When we pivoted from news reporting to public relations nearly seven years ago, good fortune immediately blossomed. The most ambitious farm-to-table operation in the United States, Black Cat, hired our firm. We still work closely with Black Cat, handling all of the operation’s marketing and communications, from social media to press outreach to writing blogs and newsletters and taking photography and videos. Working with Black Cat has served as a storytelling feast, as the narrative constantly shifts and evolves. Please review our blog entries here.
We treasure Eric and Jill Skokan, the founders of Black Cat. When they finally bid goodbye to working for others and opened Black Cat Bistro in downtown Boulder in 2006, the plan was simple: Let’s open a restaurant.
Eric quickly tired of paying small fortunes for plastic clamshells full of tiny flowers, for garnishes. He decided to grow his own, plus some English peas and carrots.
The backyard garden quickly became a lease on a neighboring acre. The couple planted more vegetables. Within a few years, the farm cultivated more than 10 acres, on city and county open space, raising increasingly more vegetables and raising pigs.
From a backyard plot to hundreds of acres
Today, Black Cat Organic Farm stands at 425 acres. The farm supports hundreds of heritage sheep and pigs, all of which graze on USDA Certified Organic pasture. It grows more than 250 varieties of organic vegetables, grains, legumes and herbs. The Skokans bought a grain mill and other grain-related machinery in the mid-2010s, and began milling all of their organic grains — wheat, rye, emmer, polenta corn, buckwheat, millet.
The farm supports two restaurants in downtown Boulder: Black Cat Bistro and Bramble & Hare. It supplies vegetables and meats for a permanent (and always busy) farm stand, as well as a spot at downtown Boulder’s iconic Saturday farmers’ market. And as of the summer of 2019, it also serves as the culinary foundation for the Skokans’ popular farm dinner business, which since July of 2020 has run every night of the week at their atmospheric and historic farmstead.
This is one vibrant, dynamic operation — a storytelling feast for Campfire Content.
In this post, we link to the blog, which we have ran for years. During the pandemic, we largely sidelined the blog in favor of the newsletter, which for a while Campfire was crafting every day of the week. For now, the newsletter runs two or three times a week. And we anticipate returning to more regular blog postings soon.
Powerful storytelling is vital for all businesses. With the Skokans, we are fortunate to work with such a compelling and always evolving story.