soil that didn’t begin as fertile ground.
“Our soil was not good,” Hanson says. “Our property was an abused piece of land.”
Instead of turning it over with traditional tilling, they adopted a no-till approach. Using a broad fork, Hanson breaks up compaction without disturbing the deeper biological layers of the soil. The tool cracks and opens the earth, allowing air and water to move through it, while preserving the ecosystem below.
“There are problems with tillage because it can disrupt the biology below the ground,” he says. “Also, when you till, you bring up weed seeds from six to eight inches deep. If you don’t turn the soil, they just stay dormant.”
It’s a method rooted in study.
“I studied what the plants do, how they grow and what the pests are,” Hanson says. “My wife and I both have doctorates in music. She recently commented that I probably have a master’s degree in plant farming now.”
After laughing, he adds, “You learn as much as you can, and then there’s a fair amount of trial and error.”
Hissing Possum follows organic practices, though it’s not formally certified. No chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides are used. The philosophy is simple and direct.
“If we don’t want to eat it ourselves, we assume our customers won’t want it either,” Hanson says.
That means the vegetables are not always cosmetically perfect. A leaf might carry a small bite from an insect, while a root might show a slight irregularity. But for Hanson, that imperfection is part of the point.
“You might buy some vegetables from us that have a little pest bite in them, but the trade-off is that you can see and tell that it’s clean,” he says.
From harvest to market
Freshness has become a defining feature of Hissing Possum Farm.
“This is a Saturday market,” Hanson says. “Everything on our table was harvested yesterday. Ideally, we harvest no earlier than Thursday.”
Hanson is always thinking about the life of the food after it leaves his table.
“We try to make it so everything has about a 10-day lifespan from harvest into the following week. Ideally, we could harvest on Tuesday, people buy it from us on Saturday, and then the following Friday they’re eating the last of it and coming back to the market to buy fresh again.”
Hissing Possum Farm also sells at the Main Street Farmers Market on Wednesdays. The feedback from customers is consistent.
“They’re saying good things because it’s fresh,” Hanson says.
For Hanson, the farm offers something more personal.
“Better health,” he says. “During the pandemic, when we started the farm, I actually lost 40 pounds.”
He pauses again, then adds, almost as a counterweight: “And there’s always something to do. I’m not sure that’s better.”
The comment carries a truth familiar to anyone who works the land: farming does not end when the day does. There are always beds to tend, crops to monitor and soil to build. Still, Hanson returns to the central idea that brought them here.
“We’re trying to feed people as best we can,” he says.
Back under the pavilion, the market continues. Customers move from table to table, asking questions that extend beyond price. The vegetables on Hanson’s table catch the light of the midmorning sun: greens layered against reds, textures shifting from leaf to root.
Not far away, the memory of a hissing possum lives on in the name of the farm - a simple reminder of how it all began.