Episode 7 What is Black Soil KY?

Caleb Sadler (00:01)

Welcome to Beyond Agriculture, the podcast that takes you beyond the scope of AG and into the real life stories, conversations and events taking place in our community. Who we are and what we do is Beyond Agriculture.

Shelby Wade (00:19)

Good morning. We're back here with Beyond Agriculture. I am Shelby Wade. We're here with us today. We have Cassie Johnson. How's it going, Cassie? You're doing all right today?

Cassie Johnson (00:29)

I'm doing good. We're experiencing a little bit of clouds today, but that's okay. We'll take the rain every once in a while. I think that we might as well roll right into the podcast today because we have a very exciting person with us, Ms. Ashley Smith from Black Soil. Ashley, how are you doing?

Ashley Smith (00:49)

Hello, Shelby. Hello, Cassie. It's so great to be on the show with you today.

Shelby Wade (00:54)

Yeah. Thank you for joining us. We were very excited to get you on here and anxious to get going.

Ashley Smith (00:58)

Thank you.

Cassie Johnson (00:59)

So to start off, Ashley, why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself and where you're from?

Ashley Smith (01:06)

Well, from here in Lexington. A lifelong resident native, I actually grew up in the Tates Creek area, so my backyard was a cow pasture until I was in third grade. And then like Veterans Park and Grand Reserve, all of these new subdivisions were built up around our small neighborhood of Fairhaven. My parents moved here in 81 from Western Kentucky, Trig County and Hopkins County, and so they've worked in healthcare and education. My mom actually retired, so she's always at my house. But thankfully, because we have three year old twins, Caroline and Trevor, they always have their clothes laid out for daycare and other activities like Weball. So I'm a mom and a business owner. I started my career volunteering at St. Joe east as a volunteer candy striper and medical records before there were any smartphones AirPods. And I worked in the medical records room. And that experience of just doing the same thing over and over, really getting good at it has taken me a long way over my career. And so to be here on the podcast today, talking more about what we do with Black Soil, the business that we've had for five years and being a lifelong resident native of Lexington really makes it has an impact.

Ashley Smith (02:34)

Thanks for having me.

Cassie Johnson (02:35)

How did you get from being a candy striper to owning black soil?

Ashley Smith (02:39)

Yes. So fast forward to 2017 from those many years ago. As a 13-year old, I worked at the Lyric Theater and I was a grant writer. Event engagement. We built programs around our mission of high presentations, high quality presentations of Gallery shows, stage plays, having field trips to working in agriculture. And I am still a fish out of water. Still three years later. But I got recruited to work at the Fayette Alliance, a wonderful nonprofit here in Lexington Fayette County. And their mission is to really have sustainable land use. So working to protect our key agricultural soil land, the operations that help build up a multibillion dollar industry here in the county with agriculture. And I loved every minute of what I was learning. We had so many opportunities. So our co founder, I say we a lot. Our co founder is Trevor Clayborn, and he works at Kentucky State as an extension agent. And so he has a research based education outreach program called Farmer Brown Scene. So, long story short, we combined our forces. So event planning and management. I've done crave and different festivals around the state in the city. And then Trevor bringing education and outreach.

Ashley Smith (04:08)

We created an event based company, Agrism. And so I visited an Allen County based farm called Need More Acres. Nathan and Michelle Hal operate, and they feed ten families a year and then use their farms like engage their community in a way that I'd never seen before. And long story short, we piloted this program on a family farm in Canmer, Kentucky, Andre Barber. So he has seven Barber siblings. Four of them have returned to farming.

Shelby Wade (04:45)

Wow. That's awesome. Yeah.

Ashley Smith (04:47)

And so they have a mixed use operation. And so I'm still talking about how we got started. It was a huge lifting up of attending city hall meetings and seeing an opportunity for a more robust conversation, including black landowners who exist, who want to be able to have relationships with the Ag Credits of the world and build up their operation and just connecting people to markets and the information and assets.

Shelby Wade (05:19)

Right.

Ashley Smith (05:19)

And so we took all of this desire to engage disconnected families from farms. Oftentimes, many of them have farms in their family, but they've moved to the city and have lost the farm. Someone's just paying the taxes and it's overgrown. And by bringing families from Lexington and Moville to the rural community, it bore this respect of the process of farming. Getting up early, dedication, resilience, working against Mother Nature. Sure. Family having to balance like, you have to have a public job sometimes and still run the farm. You still have students with sporting events and things like that. So I say all of that to really drill it down as we came about to bring a platform to farmers and bakers and chefs that we eventually molded into our cycle post 2017. And so I'm a co founder now. I serve as the CEO. And over the pandemic, I was the COO and just trying to hold it all together. It was a split second decision every minute by minute. And what we were able to experience was what we started in the very beginning, emphasizing around relationships, farmers, having relationships through markets. When you go to the farmers market, you have that farm family you want to support.

Ashley Smith (06:53)

So it's carried us through so many transitions and changes about that relationship, just bringing folks the chance to have people recognize their farm by name and know what their farm does very clearly and giving them the confidence to repeat it, make mistakes behind the scenes, but have the chance to step forward and expand. So we've worked all kinds of farms and our network traditional to the mission we have to farms outside of our network, like Robin Ridge Farm in County, Savannah, Ben and the girls there. We've been able to be really robust in how we've reached out to the entire Ag industry and sector.

Shelby Wade (07:39)

Yeah, that's awesome. And you mentioned there about relationships. Relationships are key. No matter what part of agriculture we're talking about. We consider ourselves a relationship lender. So we really want to build those connections with our customers. It's not just a one. And done. We want to help you throughout your entire farming life, supposedly. And we have grandparents now. We've done business with their kids and their grandkids now. So absolutely, we definitely understand that relationship being key for sure. You mentioned that you work with a bunch of different farms, obviously across the area, a lot of your local and Fade County. Of course, you mentioned Ben and Savannah. Robin obviously out of Bourbon County. So I'm curious what is kind of the furthest reach that you've had, maybe far Eastern Kentucky, far Western. You said you have family roots in Trigon, Hopkins County. Give us a little insight on that.

Ashley Smith (08:34)

Okay. I'd say far east would be Laurel, Wayne County. So Wayne Riley and Laurel County and Hudson produce Hudson family down in Wayne County, the furthest west will be McCracken county and George Wilson.

Shelby Wade (08:51)

Okay. Yeah. So that's a lot of counties and a lot of ground that you've covered. So that's really exciting to see how far you all have. You really reached so far and really early on. It's relatively new still. So you mentioned there about 2020 being a challenging year, obviously for everyone, but you had to be CEO, COO, C all the OS, so you were doing it all. A lot of things changing. You had people going on farms and really, like in person stuff to then everything has changed. So how did that really affect the organization and how you continue to move. Forward and where we are today.

Ashley Smith (09:38)

 Wow 2020, Talk about blinking the eye and everything changes. That was my first year of full time entrepreneurship and also trying to be a stay at home mom, which really pulled me in so many different ways in the first three months of the year were awesome. And being a stay at home mom to having to just go into crisis mode and making split second on the cuff, turning your heel decisions from March 2020 up until really, like earlier this year, coming out of, you know, winter and entering into spring and seeing some hope of the post pandemic life. So obviously throwing away all of those event plans and saying our commitment is to our farmers. So there has to be a vehicle. We use the vents as the vehicle. What is now the opportunity to present their farms to folks now living in our direct community because you remember, like, the grocery store shelves were just venture, just air. There was nothing there. And you see the meat processing constraints, supply and demand, and those price gouging, basically. And then your local small producers fighting to get into those processors to stay true to those households that they source in their local community and abroad, that they're trying to build more market. So 2020 was just trying to consistently remind yourself that you're going to make it, just breathe, keep putting one fit in front of the other because everything just changed so quickly and drastically. But in spite of we were still able to help 51 farm families with the grants. That was with partnership with Community Farm Alliance. So that was around $41,000 that we were able to privately fundraise. We leverage some grant funds that we both were able to secure. We also worked with the Mosaic Foundation, like out west, and we were able to write grants to help farmers get printers, laptops, fix their tractors. There was so much grant money flying through that we had to really harness in and be very strategic and specific. So we were able to really dig deep into this desire to help build and sustain the infrastructure needed for the farms.

Cassie Johnson (12:08)

So how did the farms really the farmers, how were they able to come together during the pandemic to be able to provide for the community?

Ashley Smith (12:19)

Yeah. So that was also so exciting earlier in 2020, February of that year, we gathered during the local Food Systems Summit and had a working lunch where folks were able to build relationships and coalitions within their region, within their like, I guess like type of farm. So livestock or CSA or you just hold farmland and you're looking for new, young and beginning farmers to work on those farms. And so now with the pandemic was setting in June of that year, we started our CSA program. So again, like a CSA is when your family Shelby says, okay, we have a couple of $100, we can pay it all at once or spread it out across some payments for a payment plan, which there's no shame in that. We love to see farms be able to bring on all types of families by offering the open accessibility for being able to afford it. So you provide this farm family with a couple of $100 upfront, say, March or April, and from there, they're able to get all of their supplies, materials, hire staff, support their families and build up their farms and get prepared to then on the back end when usually it's about twelve to 20 weeks, and that farm family then either comes to your doorstep or you meet them out at a local business. But you get your groceries because they've kept their promise, because you gave them your promise up front. And so this is a practice that is replicated across our communities. And we've seen small rural farm operations be quite successful coming into Lexington through the Black Soil weekly farm share program. So we have a three tiered system. And again, the role that we serve during the pandemic was directly marketing, serving as the bank. So we would receive your transaction and hold your fee for your CSA. And then we pay like that lump sum to the farm family, okay. Because we've again harnessed the power of community and everyone's putting their money into the pot, which helps us all get a better deal. And so we've taken that model, and we did households. The first year, we didn't work with any institutions like workplaces. And now we have eight workplace voucher programs or employers supported CSA models. We've done that. And now we're saying we're going to get back to being behind the scenes and letting that farmer speak directly to their consumer. And that, in our mind, is what self sufficiency looks like. We're coming out of this pandemic, we're coming out of this specialty role that we served, and we did it in spite of, like, being fish out of water. One farmers uses a bushel Peck as their terminology. But this farmer down here is like a case, a bundle. And I'm like, wait, what are you talking about? So the first three months of the five month CSA of our first year was just trying to interpret what everyone was saying, and they've trusted us. And that's the important piece of you trusted us to bring folks onto your land. Now you trust us to be your voice here in the larger markets of here's some information about the farm. You've met them. You've been on their farm. Now, during this time in which the grocery stores are shuttered, farmers markets are getting back up and running. Why don't you come and support directly?

Shelby Wade (15:53)

Yeah.

Cassie Johnson (15:53)

Now, Besides the farmers markets, you also in the CSA tours. Are you going to plan on doing some tours this year, too?

Ashley Smith (16:03)

Yes. So by the time this episode airs, our listeners, we will have already experienced our first one down in LaRue county. So Travis Clever, multi generational farmer, his farm is based in Hart County, but they have their admin offices in LaRue. So that will kick off Memorial Day weekend.

Cassie Johnson (16:23)

And what does that all consist of?

Ashley Smith (16:25)

And so all of our farm tours are kind of like a template. You get a three course meal that's prepared from a local chef sourced by the farm. In this case, it's a family kind of operation. And so the family was like, I'm offended you didn't ask me to prepare this. And we work with the local extension agents to host the dinner at the office.

Shelby Wade (16:47)

Okay.

Ashley Smith (16:48)

So in the past, we lugged a U Haul and tables and chairs. I mean, the pandemic helped us realize again what is going to eat up our money and reduce our ability to connect with our consumer because we're so busy about getting it done to. Now fast forward to what they can participate in as our listeners for July 15. So when you come to Miller's Farm in partnership with Central Kentucky Ag Credit, you'll get to meet not only George and Susan Miller of Miller's Farm in Stanford, but you'll get to hear how these small farm families located in these rural communities see agencies like Central Kentucky Ag Credits as ways that they can build up capacity. So Miller's Farm, they've received a grant from your local office which has helped them change how they grow their food on their farm. It also has allowed them to extend out their growing season. And it's also piqued their curiosity of how can we then continue building our relationship. So the purpose of these tours are to connect the local, state and federal organizations, FSA, USDA, Community Farm Alliance, K, Card, all of these agencies that are designed and mission to help not only farmers and agribusinesses, but consumers, too, and helping them understand the role that they play.

Shelby Wade (18:17)

I think people oftentimes, whether it's consumers or farmers alike, they don't realize how many of these organizations are really out there, really. But until you start mentioning them on, you'll forget a couple along the way. There are so many groups in Kentucky specifically that are for the farmer and like you said, educating the consumer as well. It's awesome to be able to combine and get all the powers that be and do events like that.

Cassie Johnson (18:46)

Central Kentucky Ag Credit has had a relationship with Black Soil for the last couple of years, and we are looking forward to having this with you because what we're hoping to do is to shine light on what all Ag Credit can do for the farmer, for the rural farmer or the urban farmer. And Shelby, we work with the FSA.

Shelby Wade (19:11)

The Kentucky Ag Development Board through the Kentucky Ag Finance Corporation. So the Kentucky Ag Finance Corporation is, of course, funded by the Ag Development Board. But yeah, and like you said, Cassie, really, we work with those two organizations specifically as far as their loans are concerned, to get the best deal for that beginning farmer or whether it's building a new maybe high tunnel, maybe they need additional funds for that or whatever it may be. We work with those groups to get it to where the farmer doesn't have to put as much down or get extended terms and all these things. So we really do, like you said, try to really get the best we can for them through these other groups and things like that.

Ashley Smith (19:56)

Yeah, it's really exciting and meeting your new leadership, Jonathan, and transitioning and just seeing FSA offer new, flexible loan products that more producers can have eligibility to receive that consideration and creating a robust, well educated, well prepared farmer producer and grower who is ready to take the next step with those loan products. And I think, again, it's a heavy lift to build up that confidence and trust as well as that knowledge that people desperately need around these types of lending opportunities, because it's a very serious commitment.

Shelby Wade (20:40)

It is.

Ashley Smith (20:40)

It's nothing to play with. And as well as farming is not an easy thing, you just walk up onto the field and there it is. So it's crossing those bridges of the finance and the farming and helping folks understand the place that they can find themselves driving.

Cassie Johnson (20:58)

So at our event in July at the Millers, we're going to actually have some loan officers there. We're going to have a table discussion, and we're going to bring in somebody from FSA, somebody from Kentucky Ag finance corporate.

Ashley Smith (21:16)

That's right. Yeah. Just really give folks the tools that they need in their toolkit so they can come back again as prepared customers. So you don't have to do so much. But also, it gives folks the right next step.

Cassie Johnson (21:32)

And for those that are listening that are wondering about what exactly this is called through Ag Credit, it's actually our Ag Start program. And what you do is you can come in, you can talk to your local loan officer, ask them about the Ag Start program. And it's the program that we utilize to make these connections with these other programs.

Shelby Wade (21:55)

Yeah, absolutely. And to kind of combine what you both have said, we're all about grants. Before I come to Ag Credit, I'd actually worked with the Kentucky Ag Finance Corporation and the Ag Development Board. So each office and loan officer and we all have our own connections, but we want the best opportunities for you. So we're going to try to get those getting you in contact with if it's a local sole conservation office to work out a state grant or the county Ag improvement grant through the development office. So lots of things like that, lots of opportunities. And we're going to help connect you all to those as well.

Cassie Johnson (22:38)

So, Ashley, if somebody's listening and they want to start having their own CSA and they want to start producing crops and need your help, how can they get involved?

Ashley Smith (22:49)

Yes. Well, we invite you to visit BlackSoilKy.com. Just look over our online platform, view some of the products that we've been in retail. You can always reach out to me, Ashley@blacksoilky.com, and then we'll kind of take you through an intake process and learn more about the history, the overview of your farm, how long you've been in business. That's really important to us because that helps inform our approach and strategy. You know, someone who's been farming for 20 years doesn't need the same type of approach or methodology as in five years and under. They're coming with different types of risk, liability as well as experience and resilience. The 20 year farmer has a different level of resilience, not saying it's greater or lesser than, but your five year farmer is still really trying to carve out who they are. Mark that identity in the local food system.

Cassie Johnson (23:49)

Now, we've been talking a lot about farmers and vegetables, but we haven't talked about the other aspects because there are other people that sell certain things, like candles and goat soap.

Ashley Smith (24:03)

So great value added products. I've always thought of us as a health, beauty and lifestyle. Again, tourism, travel. It's a lifestyle. And people enjoyed coming to our events, our farm tours, because they always left out with this great gift that were these vendors. They sourced these value added products in addition to our vegetables that you can get through our CSA program and come out. We've already gotten started at this point with our weekly farmers market every Saturday from 10:00 a.m. To 02:00 p.m.. You can get fresh farm eggs, Hills of Kindness out of Taylor County. The Thomas family, they're both AG educators and they also have livestock. And he's trying to figure out as a young farmer how to get back into dairy.

Cassie Johnson (24:48)

Wow.

Ashley Smith (24:49)

Bless it. That's really tough. It's really tough. But it's like, wow, do you dash folks aspirations and their ability to say, I've got the asset of the cattle, the livestock. But the market is just continuously shutting me out. So Coffee Wesley Coffee, Sean Robinson ground and wholebean Flygirl candle. So we love to connect that education. So you can come and do a candlemaking workshop. The next one for this audience would be in September. You can see that on our website as well. You can create a custom candle. Gifted.

Shelby Wade (25:27)

Oh, that's cool.

Ashley Smith (25:28)

Build up the different scents and notes and then put these pretty nice accessory like flower accutramonts on top of the candle. And then there you go. You have a full candle.

Cassie Johnson (25:42)

And where is this farmers market at?

Speaker 4 (25:44)

So here in Lexington, Fayette County, you can find us in the North side Loudon and Limestone area, two buildings down from the Greyline Station.

Cassie Johnson (25:53)

Okay.

Ashley Smith (25:53)

And so the BIA Building Institute Academy used to be our neighbor. We're in 109 and we're in suite 102. So when you pull up on the left hand side of the new Herald Leader building, you'll see a brightly colored yellow banner, and it says Curbside pickup. And that's where you can just come pull into the parking lot and see us. And again, it's really just welcoming vendors and artisans. We've got our products from Honey, a 15 year old beekeeper out of West Louisville. These are great stories.

Shelby Wade (26:26)

Oh, yeah.

Shelby Wade (26:26)

And it's about positioning them to say, think about it as like a localized Sam's Club. There's someone like there with all kinds of different items, and you can sample and enjoy safely if Sharon Spencer is listening, right?

Shelby Wade (26:43)

Yes. And like you said, kind of taking it back just a little bit to the pandemic. And one of the good things that have come out of the pandemic, I know there's not a ton, but is that desire for local we see it everywhere. It doesn't matter where you are in state or even the country. Rather, local food is in high demand and I see that as a great opportunity for any type of farmer, any type of value, anything. You can add value to this right now and it's a great opportunity to get in with black soil and get in maybe to the farmers market or to a CSA program. So definitely reach out to Ashley if you're interested. Maybe even haven't quite started yet, but are thinking about it.

Ashley Smith (27:23)

Yes.

Shelby Wade (27:24)

You know all the contacts you can help me.

Ashley Smith (27:26)

That's right.

Cassie Johnson (27:27)

Give them again your contact information one.

Ashley Smith (27:29)

More time so you can visit our website at Blacksoilky. com  Ashley@blacksoilky.com.

Cassie Johnson (27:44)

Awesome. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to come in here. It's been a pleasure. We've had plenty of bloopers on the side that nobody out there will listen to you.

Ashley Smith (27:54)

You'll never know....

Shelby Wade (27:55)

That's right!

Cassie Johnson (27:57)

We look forward to having our next podcast coming up here in the next couple of weeks, but until then, please be sure to rate subscribe and share this one with all of your friends and family.

Speaker 5 (28:10)

This episode of Beyond Agriculture is brought to you by Central Kentucky AG. Credit thanks for listening to the podcast. Be sure to visit Agcreditonline.com Beyond Agriculture, access the show notes and discover our fantastic bonus content. Also, don't forget to hit the subscribe button so you can join us next time for beyond agriculture.