Heirloom Salt, 3.5 oz

JQ Dickinson Salt Works: Malden, WV

One could say salt-making runs in our blood. We are seventh-generation salt-makers, brother and sister Nancy Bruns and Lewis Payne. We share a common love of food, farming, and family. We have come together to revive our 200-year-old family trade in Malden, West Virginia, and once again produce salt for our local communities and beyond. With our love of the land and our shared culinary passion, we have worked to produce a rare, small batch finishing salt, harvested from the ancient Iapetus Ocean trapped underneath the mountains of Appalachia. The result is a pure, delicious salt sure to transform any dish. The history of Appalachian salt is deeply personal to our family.  Our Dickinson ancestors first drilled for brine in 1817, using a hollowed-out tree trunk for piping, and established our family farm along the Kanawha River a few years after.  By the 1850s, there were hundreds of wells along the river producing more than three million bushels of salt per year, making the Kanawha Valley the largest salt producing region of the United States.  In 1851, “The Great Kanawha Salt” was awarded “The Best Salt in The World” at the World’s Fair in London.  Today, we are reviving our family’s salt-making tradition on the very same land where it all began.  To celebrate, we invited family members from across the region to a feast beside our long-standing barn; the meal showcased our newly harvested salt, and our strong commitment to a farm-to-table lifestyle.  The salt imbued nearly every dish on the menu, from the pork chops and bread to the local squash from the farmer’s market and sweet pecan pies.