Black Soil Kentucky Revives our Better Nature
The first time I saw Black Soil on a menu was in September 2020 from our pop-up partners at POCO 502 following a spring and summer that had reshaped the restaurant and social landscape around us in ways we could have never imagined.
It felt like a family meal that night at Pints and Union, the first time many of us had experienced dining inside since the restaurant closures in March. Pints was a satellite relief center in the early weeks of The LEE Initiative’s Restaurant Workers Relief program, but by summer, it was clear that the food chain had broken and local farmers were feeling the pinch just as hard as restaurant owners. Enter the Restaurant Reboot Program. The concept was simple, connect with local farmers to buy their goods and give them to restaurants who were struggling to keep the lights on and still wanted to use the freshest ingredients possible.
For Lexington based non-profit Black Soil: Our Better Nature, connecting with these efforts brought their name and mission to a whole new audience, including us.
The ground that Black Soil covers, both literally and figuratively, is substantial. Co-Founder Ashley C. Smith doesn’t have a background in farming, but when she moved back to Kentucky from San Francisco, she saw a way to use her experience with events and marketing to give a larger market share to black farmers through events, innovative farm produce and chef-driven meal subscription plans, educational projects and distribution of goods to restaurants like Pints and Union.
We’ll dive deeper into Black Soil, Ashley, their massive distribution center and why they’re building a room specifically for earthworms soon, but this clip should give you a nice introduction to an organization you should really keep an eye on.
