Dirt Factory

Every good dig begins with a little surface scratching, and the Dirt Factory project has been no different. I started by poking the generic “contact us” form of a major soil company, only to watch my message pinball from a polite customer-support rep to the corporate switchboard, then land in the black-hole voicemail of “media relations.”

Rather than wait in that queue, I hunted for anyone who had ever worn the company badge. A quick LinkedIn search surfaced a former employee still starring in a few lingering promo videos. They accepted my connection request and, after a brief chat, steered me to one of the firm’s senior scientists. That conversation turned out to be gold—forty-five minutes of candid detail plus warm introductions to the real media contact and two specialists at other soil outfits shaping the industry from different angles.

While I wait for the recording of that call to land in my inbox, I also caught up with a former coworker who built his own house with a living roof and helped his brother raise a cob cottage from mud and straw. That side conversation was a timely reminder that some of the best leads sprout from the far corners of your own address book.

The moral is small and sturdy: research rarely opens with a red-carpet invitation. More often it begins with a cold email, a polite follow-up, and the willingness to ask a stranger—or an old friend—for directions.