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all right well it looks like we're right on two o'clock so we will go ahead and get started thank you everybody for joining us and welcome to cafe conversations hosted by the office of philanthropy and alumni and the cafe alumni association for those of you that haven't been on before i'm elizabeth vaughan i'm the associate senior director of philanthropy for the college and as all of you know february is black history month so we have jim coleman owner of coleman crest farm and ashley smith co-founder of black soil here with us today and they're going to talk about black agriculture in kentucky and tell us a little bit about their stories as well before i turn it over to jim to get us started just a reminder to everybody if you have a question during the presentation feel free to post it in the chat function and so we will go ahead and get started jim you want to kick us off okay thank you very much elizabeth i will pull up my presentation here and uh we'll get right to it i think maybe let me know when you all when you see it there we go well uh as elizabeth was saying i am jim coleman the owner of coleman crest farm uh it's been in business since 1888 and i'll share with you all about the story as well as to give you an update on what are some of the things that we're focused on right now as you all know uh the uh transatlantic uh slave trade was uh from 1500 all the way up to 1866 and as you can see uh there was a migration to the united states as well as you know the caribbean and uh south america i uh originally my family is from nigeria and i just recently did some research and found out that i'm 50 nigerian and so my family came from nigeria to the united states landed in spotsylvania virginia uh they were owned by the dorson family in uh spot sylvania virginia um and then uh from there they had a daughter named mary and she moved to lexington and she met and married a man named coleman and the reason my the reason why my name is coleman is that at the time my ancestors were owned by the duerson family so they went from being dorisons to being colemans i had a great uncle that used to tell this story on a verbal basis but i did research and i found that uh what he was sharing on the verbal side was actually true and it met right up with exactly what he had been saying for years in 1865 once uh the 13th amendment was ratified by all the states my great-grandfather and his family received their freedom he was born uh in spot seven virginia in 1845 his name was james coleman again he moved here with uh mary dorsen and he brought his family he also married a woman by the name of lucy ward and they had six children four sons and two daughters they uh worked out on the farm that is today coal and crest farm and he had uh three options that he had in 1888 he was about 41 years old the first option was hey you know i don't have an education don't know how to read and write i don't have access to financing at 53rd bank or chase manhattan to be able to get a loan to buy anything i can't join the chamber can't go to uk right now maybe my great great grand daughter might be able to one day but i can't right now he could have concluded you know what there's not a lot for me to do here in america and could have just said you know what i'm just not gonna make it that's the way life is second option that he had at the time was congressman henry clay had formulated the american colonization society and that allowed all free blacks who wanted to leave america to leave i had a relative his name was william d coleman who's also out there on the farm uh he and his mother left and uh joined several others uh out of new orleans and they crossed the atlantic it took six months for them to get to the coast of liberia you can see there that's monrovia which is the capital of liberia and then 12 miles in that's where the 40 square miles were it was called clay ashland right after henry clay as well as the name of his plantation here in lexington and uh you know if i were back then i probably would have jumped on number two the option number two was kind of like going to silicon valley you're out of here you're escaping oppression uh you're going to go to a new country that you can start and build yourself and i recently just in the last five years met my ancestors while i was on tour down in prince george's county leading up the economic development corporation i went to the liberian embassy and i met a lady the lady there in the orange her name is fatima coleman and i met with the ambassador and explained the same story and fatima started crying she said i can't believe this she said we've been trying to find the coleman's in kentucky forever and she said we've got a family reunion each year and i said when is the next one she said it's in three weeks and i said where she said it's going to be in bowie maryland well at the time that was about five miles from the apartment i was living in and so this represented the first family reunion and i've been there each time uh over the last five years to the family reunion the lady that you're seeing there in the blue she is the granddaughter of william d coleman her name is genevieve coleman that's her son uh and fatima and they gave this gave me this beautiful dashiki to welcome me into the family so that was the second option which was to retreat and to go to liberia the third was to seize the moment and that's what my great-grandfather decided to do uh instead of focusing on all the things that were not perfect that were going on in the country with a lot of oppression he decided to focus on what is it that i can do and thank god for booker t washington he created the union benevolent society and it was popping up all over the united states and was connected to the black church where african americans were pulling their money together the little bit of money that they had they would pull it together to give each other loans to either buy land or to bury loved ones i've got records that show uh that shows where my family took out loans for both well james coleman and lucy took out a loan for twelve hundred dollars and they bought the farm that they had tilled from john and mary darnaby and i like to say that was the day that i was conceived as well as 300 of his other descendants because we all were able to directly go to college as a result of taking loans out on this farm which a lot of farmers do no matter what nationality you're in as well as using the proceeds to send kids to college it paid for my college 100 percent as well as indirectly many of the ancestors if it were not for this strategic purchase many of them would not have the opportunities that they've enjoyed today uh one generation later john coleman who was one of james coleman's sons that's him in the middle he's there on the farm they built this beautiful house it looks like hamburg place uh that's molly her name was molly jackson that's my grandmother the little guy that you see down there in the middle his name is sam coleman that's my father and uh the one over there to the right is ben that's one of my favorite uncles and uh the little girl there her name is anna they had a total of seven kids but many of them had left to quite frankly go off to college uh and these three were still left and they were raising them this picture was taken in about 1927. when the economy was bad everyone was having a tough time but because we owned land we were able to be sustainable both in generating incomes from the various uh production of livestock as well as produce and tobacco that we were selling as well as they were able to take loans out and i have documentation from all the loans they took out to send their kids to college this is john and molly's sons and daughters this is the night before my parents were married uh february the 3rd 1950 i like to say this is the picture of the kennedys here but it is the colemans of uh coleman crest and the little guy down there that's laughing and all happy that's my father uh the one that you see up there with uh right there putting his hand kind of in his coat that's uncle stanford he went to school with uh with thoroughgood marshall at lincoln university uh this is my uncle uh jim and uncle ben i like to say of all the ones he was probably the wealthiest because he worked as a butler lived as a rich man he worked for henry knight who was a big insurance man and he later got into the insurance business as well this is anna his sister she moved to cincinnati and she's got kids all over the country that are doing extraordinary things um this is aydah mauldin i'm sorry this is ada coleman uh smith and she lived in richmond virginia she became a principal in richmond and then the one over there that's laughing his name is cliff and they uh took out a note for 500 to send cliff to morehouse college and that's when they almost lost the farm the note was seven dollars a month you might think why couldn't they pay seven because at the time generating seven dollars a month as a farmer was tough and so they almost lost the farm thank god molly talked in tongues and prayed like crazy when the banker came up to foreclose he took off running and never came back and they were able to preserve the farm as well as to pay off that note that they had but this is uh pretty much the foundation of the 300 kids after that that all of them were able to send their kids to college but the picture that you're seeing here these people were successful as a direct result of agriculture and the production that we had at coleman crest farm that's the next day when my parents got married sam and cleo i called her cupcakes all of my life my grandfather there to the right my mother's father he uh was the king of dewey street had a lot of restaurants and bars and uh that was i guess in 1945 he had a total of a hundred thousand dollars he was a very successful businessman and he was very particular on who his daughters would end up marrying so because my father owned coleman crest farm he went to kentucky state they met there graduated in 1949 they ended up falling in love my mother loved his business mind his love for agriculture and his love for kentucky and wanting to have a family and so this was a beautiful day my parents ended up having five kids with me being one of them uh the one that uh i'd like to share this slide this is the house that my parents built in 1950 my father served in world war ii so he got a loan to be able to build this beautiful ranch house and that's the look of the farm from 1950 to about 1990 and this is pretty much how i grew up this is what i remember seeing in the farm and we had cows sheep pigs dogs uh we had chickens we had everything that you could think of to sell fully a diversified list of crops we sold tobacco hey we had a tractor we had i just after coming back home from 42 years ago and getting back last august i am amazed at how much my father was able to get done the spin concept that's hot out there urban farming my father wrote that about 50 years ago and it's something i'm trying to understand uh today on how i can bring back the life of the farm and get the kind of productivity that he got because he was able to do uh the things necessary on this farm to send all of his kids to college ruth my oldest sister she graduated from the university of kentucky in 1977 she was born and raised of course with the rest of us out there on the farm that's her down there at the bottom as well as at the top that was in 1952 with my mother and my cousin stanford came down for a visit from dayton my brother bubba my mother was holding and that's ruth when she was about two and a half years old ruth graduated from bryant station high school in 68 started her academic career at transylvania and then she completed two years as a math major and realized she can make a lot of money as an engineer she even used to say you know you can make more money with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering than a phd in math so she left transylvania and transferred over to the university of kentucky and that's where she studied civil engineering and she was the first woman and the first african-american to graduate from the university's civil engineering program and from there she went on to get her pe her professional engineering license and she worked for bechtel parsons and also she's been an independent professional engineer she's retired now and lives up in alaska and the reason why she's up in alaska she worked for about 10 to 15 years up there on the alaskan pipeline she's built everything from pipelines to roads highways bridges uh as well as nuclear power plants and so she is quite a trailblazer and someone that gave me the encouragement when i was young to study science and math and to do well in school so after all of my older siblings left ruth and bob and coley i was left at the age of 12 i was the manager of the farm my father said uh you know you're now the manager i said well daddy what am i gonna what am i gonna get paid he said well you're gonna get three hots and a flop three hots and for many of you you may not know that means breakfast lunch and dinner on the house and a bed to sleep in and i was proud i loved working on the farm and i loved being the owner and he said you're in charge your job is to feed the pigs and to take care of everything and so when i took over the pigs looked like this they were kind of hungry we could only grow so much on the farm and we also had to buy extra feed from southern states and because my brothers they were only able to feed a certain amount uh due to my father's tight controls on expenses the pigs were pretty hungry and they used to break out a lot and they would go over into our neighbors fields and root up the fields and so i quickly learned all you have to do is just give them more feed that we were buying from southern states of which i tripled the amount and in 90 days they were looking great my father came up to the barn and said look at johnny these the biggest hogs we've ever had and i said i'm doing my job he said you're doing your job but you're gonna break us and so what he did is to go to the saratoga restaurant uh they had a backup in their kitchen of slop uh the city was charging five dollars a barrel to pick it up and they were only picking it up once per week and my father said we can do a lot better we can pick it up every day pay us the five dollars and we'll eliminate your problem that eliminated all of our costs for raising pigs and then after another 90 days our pigs look like this and ready for market and the beautiful thing of this is this is what ceos are trying to do every day eliminate cost find new revenue streams because our hogs got so fat they stopped eating all the slop and i told my father look we're getting rats up in the barn if we don't get rid of all this slop he had me to get in the truck to drive up and down the road to sell the extra slot and we sold the extra slot for five dollars a barrel and that's what sent me to college and that all paid we raised about five thousand dollars from the time i was 12 until about 16 and he took out a note for five thousand dollars for a total of ten thousand dollars and they paid for my four years to go to howard university where my mother wanted me to go to howard i want to share this today i you know got some feedback some of some of you are concerned about how can we help to develop youth here this is what i learned on the farm i it was the 20th century but i learned 21st century uh job skills by being raised on the farm critical thinking creativity collaboration just that one case study i learned a lot about the right kinds of skills so that when i went off to college as well as the future jobs i had i was really prepared and that's what i want to do for youth here in lexington as a result of my father sacrificing pulling all the money together and my mother's vision of me going to howard university you know i applied and i didn't get in at first they turned me down and my mother said they don't know what they've done they she wrote this guy here is president cheek she wrote president chica letter and said if you give him one year of a chance on probation we'll pay for the four years as well as we'll bring him home because he's going to be successful and he will make you very proud one day so i went from being a college rejected howard to the time when i graduated in 1983 dr cheek was giving me the who's who of colleges uh students in american colleges and universities and it really taught me a lot about perseverance and being focused and working on the controllables and this was a very special day down there at the bottom is a picture of my mother-in-law and my wife kathy and that's also to the left there's a picture of all of my other family members i put the robe on my father because i said daddy you paid for it so i'm gonna let you have it it's your diploma and this was just a very special day also while i was there i and at howard university i learned a lot about leadership and i ran for the liberal arts student council and i want to tell you another quick little story as it relates to um you know black history month this is a flyer that i used to get the message out about my campaign and i had this campaign manager's name was rodney bell down here at the bottom he said uh you know we've got to find a way to get this flyer out i said no we can't go to the women's dorms we can't go upstairs and hand them out what do you think we can do about it he said you know what i've got about seven or eight girls that i know that could probably help us and so the next night at the library we had a meeting with these eight girls that he had invited to this meeting and i was telling them all about what i'm going to do i'm going to hold the line on tuition i'm not going to let the tuition raise cost we're going to get more out of the administration we're going to make sure the administration's accountable to the student body and they all were like excited so much so that one of the students at the end of the meeting right here this young lady right here she walked up to the table where i had about 300 of flyers that i was going to have them to hand out and she was giggling and she said i love what you had to say i believe in what you have to say and i want to hand out flyers to help you to win i said i really appreciate that and i say where are you from she said i'm from san francisco i said wow what part of san francisco north south she was telling me all about the city and i said well what is your name she said my name is kamala harris and i said well conway thank you for being on my team and please get these flyers out she said i'm going to and she giggled and rushed over to the quad and hand out the flyers and called us the next day uh to say she even needed more flyers and it just says so much about you know the power of one that if my great-grandfather didn't seize the moment and if my father and mother didn't sacrifice and hold on to the farm i wouldn't have been able to go to howard university and i would have met the next vice president of the united states the first woman and first black person to be the vice president the united states i saw her two years ago on the day that she announced her run for the presidency and she saw me and i hadn't seen her for 40 years and in a crowd she ran up to me nose to nose james coleman you look the same i said so do you calmly and it was an incredible day but it just it's just an incredible ride that i've had because of agriculture here in kentucky i had a chance to work for these four corporations and learned more on a formal level over the last 35 years uh oscar mayer pepsi philip moore's and american express and then last august i recently decided to relocate back to lexington to restore my family farm i do want to let you in on a little bit of sad news that my wife of 32 years kathy uh who was my partner for more than the 32 years plus in college she passed away and she's listening today via the internet from heaven and i know she's excited about all the things we're doing at coleman crest because she's one of the main individuals in my life that allowed me to hold on to the farm we purchased it from my mother in 2001 and we didn't have any crops growing it basically turned into a forest and my wife with all of her help helped me to pay the bills and to keep it going until i could get down here to care for it i want to kind of now shift gears and i'll kind of wrap this up elizabeth with you know going through these last few slides uh but i wanted to let you know the steps i'm going through on the renovation of the farm first of all you've got to have a team of advisors and i'm pleased to let you all know these are active advisors dr mia farrell she's been at the to the farm about five times the dean dean cox has been out to the farm i mean i had a meeting with her and her team this group here up at my mother my grandparents grave which is on our farm and uh we had uh you know pull out seats and talking and talking about the history of the farm and she gave me so many great ideas and direction on resources and dr kessler and danielle was there the two heathers have been on it just you know today's thursday i i sent an email out uh to heather and heather uh on what was it tuesday as well as david letting them know that we're moving quickly on our plan for production for this year and i would like to have an analysis done on my well i sent that out about 10 am i'm sorry 10 pm on tuesday night and uh 8 48 the following morning i got a response from scott aldrich about i can meet with you let's meet on friday at your uh it's going to be thursday tomorrow on my farm at 10 a.m and it just says so much about how fast uh they respond and it's just my team i could not do it uh without this advisory board and i'm also pleased to let you know that i put together a great team that's going to help me to get the team cranking uh i met eric walls he and his wife gail saw me on television talking about the farm and they called me they lived down there on brian station road he's the owner of a farm called eric's organics it's an organic farm and they've had tremendous success over the last 15 years he's got about 25 to 30 customers and he said look i'm weaning myself out i'd love to talk to you about how we can help you to be successful with your farm as well as i'd like for you to take on some of our customers i'm like you can't beat that i haven't even started and he already has introduced me to ramsey's diner and they want to buy two tons of okra and so uh in meeting them i also had a chance to meet their son grant uh walls who's a junior at the university of kentucky in the agriculture department this guy is a wizard he is the elon musk of farming he is so wound up and fired up about being an intern with me this summer i mean i'm learning as much from him as he's learning from me i want to make sure that he's got those 21st century corporate skills that i've learned uh through my 32 years and i need his immediate help on farming he's excited about some of the high-tech things that we're going to be doing but i'll share with you in a moment and he's going to be with me starting uh in may right after graduation through september uh jakeithia johnson just a smart individual that is a senior getting ready to graduate uh this coming may go to work at the usda out in nebraska but while she's uh still here she's agreed to be my agribusiness advisor she's already cracking me on getting things signed with grants and things that i would have ordinarily procrastinated on and she's just been a rock star in helping me and then i've got my little protege emanuel cooper who i met through lexington powell he's in the 8th grade at bryant station junior high school and he's going to be the first agriculture scholar the coleman crest farm agriculture scholar he's going to come out to the farm this summer and he wants to go to howard university and then to harvard university for law school and i'm going to help him to get that done kathy and i in her memory i've decided to set up a a scholarship fund it's right now a total of two million dollars thank god for kathy's investment skills uh but it's going to be available to help students to be able to pay for their tuition and it's called the kathy james coleman scholarship fund at howard university uh to help and he's going to be the first recipient to go to howard university to get his degree in political science um just very excited about meeting him but that's my team and here's what we're going to be doing we're going to go both the conventional route with uh you know having spin farming going on small plot intensive at the farm the equipment that you're seeing is the plotter the cover that uh thank goodness for the walls family eric and his son brought the equipment up we're already building the beds um we're gonna do it even more once the you know once it gets a little bit warmer we're gonna start april the 14th and planting the okra that's why i've told our friends heather and heather uh that we've got to have the well up and running by march 19th so that we can start the water uh we're gonna start planting the other crops which will be tomatoes and some types of lettuces later on in may but uh okra is more of a product that you can start earlier in the year and the earlier the better and you can get the better yield so we're going to be looking at okra leafy greens cabbage as well as tomatoes and ramses has said we'll buy as much as you can pump out we're also going to have an incubator farm in partnering with uh with lexington powell as well as the uh first uh individual her name is ginger ginger darnaby she is the descendant of john darnaby who sold the farm to my great grandfather she wants to be one of the first incubator farmers on our farm and i've already told her look you don't even have to worry i won't even charge your soul sister and it's about reconciliation and she's excited and so she and her husband going to take over about a quarter of an acre and they're going to grow and our focus is helping people to understand how to grow and generate at least 50 000 plus in gross sales by growing the right crops we're also at coleman crest taking a look at the uh freight container hydroponics program i'm going into community trust bank keep your fingers crossed for me because we're going to ask them tomorrow for 164 thousand dollars to launch this program it totally controls uh mother nature i was up in indianapolis taking a look at it you can see me there where you can control the lighting you can control the temperature uh the well water would be fantastic because you can control the water you can control the nitrogen the ph level no pest and no weeds and uh we're looking to launch this uh and to have it at the farm probably in about nine months it takes seven months to have it produced so we're expecting it to be at the farm probably by late september or november sometime between september and november based on the production but it's a cool program it's going to allow us to have production and availability of our crops wonderful companies like black soil can't wait to be able to buy lettuce from us we're going to pump out everything from butter head to romaine lettuces as well as other types of lettuces once we can get started we're looking at somewhere between 14 to 15 000 a month in gross sales with the net of about nine thousand dollars so we're excited about this new concept and bringing it to lexington uh and then i'll speed it up to give my partner a chance to talk this just shows you what we're doing at coleman crest to be committed to especially youth who are disadvantaged youth we've had already some success in working with lexington powell uh that's police athletic i'm sorry police activities league and they're partnering with us to bring their youth out they've got about 800 youth probably about 50 to 60 of them will be interested in coming out to the farm we're going to have a big day on march the 12th where kubota tractor corporation is producing a documentary on our farm about the history of the farm we're inviting lexington powell youth to come out that day to learn about our tractor and our equipment as well as the history of the farm and we'll be having other events for them throughout the year of helping them to get informed and exposed about agriculture here in lexington so to wrap it up keep takeaways that we're pushing for our youth as well as all of my team members is to seize the moment never quit never retreat like my great-grandfather he sees the moment we're building individual and organizational skills i want to make sure that the team members i'm bringing on that i'm developing their skills not just in farming but good business skills and good leadership skills i want them to know their purpose and i hope it's going to end up being agriculture i want them to learn to focus on the controllable study winners i do this all day like the walls family they've had tremendous success i want to replicate their success versus starting from scratch and then i'm encouraging them to hang with positive people that our five best friends are who we really are we're the average of our five best friends and so that's what i wanted to share today uh elizabeth and that wraps up uh my presentation yeah thank you so much that was incredible i can't believe i mean you could kind of say you launched kamala harris's political career that's amazing she is just a wonderful friend still today and it just says so much about her that she can remember her friends i mean 40 years it was 42 years and i hadn't even seen her and you know we just kept each kept up with each other on you know online and seeing her on cnn but for her to come in an audience up to me to say you look the same james coleman what are you doing i said you look the same too carma it was an incredible day yeah that's awesome that's what i want to do for our students here at uk and you know for the students that i impact i want them to have this same kind of experience i want to help to show aspiring farmers how they can make a living through agriculture i told dr cox that i want coleman crest to be the most profitable farm per acre in the state of kentucky and i'm going to get that done within the next three years yeah that's some awesome goals and i know our students love those opportunities to interact and be hands-on so yes so thank you for this opportunity yeah absolutely i'm going to turn it over now to ashley to talk a little bit about black soil and kind of what they do i will say i saw some very delicious looking donuts from north lime donuts this week that involve black soil so ashley i'll let you kick it off well thank you so much for the opportunity to be here and i know we are getting close to our finale of our event today so i just briefly want to capture your attention black soil exists to ask the question if mother nature can't see who puts the seed in the ground then why do we have such enormous disparities in agriculture being unable to shake that question three years ago black swole our better nature was established with the mission to reconnect black kentuckians to their heritage and legacy and agriculture much like you heard today in mr coleman's presentation uh coleman crest we've been working with since uh 2018 and it's just been amazing to watch the journey that really again to our mission not only to reconnect folks to their heritage legacy but to also increase the market share and carve out um procurement opportunities for the 1.4 percent of producers here in the state um and so here's the team that makes up blackswell we are a co-founded organization our co-founders name is trevor claiborne he is an employee of kentucky state university extension and for six years he's traveled across the country working with urban and rural youth connecting them to careers in agriculture and using multimedia to express that education and outreach myself i'm an alumnus of the university my degree is in sociology so i'm coming as an industry outsider wanting to really connect communities from point a to point b and our second generation of black soil and you'll probably hear in the background are running in the corners of the video um our little pudgies caroline and trevor jr so long story short um again 2020 through all of us for a loop but because we've been working in building relationships over 31 counties fo now four years this august we were able to root our farmers who represent uh over 60 kentucky based brands farmers culinary artists and makers where we continue to carve out this problem that looks at food insecurity land dispossession and land loss and then really again getting to the nitty-gritty of our valuated proposition if mother nature is a uh you know colorblind unable to seize with the color of the skin of the producer placing that seed into the ground or cultivating production we have to understand that here in the state of kentucky black farm products are valued at a little over 10 million dollars compared to their white counterparts product valuation and over 5 billion dollars so again working at the margins of being 1.4 percent or around 433 out of 77 000 total producers here in the state of kentucky we're based in a historic narrative that looks at our shared agarian history our beloved sectors of hemp tobacco equine and distilling that set us forth on a journey in hart county where four of the seven seven siblings of the barber uh family have returned to farm at barbers pharma 150 acre black owned farm in canberra kentucky where formerly they raised tobacco we're a dairy producing farm now they have a csa and a farm store in munfordville that pulls from 15 to 20 other rural based farmers in the region and we are motivated to continue this work now moving more and more away from agritourism which you know breaks my heart because of coving but we honed in and we focused on our csa program that focuses on connecting households small locally owned farm-to-table restaurants institutions such as the university with these kentucky-based farmers and we continue working in our services such as the historic interpretation of agriculture that looks at our modern fascination with him but we can't overlook its roots and how enslaved black men across the state of kentucky made the great compromiser henry clay and other political and historic figures much of their wealth and affluence so to hear the direct connection between coleman crest farm and how mr coleman has basically pieced together the traces and the connectivity that again embodies our vision and our mission and again we work across the state of 31 counties as i looked at the participant list i see some of those farmers have joined us today silver springs farm equine and vineyard miss leslie and alan carter in bracktown we have thompson family farm in scott county mr ed thompson if you're not familiar is the usda 1890 liaison at kentucky state university in a ffa legend in his own right so again we work with diverse um producers who raise specialty crops seasonal produce freezer meat local meats feeder calves value-added products that look at taking the uh raw ag products that we love and creating a finished product so here uniquely again um echoing the presentation of mr coleman going before us here in lexington fayette county we have unique settlements in our rural and our urban areas called hamlets these post-civil war settlements where former enslavers parceled out and made their former enslaved individuals by land in which they at one point in time worked for no compensation so coleman crest located in uttering town we mentioned again silver springs farm equine and vineyard in bracktown slack market farming athens green landing located here in lexington in caden town we continue echoing the heritage and legacy of african-american food ways through working with culinary artists and chefs such as chef lawrence weeks and honeywood angelia drake chef chris kane these um culinary artists bring forth more even more life to our seasonal produce by cultivating farm to table dinners uh meal kits meal prep that are ebt eligible makers again to echo um the continuation of our food system and really stretching out um the life of our seasonal produce and our kentucky farm products to ensure we're doing everything we can to reduce waste um these makers keep those lifelines going such as being together honey a 14 year old beekeeper based in west louisville so again i know we are over on our time today and i will conclude my presentation but i did want to exalt and lift up the farms the food brands as well as the value added product vendors that we've worked with now since august of 2017. so again thank you so much to the college for the opportunity to present today and we appreciate the opportunity to share more thank you thank you ashley and we we are kind of bumping up against our time limit here for those of you that have some more time and want to stay on we had some questions submitted both in the chat pod and before we got started i have jim and ashley if you guys have a few minutes i'd love to maybe try to address a few of those ashley are you good on time perfect all right so one of the first questions that we got was uh from a teacher that had we heard from several teachers talking about how you know they wanted to share this with their class but one of the teachers asked is a teacher looking to encourage students specifically boys of color to enter into agriculture as a career field what are some of the pieces of advice you either wish you knew before you entered this field or some current and business industry partners that are looking to get involved with agricultural youth okay i'll let ashley go ashley you can go first okay our experience through black soil and farmer around the embassy programming have really uh emphasized representation so students being spurred on and a confidence fostered by seeing presenters educators workshop featured individuals who reflect their experience their cultural heritage as well as allowing for these students to have hands-on application so i reviewed the questions prior and the the educator who asked this um works at an academy to serving uh young men of color um with educational opportunities in agriculture so obviously those types of critical infrastructures and support systems um are what will need to be in place to help make that pivot and encourage more people to come back into the industry in the second okay i would like to add to what ashley said and i agree with everything that she has said uh i would like to partner with schools uh ashley's already shared some ideas with me as a partner of mine and strategically reaching out to especially elementary and middle schools to invite them out for ag days as soon as we can uh to give exposure to the students we're going to be doing this with lexington powell to invite the students to come out and learn to get in the dirt many students especially in the inner city have never even been out to a farm and they don't know anything about the soil so coming out and getting exposure can really strike up their interest in agriculture the second thing is to have these summer internships i'm taking the lead with bringing out emanuel and some of our students at the university of kentucky but i would love to partner with any of the schools to invite as many students out i need as much help as possible both in the hard work as well as in their brain power of knowing how to like grant put together a spreadsheet for me on all of our crops within an hour in real time while we were on a zoo call and i i need that kind of brain power i'm tacked i'm at about 15.9 gigs and i've only got 16 gigs of operating space and so i would love to invite our youth to come out and use their brain power as well as to give them a chance to get in the dirt and help me to produce some great crop product and and to share in the success of it great so this question is very specific for you ashley um someone had asked what percentage of kentucky's black farmers belong to or work with black soil so over the summer so again in 2017 we started off building a relationship with one farm and there we have grown to work now again in 31 counties we work directly on a continuous basis in regards to purchasing sourcing from a good 15 to 20 farms now total when we um extended out around thirty one thousand in one time covet 19 grants those went out to 51 kentucky black farm families so i would say around 60 to 80 within the network that we have access to communicating with on a regular basis fantastic i'd like to elizabeth i can to give a plug to black soil not only are they a good partner on the distribution side ashley's an excellent pr executive and helped me tremendously in building awareness about our farm i would not know eric walls or grant if ashley didn't get me on the television shows here in lexington to build awareness she was in charge of our ground breaking on september the 15th and just getting more awareness out in the market can help not only a black farmer but any farmer so that when you go in and you're talking to customers it's not the first time they've heard about you and so that's just a tremendous value that black soil offers it's it's a very comprehensive firm and i encourage anybody out there to uh whether you're black or any other nationality to use black soil as a partner yeah that's fantastic so a question specific for you mr coleman came in during the presentation asking kind of along those lines of the distribution piece you had mentioned that ramses was buying you know a few tons of your okra where do you sell most of your products and how much of your job is spent just finding buyers for your products that's a good question i would like for the target markets that i'm going after are going to be farm-to-table restaurants those restaurants they want to have good fresh local product so directly with the restaurants and also i want to work with great firms like black soil who are wholesalers to firms who want to get a good continuous flow of good freshly grown local product that's organic and so that's going to be a big help to be able to sell to ashley because she's got some really large clients and you know if i can get this uh brand new concept launched we can even sell in off season so that's going to be great for ashley and certainly great for coleman crest and then of course i want to sell through farmers markets i want to be the king when i go out to lexington farmers markets i'm going to get out in front of the booth and talk about cooling crest as i visited the various farmers markets you know a lot of farmers are like kind of hiding behind their tables and you have to really get them to come out and talk that's not going to be a problem for me emanuel is going to be counting the money and i'm going to be out front talking about the product and selling it and getting it sold directly to our consumers as well as i'm going to be setting up a csa with our church butting your town baptist church there are a lot of our uh members of our community that want to buy the product there locally so i look forward to setting that up so that's the way we're going to be selling and i'll be using my selling skills that i've learned over the last 30 years to approach these various uh freight companies and customers that we're going to have yeah absolutely i know csas have just seen an absolute boom over the last year or so i think i heard some statistics and i don't have them committed to memory but i mean multiple i know around lexington were had waiting lists early on which is fantastic perhaps that's one good thing about covet it's made us you know rethink food in some ways and so hopefully that's a boom to a lot of our local farmers so that's right we will wrap up with one last question here that was submitted in advance how can mostly white communities better support bipart farmers have you know and really maybe just local farmers in general and so what is the role of mostly white communities in helping spur maybe systematic change in across agriculture number one talk about our farms get this uh link out to as many of your friends as possible share it on your facebook page so that the community knows about black soil and coleman crest and these other farms that you know ashley mentioned so building awareness about us is a big help to buying from us when you go to a farmers market buy from us you know and tell everybody if you like the product tell as many friends as possible three if you've got any way to be a sponsor to help me to cover some of the costs for these internships i can hire more people i've got the manual and grant on board i'm hoping i'm going to have a good season be able to help to offset the cost but right now that's coming out of my pocket 100 and i would like to you know if i can't get it out of the volume of the sales which i think i will uh it would be great to get any kind of support financial support from the corporate community to be able to help us to get our students hired at these not just coleman crest but actually these other farms and the other farms may not even realize it i've already it's given me a lift in my brain power to be able to know that i've got ashley jakitha as well as emanuel on board and you can take your business to a whole nother level but it would be great to get any kind of sponsorship or help to be able to help finance that would be a big win for us and a big win for the youth actually anything you want to add we can end it with that perfect yeah well i see that we already have some comments in our chat about people looking forward to meeting you guys at farmers markets and local events when we can get back out yes do some of those things so thank you both so much for presenting today i you know this is certainly informative for me and i'm sure for the rest of our audience for anyone that does want to share this after the fact we will send out a link to the recording for everybody so you'll be able to share widely and we do encourage you to do that and we hope that you will all be able to join us on our next installment of cafe conversations we're going to be talking about all things water and it's amazing how much water there is in this state and how much shoreline we have and so we hope you'll come learn a little bit about that on march 23rd at 2 p.m you'll get an email invitation but go ahead and save the date on your calendar and thanks so much for joining us thank you so much elizabeth thanks see you later ashley thank you all have a great one bye