Regenerative Farming, Food Systems, and Non-Linear Career Paths with Kimberlee Chambers

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Kimberlee Chambers, Agriculture Program Manager at Earthworm Foundation about Regenerative Farming, Food Systems, and Non-Linear Career Paths.  Read her full bio below.

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Connect with Kimberlee Chambers at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberlee-chambers-7b4a958 

Guest Bio:
Dr. Kimberlee Chambers is an Agriculture Program Manager at Earthworm Foundation, an international nonprofit. She works throughout food system supply chains to support farm viability and sustainability initiatives. Kimberlee’s roots in agriculture and conservation run deep — since growing up on a family farm in Ontario, Canada, she has conducted multiple applied agricultural research projects with farmers, Tribes, and First Nation communities in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Kimberlee serves as a Board Member for Sustainable Northwest and the Oregon Agricultural Trust. She has a PhD in geography from the University of California, Davis, and an MSc in ethnoecology from the University of Victoria in British Columbia.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental enthusiasts, Nic and Laura. On today's episode, Laura and I talk about food. We interview Kimberlee Chambers about regenerative farming, food systems, and nonlinear career paths. And finally, here are some fun facts about earthworms.

Earthworms are hermaphrodites, meaning each worm has both male and female reproductive organs. They still need another worm to reproduce. They also lay eggs. Earthworms play a major role in soil health by breaking down organic material and mixing it into the ground, helping plants grow.

As they burrow through the soil, earthworms create tunnels that improve aeration and allow water to move more easily through the ground. Because of their ability to recycle nutrients and improve soil structure, earthworms are often considered one of the most important animals for maintaining healthy ecosystems.

How about that? Yep, they're still icky. Come on, they're cute in a way. Hit that music.

This year, NAEP is hosting their annual conference and training symposium in Anchorage, Alaska from Monday, May 11th through Thursday, May 14th. The conference is a great opportunity to learn about new projects, share technical knowledge, network with other industry professionals, and engage with environmental leaders.

Not a member yet? Join NAEP with special discount code EPR for $25 off your membership. Register now at www.NAEP.org.

Let's get to our segment.

One of the things that she talked about that I thought was really interesting, it's about eating good food and realizing the pineapple story she told speaks directly to me, cause I never liked pineapple growing up, and it's only because I was not really eating good pineapple, I was eating like unripe, spoiled pineapple, pretty much, like that's I was getting at the stores.

And then I went to Thailand and had pineapple on a crummy fishing boat. I mean, like, just going from point A to point B, they're like, hey, do you want some pineapple? I didn't want to be rude. So I ate it, and it was like, it exploded with flavor, and it was like, I was like, oh my God, I want a million of these. Like, what happened?

And it's all about, you know, how fresh it is, we grew it, and I think it's a really fascinating thing because it's like, you just don't think about it sometimes, like asparagus is another one. Or like how that is grown, eating it fresh off the ground versus in a store, they're not even remotely the same vegetable. Like, it doesn't even make sense. Like, it does not taste the same.

Fresh asparagus snaps. Like you can snap it in half. It'll literally like, you know, it's, it's delicious. It's an unbelievably different thing than what you get at the store, and I think that's kind of a neat part of one part of the interview we talked about today.

Yeah, I, I agree. I feel like that and like the, we talked about the expansions of foods, like, I remember before there was avocados. Avocados like a staple in any restaurant. And that it didn't even exist in, you know, like when I was younger and like, and I don't know exactly when it came to be because I hate to throw my mom under the bus here, but we never had good fresh vegetables and fruits in the house, so it was all canned and frozen, and so like, I, I didn't eat fruits and vegetables until I became vegetarian in my twenties.

So, it's, it's kind of crazy. I don't really know, like, what that was like, eating something I didn't like and then having it later, but all of the fruits and vegetables became available to me later, and I think, but still having it fresh from where it's locally grown is completely different than having it where it's been shipped thousands of miles and it's stored and processed and But yeah, there's avocados, hummus. I remember hummus didn't used to be a thing, um, and of course that's processed food, but at the same time, like, just certain things that have, I think a fascinating part of her job is the way that she kind of has to market and promote new things as well.

When you think about, you talk about avocados, right? Like one of my favorite parts of this thing is the connection point we're talking about, and I'm remembering, oh yeah, avocados are in the store, and they still have signs that tell people when they're actually ready to, you know, be eaten. And it's like there's a little little sign like, you know, not, you know, green is not ripe, and, you know, this is, this is ripe, this is too ripe, you know, and that's exactly it.

That's the kind of marketing you're doing at the store to get people to buy the thing and keep buying the thing cause avocados are delicious, they're incredible, but yeah, they're also like there's they're one of those fruits, it's a fine line between like perfect and completely spoiled, and it's like, oh my gosh, they're the worst.

I feel like it took me a while to start learning how to buy them. I don't know. I never really bought them myself even until recently, and then it took me out every time I would get them, I was like, What's wrong with this? And I'd have someone in the store pick one for me. And then I was like, but now I'm like, I've had a streak. I'm on a streak of picking a avocado and I'm like, figured it out.

That's funny. On the front end too, we both love our mothers very much. It's not their fault that they did the same thing to both, you know, it's not, it's not, it just is what it was. That was what it was canned corn, you know, big, big part of the, the diet growing up.

Oh yes, canned corn and um canned mushrooms on pizza. Like I couldn't, that'll never happen today, ever. You will not find me eating that, but like my soul left my body when you said that.

Oh man, I don't, mm. It's like those are the worst versions of mushrooms. It's not great, yeah.

But yeah, it is interesting that I think lately I've seen a lot more exotic fruits popping into the grocery store more often, and I still look at them, a lot of them like, hm, I wonder what you do with that.

Well, like, this is embarrassing, really, but there's an unfortunate number in front of my age when I realized that food is seasonal. Strawberries are good for like, A few months out of the year, they're there all the time, but they're only good for a few months out of the year because that's when they're supposed to be grown.

Right? Well, right now in Florida, strawberries are amazing, and you can go pick your own and all that fun stuff, uh, which is also nice about living somewhere near where they actually harvest things. I've had the pleasure of doing that in Florida with blueberries and strawberries, blackberries, naturally, and then also in New York with apples.

Yeah, that's true. Like apples growing up, you grew up on the Appalachian Trail, that's kind of a thing. There's apple trees all along the, the mountains. It's pretty cool, and it's weird. I mean, they're not, they're not the same as like store apples, but they're, you can totally eat them. It's great. It's kind of wild. I mean, I mean quite literally wild, but I don't know, I think it's just funny how things are.

I don't know. Strawberries is one of those ones where if you like, you get a box of them and they're bad, it's devastating. You're like, oh, these all taste like nothing. Great, I've failed at this. And so I'm, I'm always like gun shy on. Strawberries, but in season, it's a lot easier to pick, right? That's something I learned like 4 years ago. Like why are my strawberries all bad? It's like cause it's winter, I don't know, like.

Yeah, I think that that's why, you know, you can check like where the produce is from, cause there's different seasons in different areas too.

Yeah, and how far it takes to get here is another big deal, um, which, you know, all this is super interesting, but I think Kimberlee has so much amazing information, so let's get to that interview.

Yeah, sounds good.

Hello and welcome back to EPR. Today we're joined by Doctor Kimberlee Chambers, agricultural program manager at Earthworm Foundation. Kimberlee, so great to have you here.

Thanks. It's such a pleasure to be here.

So you lived in a couple of different worlds. You're growing up on a family farm in Ontario and then working across food systems in the US, Canada, and Mexico. How did you get to where you are now?

The story I typically tell people. Running away from the farm. I grew up in a, a pretty poor rural area and just knew that university was the best way for me to kind of have life choices. And I love learning. So, I headed off to my undergrad, and that led to a lot of adventures and internships, and then a master's opportunity, which then led to being talked into doing my, my PhD.

But through all of it, there's a relationship between human environment interactions, which I think at my core is what motivates me and is my greatest passion.

Yeah, it's very cool. And it's actually something that that's kind of my background too. And it's always a fascinating thing because we tend to take ourselves away from the environment sometimes, like, oh, well, it's, it's humans and the environment and then the environment. It's like, well, we're kind of always here some way, shape or form.

So how did that passion kind of inform how you made steps along in your career?

Well, I think definitely growing up in a rural area on a farm and just seeing the intertwining between the two. Particularly, my family's been there for 5 generations, so there's a real history on the land and seeing how it's changed and in ways that it hasn't. And then getting to university and being introduced to where our food comes from.

It's a lot of research on agricultural origins and dispersals and just becoming more and more passionate about why we eat the things we eat, where they've come from, their connection to medicines and the environment, and how landscapes have been managed.

I remember learning once that there's something along the lines of, and, you know, forgive me if it's not perfect, 80,000 edible plants and we eat 80. Something unbelievable like that.

So I mean, it speaks exactly to what you're saying. And forever decreasing, right? Like if you look at Michael Pollan's early work that we're all corn, essentially.

Yeah, yeah. So, OK, tell us, for those of us that may not be familiar with the Earthworm Foundation, what's your role there and, and what do you do on a day to day basis?

I think one of the things that I love most about my job is I don't do anything on a day to day basis. It changes continuously. Uh, so, uh, Earthworm is an international nonprofit. It was originally called the Forest Trust, and we've been around for over 25 years.

And the idea of the archetype of the corporation, so what kind of shapes the culture and shapes the vibe. And we started with a field, I think he's a geologist or field forester out of Australia. And that's really who Earthworm is.

We're really focused on impact on the ground, on being in the field. But in order to do those changes, we really feel that we have to work from the boardroom through the C-suite, through the entire supply chain within a company.

So, we're, we work behind the scenes. We're really trying to help companies make the changes that either they've chosen to make, or they're being pushed to make in some instances by activist NGOs. So, we embed ourselves in companies, be that bridge to understand where their supply is coming from and how to improve it from both a human and environmental perspective.

So what does that look like? Can you give me an example of like how that process plays out?

Sure, yeah. We do a lot of work in palm, soy, you know, a lot of the big commodities, cocoa, things that people are pretty familiar with. But for me, my work is focused on US and Canada agriculture commodities, the things that I kind of know the best.

And I work with companies who are either sourcing raw ingredients from here and might want to understand what their impact is, if there are risks, how they can help address those, or really kind of one of the leading edges and a lot of work that's happening for us currently is around regenerative agriculture.

So, I might work with a supplier or with a brand to help them implement regenerative agriculture on the farm, and then all the systems. Systems that need to go in place to track that right up through to, could be the consumer package goods.

Very cool.

Yeah, so, I was pretty close to Florida, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday this week. We're down in South Georgia where we are enrolling cotton farmers into ECO USA's regenerative cotton program. So, this will be our 3rd year down in South Georgia. So, working with those farmers to understand the practices that they're doing and then helping them make improvements through field days and soil sampling, and then working with ECO to help them build brand recognition around that cotton as well.

Nice.

That sounds like you guys do like, uh, turnkey solutions for people if you're working all the way from the sustainable practices all the way to branding.

Yeah, every single occasion is different. Every single partner is different. Where Ecom, you know, we have programs. In Georgia, uh, Mid-South, so Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and West Texas, and every one of those areas is as different as you can imagine it is.

But yeah, that's, eventually we hope we can get all the way through to the supply and to the market with them.

Nice. And then, I'm curious before we go any further, how did you go from forest to earthworm? What did, what did the name change come about?

Yeah, a lot of people know the Forest Trust. They do not know Earthworm. And, um, I realize this is going public, but every time I tell a farmer in the US or Canada that I work for an organization called Earthworm, they automatically get a little suspicious. Um, like what?

Uh, so, we just recognize that we're doing way more in soils than we are in just forests anymore. So, that, you know, there's the importance of the, of soils as the skin of the earth, so the quote goes, and just recognizing the power of earthworms in terms of building nutrients, recycling nutrients, and kind of just being a change agent, really, in soils overall.

OK, that makes sense. I wasn't around for the rebranding, so. Makes sense though.

And then a lot of people talk about agriculture and making it more sustainable, and there are lots of different ways to do that. In your experience, what does sustainable agriculture require in practice?

Oh, there's no easy ways to do it. Let's just say that, you know, every farmer that I've worked with is doing what they can to drive change on the ground. Most of them. We did some big baseline assessments with one of our partners looking at the Canadian prairies and then West Texas and Oklahoma Panhandle to ask farmers who are leading in regenerative ag, what motivated them.

And the ones in, in the US talked about spirituality and the ones in Canada talked about stewardship of the earth, but it's at this kind of same core for why they want to continue to do what they're doing.

I think the big issue is identifying the barriers that are stopping those farmers from making those changes. Most farmers want to be doing the best that they can do in the most affordable way, but what's making it so that they can't?

And it's identifying those barriers and then looking at how we can address those. And for me, that how we can address those is getting increasingly exciting watching collaborations form around the really big challenging problems that can't be addressed by one group of farmers or one brand or one earth farm.

There's a lot of interesting initiatives happening that are, are cross-functional collaborative, you know, whether it could be introducing new rotation crops or introducing big shifts at the landscape level to help improve things.

Right. Do you have any favorite projects that you've worked on or solutions that you particularly like?

All of them. But, you know, I, I, I learned really early on that in order to be happy in my job, I had to be continuously learning. And context is everything in regenerative ag, I mean the local context, the farm context, the field context.

So, everything that I've worked on has been incredibly different, and it's just been really rewarding to pull life experiences from several different aspects of my life into a single project and see little kind of improvements occurring.

Right. Well, so far, this sounds like a dream job and amazing. There must be some challenges. So, you ever run into a community that doesn't seem to want the help, you mentioned letting the work speak for itself, and sometimes people start to get it.

Yeah. 0, 100%. I mean, I think what makes this job fun for me is I, I have a broad background in academia and research and family farming. And then working at for-profit entities, and being in this role allows me to pull from all of those.

There's definitely challenges. I think every situation that I've walked into, and I kind of joked about this at the start of the call, there's been some suspicion about who I am, why I'm there, and what I want people to do. I am a middle-aged white woman with a PhD from that liberal coast of Portland, and I work in a lot of places that are not that.

So, having, you know, seen people come around, whether it's with the companies we work with, or the farmers or local extension agents, seeing them come around to trust me and to realize that I'm actually there to help, and I'm not there to mess with their systems or make things worse, but to try and bring whatever resources they can to support them.

It was the same working with First Nations in British Columbia. I'm just here to give you tools. I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm here to help.

Yeah. Yeah, so it's, it's got to be a very collaborative process.

Do you get questions and comments about, like, you know, I guess how does this even start? Do you go in and say, hey, here's a suite of things we can do, or is it more like areas will reach out to you and say, hey, we're trying to do more. We have this idea, what do you think?

Yeah, it's much more of the 2nd, and a lot of it is context, this idea of context analysis. So we, you know, right before this call, I was on the call with another partner about building a budget and a proposal to go in and do a program development analysis.

So, we spend time on the ground, talked to local stakeholders that are identified by people in the area, talked to local farmers, talk to kind of the key people who are involved in the program to understand what it is they need, what it is they're doing already, who might be on the ground and there to help contribute, what resources do they need, and then from there, we would go to build something.

So there's no real menu that we ever bring in. It's about understanding what's happening locally and how we might be able to support what's there already, what additional resources are needed.

I almost want to tie it back to the AD plants and dwindling that we actually eat. Is there a future where some of what you do also ends up expanding our palates at some point, or am I being, is it wishful thinking on my part? How do we get to that point?

Well, we'd love that. I mean, crop rotations is one of the key fundamental concepts of regenerative agriculture. So, you know, you increase your biodiversity, you increase your soil health, you do all kinds of things with crop rotation.

The challenges that we have currently are just really limited markets and limited infrastructure. So, even if a grower wants to plant, you know, different kinds of beans, for example, where do they take them to? Where do they sell them?

And then there's, you know, there's an associated lack of knowledge and equipment, right? So, on-farm equipment, I did a project with some students several years ago looking at transitioning grassland in the grass seed in the Willamette Valley to edible grains, and, like, what, what equipment is easily transferable.

So, all of those levels. But there are groups emerging, particularly in the Midwest around a couple of universities and nonprofits who are looking at how do we introduce new crops into these systems, where are the opportunities?

And most food and beverage companies and agriculture companies run super lean. Like, they don't have people who can reach out and connect all the dots and do that exploration and put a feasibility study together. And that's where we can come in and help is identify what other crops might be possible, what are the nearest markets, what are the infrastructure gaps, where's the funding to fill those gaps.

It's risky, and I think that's kind of one of the examples I mentioned earlier I've seeing multi-stakeholder groups come together to solve these bigger problems.

Yeah, you know, it's funny, like I'm hearing you talk about it and you're hitting all the things, OK, it it did, that's a worry, yeah, that's a worry, that's a worry, that's a worry, you know, this is what you have to kind of go through because it's not just you grow something and then ta da it's in the grocery store.

Uh, because even if you do get it to the grocery store or when you do, uh, you can imagine it's like, wait, what is this strange thing I've never seen before. So there's all kinds of stuff in there that's, it's kind of uh.

Unique to this this process and this experience, I feel like that we are in a space where people are looking for more diversity in the grocery store than they have in years past. I don't know if that's true or not. I'm kind of curious what your thought is there. Are we on the cusp of getting more fruits and vegetables in our markets, or are they kind of still working on that?

Well, I think you could say yes and no. I think it's both, you know, we've seen some really great opportunities here in Portland, Oregon. Several years ago, there was a grower who decided to introduce Pedron peppers, and they did a lot of strategy.

They had a skillet at the farmers' market. They'd cook them up, hand them out to people. They introduced them to certain restaurants. Of course they're everywhere. You see them everywhere.

So I think we do see that happening, really innovative. Where we can run into challenges is when you try to scale some of these things, because Specs for processors are really tight, really narrow. So, if you change something, then they can't handle it in their machinery, you know, so, having to kind of navigate and then realizing it's all about leverage points, right?

So, where can you get in and then drive change? How can you build that?

Yeah. That's cool. It's so cool.

It reminds me of I was, I had a little flashback to last year, I was visiting my mom and my niece was 14 year old niece was over, and we had gone to the grocery store and picked up a, a dragon fruit. Which I have since only had in a smoothie or a, uh, you know, smoothie bowl or acai bowl.

And so we're like, what do we do with it? I don't know. Is it ripe? I don't know. So we have like open day, we're like, do we eat it now? Is this right? It was so funny. So that's what I thought of when I thought of bringing the fruits and stuff into the grocery store, like, not only like bring it in, people won't buy it if they don't know what it is or how to eat it, right?

You don't know what to do with it.

Yeah. And yeah, Nick, we were talking at the beginning, just like how few crops are actually eaten, right? And that's particularly the case with tropical fruits, because most of what we have here has been shipped. So, it has to be something that's either bred for shipping, and then there also is the, like, knowing how to eat it or when to eat it.

So, there's that cultural component. I'm not that old, but I definitely, you know, things like mangoes and pineapples were exotic in Canada. You know, growing up in Ontario, citrus would be a box from Florida that came up in January.

So, we have made big leaps, even looking at the diversity. Mangoes available in the market. But there's, uh, both, uh, overcoming cultural barriers, introducing things, introducing them when they're absolutely ripe.

I hated pineapple until I was in Costa Rica and had a ripe 10 yeah. 0, 100%. 0 my gosh, yeah.

And then overcoming the shipping, like the our infrastructure around food and egg is phenomenal, but there are barriers. Like, how do you get it from point A to point B? What does it have to look like? How does it have to be packaged? What temperature does it need to be at? All of those things.

Yeah, yeah.

Career wise, we like to talk about how people get into their careers and your advice for someone who wants to get into this. I mean, food science and and agriculture is so important, obviously, I mean, every element of career climate change is, is important, but the agriculture, we need to eat.

So yeah, yeah. What advice do you have for someone who may be interested in this, or even someone who's not to say like, Hey, this is a great field to get into.

Yeah. You know, the advice that I was given by an undergraduate advisor was, go and take whatever opportunity comes to you and have a good time. Um, so, I was, I was very motivated by that. I was very motivated by just making sure I could pay for myself.

So, you know, I did. Internship in the Presidio, and internship in Costa Rica, and, you know, I, I kind of bounced around in a lot of different places. To me, they were always building from one to another. So, I don't have a very linear path. I have 3 degrees because the opportunities were there, and different career choices because the opportunities were there.

I am as a whole, all of those things now, but it wasn't very linear. And I actually don't. You know, at Earthworm Foundation, there's one person I know who was an intern at Earthworm, but then went off and did other things and came back.

But most of us come from very diverse careers. Like, you could have somebody who came from, you know, I started, there was a woman who was at Starbucks who was setting up new facilities, and that had come to us as a project manager. There are people who have come from different corporations, different NGOs, different academic backgrounds, and that's kind of what makes us a whole.

I used to get a lot of questions about how to get into sustainability. And for that one, I would answer, don't focus on sustainability, focus on what area you like.

So, uh, when I took a job at organically grown Company, I was hired as a sustainability manager. To oversee their five long-term sustainability goals and really quickly realized that I wasn't actually that interested in waste management or building energy efficiencies. I was interested in the on-farm components, and I, I think that that's a direction that people really should be aware of is what's your passion within the greater sustainability field and get your background in that and get your focus in that and your experiences in that, and then weave sustainability into it.

Yeah, that's a really great point. A lot of people that I consult come in. What do you want to do? I want to do sustainability. Well, cookie, that's, I don't think they even really know what they're saying. They just heard that I'm supposed to get into sustainability, but that's like saying I want an environmental job.

Exactly. Big umbrellas, um, so that's, that's really good advice, and I think 90% of the people that we've had on have not had a linear path or didn't. You know, aren't doing what they thought they would do when they started, um, which is also just good for people to hear because that's how most people's careers are going to play out.

Just follow the leads and follow the opportunities and go through the open doors and all of that.

But what type of, so, you know, anyone from any background, but are there certain types of skills or characteristics or strengths a person should have.

Oh, it really, again, it depends what area you're going in. I remember somebody told me a few years ago that there's a labor shortage in agriculture in two different areas.

So, we have a significant labor shortage in the field that impacts what gets harvested, when it gets harvested, how it gets harvested. But the other labor shortage that we have in agriculture is that the technology and that's trying to drive solutions to those peoples.

So, you know, people with tech backgrounds in agriculture are really critical in a broad array of areas. For the work that I'm doing in the supply chain, soil scientists, people with technical soil backgrounds, those are really important. Finance is increasingly becoming important.

There's a lot of innovation and finance going around, regenerative ags, so people who can come in and think in an informed way about that. How do you build different finance programs together? How do you connect them? Those are ones that I know just off the top of my head that there are gaps in.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's great. That's super helpful.

We are at the point in the show where we do a segment called #e notes, and we ask our guests to tell us about memorable moments doing the work. So if you can share a funny, scary, awkward field story with us so we can read them on the show, you can send them to info@environmentalprofessionalsradio.com.

And Kimberlee, you have a story about being in the field as an assistant and something with bears. I love.

Yeah, actually, I just, you know, there's a lot of actually like I think of several like being in the highlands in Mexico and hiking back in to meet these people, and they very generously served a beautiful meal and eating the chili peppers and turning very red, and I like spicy food, but those chilies were unbelievable.

Um, yeah, when I was doing my master's work in British Columbia, the head of the geography department, because I was cross posted in environmental science and geography, asked me if I had a field assistant. I said, Yes.

And he said, What's your field assistant's job? I'm like, Write down what I tell them. And he's like, No, it's to watch for bears.

And he was so right. Like, we, he said, Keep your head up. I was working on balsam root, which is a beautiful native sunflower, and it's both a medicinal and a food plant.

We were working with agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and First Nations communities, and just to really get a more holistic understanding of it.

And we, one of the field sites, I think we saw 9 bears in one day. They would be grazing below us, down slope, you know, just like cows grazing along the field. On our way in, we saw 3 small cubs in a tree. They were just kind of everywhere. All 3 field sites, we had a lot of bears present.

Happily fed bears, did not need me.

Right. Well, I mean, it's, it's, you know, it's funny you say that. It's like bears, you can get used to it in a way that's confusing sometimes, because like, your first day there, you are going to see every bear there is. Your, your 30th day there, you're like, no, it's just bears again, and you're like, whoa, there's a bear right here, you know.

Oh, so how do you handle that? Cause like, I just can't even imagine that it's gotta be like, is there always an underlying tension, or did you just get used to it?

I think it's just part of one of the blessings of growing up in rural Ontario and, you know, having Canada as home is rarely do you look out across the landscape and not see wildlife. And in, in some ways, not seeing wildlife on the landscape of the United States is something I can't get used to in places.

Like, it, it really was, you know, the gift of where I grew up and living in Ontario and Alberta and British Columbia, and just having nature be so much closer and so much a part of your life.

Yeah.

Well, it's, you know, I love, I love you said it. Like I grew up on the Appalachian Trail, and I don't think there's ever going to be a time where I don't enjoy a forest, right? I just, it just feels very comforting to me. So I'll go out west, and it's wide open and I'm just so you can see everything for miles, and the people there are like, yeah, I know, isn't it great? I'm like, no, you know, it's just different, it's just different, you know.

Yeah, yeah, I feel that a lot moving between, you know, so in the past few months, we're in West Texas for a week, and then we're in southern Arkansas for a week, and then this week, we're in southern Georgia. And those landscapes in southern Georgia and southern Arkansas with all the trees and, you know, water in different places, that feels like home. That feels much more like home.

Yeah, I totally agree.

Yeah. But anyway, we love to also ask about what people do outside of work, because the, the, the joy of this profession. In these fields is that we're, we are very diverse. We've talked about that quite a lot today, so this fits really well.

So, you mentioned that you like to cook, you like to grow food, and go backpacking, but what do you enjoy the most about those experiences?

I was reading an article about book author diary authors, and one of them just talked about how cooking puts you in motion and allows you to kind of just be present in what you're doing. I thought, oh, maybe that's why I love it so much.

It's also the creative process, and just the gift of being in Oregon and having access to what such beautiful ingredients and diversity so locally.

Growing food has just, you know, my grandfather died like oh, he was 97. It was the day after he planted his large garden. So, for me, being able to know how to produce my own food has always kind of been part of who I am. I grew up with big gardens, and just that blessing of being able to step outside and eat cherries off, or tomatoes off the vine and blueberries off the bush.

Yeah.

And then, yeah, the kind of more adventure one is we do a lot of bike packing. We usually do a spring trip and a fall trip. I've done several solo.

Those can vary from biking from Geneva to the Mediterranean on the Via rona to, um, remote bike packing on the Kettle Valley Railway in British Columbia.

Uh, yeah. So, those are great. You can't really look at your cell phone or your computer while you're riding a bike through trails and parks. You really can't.

That is 100% true, because you'll lose your phone almost immediately.

Yeah, I have to ask though, it's like, uh, so if you're making dinner for some, like, you know, friends or whatever, a family, you have to have something unique in it, right? Like that's the expectation. You can't just, well, here's some, uh, I sauteed some peppers and onions.

I hope you don't mind. That's green bell pepper actually could have gone red, but I chose me. Do you have to have it be a unique experience?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm also like super conscientious about making sure it's balanced food and there are options in case people are, you know, not wanting things one way or another. Pretty vegetable dominant.

You know, I grew up on a beef farm. It's not because I'm a vegetarian. I just find vegetables to be really interesting.

There's, um, one in particular, I have a, a good friend whose birthday is right around May long weekend. And for years, I have cooked her a fava bean dinner.

And last year, that included getting a 25 pound case of fava beans from a local grower here that we like, and doing multiple fava bean dishes. And I thought I would have enough left over to do a second dinner the next night, but we actually had to go back to the farmer's market and buy more fava beans. 20 bucks.

Wow, wow, I love fava beans.

That's Oh, me too. But I'm also, I'm also kind of OK when they go away, you know, like eating like, all right, I'm done shelling lavas.

Like there comes a point with, with each seasonal highlight that you just, you're glad when it's a little bit over. Usually those fava bean dinners include a dish that I've made in the past that we all really like, and then something new. We'll try something new and multiple different dishes, yeah.

Oh gosh, yeah, that's the joy of it. I love trying new things, even stuff I wouldn't necessarily think I'd like, and, and I think as a kid you're like, oh, I was like, you know, give me chicken fingers and and french fries, but certain things I, I stick with me, like the first time I had like a spicy radish, and I was like, this is different than what I was expecting.

I thought it would be flavorless, and it was anything but, you know, it's like that that's the joy of eating and food. I mean.

Yeah, yeah, I want to know more about these bike tours. Do you, do you figure them out on your own or do you do a bike tour company or something?

Like, are you, how are you getting from point A to point B and knowing the roads connect?

The vast majority of them are figured out on our own. So having 3 degrees that are basically in geography, I naturally gravitate to maps helps. Like, everybody should know how to read a map.

Um, but usually we do multiple sources. So, there's a lot of good online apps now, like Ride with GPS is big here. Commute is big globally. So, you do searches for routes in the area that you're going to. You read blogs. Sometimes I would get to order a book that might have the route explained.

Sometimes I order paper maps that have the route, and you kind of figure out the length that you're going to do, and then how far you may want to ride within each day and where you want to stay.

So, the end of April, we're headed to the Piedmont region in Italy, cause my partner picked this route, and he's a big wine fan. So, naturally, his choices have wine in them.

And we found a route online, and the route looked great. And then we got it all planned. We made all of our accommodation based on how much we're hoping to ride each day.

And then when we started zooming in and really looking at the routes online, we realized that it went over a ski pass one day, up to a ski hill. And given that we're there in April, we said maybe we should route around that day.

So, it's a combination. But they say, though, like planning the trip, you get to enjoy it first, and then doing the trip, you get to enjoy it second. So, the planning is part of the fun.

So, do you ever like doing something like that? Do you end up kind of bringing that back with you to your jobs? Because I can imagine like if you're trying to find new things and new foods, there's gotta be some joy in doing that too, yeah.

Yeah. And it, it's also just the inherent nature of reading the landscape and interpreting the landscape. And the route, I think, when we did the route from Geneva to the Mediterranean, all three of us who were on that ride together, all work in agriculture.

And two things that really struck us is like, it rained almost every day. But none of us cared because we're living on the West Coast, where we've had wicked droughts and fires, and we're like, Oh, it's good. Rain's good.

But, and then, you know, 10 years ago, I probably wouldn't have thought that.

And then the other one is just really being aware of how different the farm landscape is there compared to here, how small the farms are, how many more farms there are in any given region.

So, there's not always a direct relationship, but a lot of the work that we do at Earthworm is across regions. It's across countries, it's across continents. So, being able to build empathy between regions and understand.

I said it to someone recently. We had a, a meeting with a big global agrifood company, and there were tensions emerging around their program in the United States and their program in Europe. And I just see us at Earthworm as kind of being part of the translators for that.

You know, the Europeans felt that the US company, US parent company didn't understand them and their system, and the US parent company felt like Europe has no context for what's going on here, and that's part of what our job is.

Yeah, connecting dots. That's kind of a, that's a joy. I love doing that kind of thing too, in a different capacity, but no, I love that. That's neat.

Yeah, and finding the similarities, right?

Yeah, which is a lot of what I do in the field too. It's like, You're right. I am not a South Arkansas cotton farmer, but being able to find connections with people and that humanity and things to like about each other.

100%. And it's like.

No, I was just gonna say it's like most people love to talk about what they do, you know, and just sitting there listening to it is like step one, right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it sounds like you have a really great job and a really great lifestyle and philosophies on life. Are there any particular books, quotes, things that kind of motivate you and anchor your, your lifestyle?

A consumptive reader. Like, I churn through books. So it really depends on where I am on any given day. That's a tough one to kind of think about.

Often, I lean on a, a quote from the lineage of geography that I was in, which is Carl Sauer. And I remember when I was planning my PhD research in central Mexico, and I came across this quote that something like, a plan is what you have until you get in the field.

And that is our job on a daily basis. Like, you really, you can't be fixed to the plan that you came up with for that particular place, for the program overall. You've got to understand it's agriculture, and things are going to change the moment you get there.

So, that's probably, that's probably a good life quote too, right? Like a plan is what you have until you get in.

Yeah, it's totally great. I love that.

Yes, that's awesome.

So, I mean, this is a great place to sort of start wrapping it up. Is there anything else that you might want to talk about before we let you go?

Oh, I'm really excited to actually be on this call. It's been a pleasure talking with all three of you. I was thinking the other day that, you know, very rarely do I actually get to talk about myself.

Little vanity in that. I'm usually trying to extract as much information as I can from other people to help design solutions, look for pitfalls, help navigate around them, look for opportunities. So it's very, very sweet to be on the other end of the table.

Yes, you did mention that you were, were a curious person full of questions earlier.

So, well, you can interview us, but I think we're going to stick to interviewing you.

I think that's the worst thing to ask me. I remember when I started at OGC and a guy who became a friend later on, he was training me, and he very bluntly asked if I was going to get a bonus based on the number of questions that I asked, which was essentially, you need to stop asking questions. But yeah.

Yeah. Inherently curious, which is really how I did get to where I am now, is by always asking questions.

That's amazing.

Well, and if anybody wants to get in touch with you to continue asking questions or learning more about you, because I've, we all have thoroughly enjoyed listening to you and learning more about you and what you do. Where can people get in touch with you?

Oh, absolutely, through LinkedIn. Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn every day, and I kind of keep up with stuff that's going on there. And say Earthworm has several LinkedIn pages as well for some of the regions and for global, so be sure to follow those. I invite anybody to reach out.

Well, this was great. Thank you so much. That's our show. Thank you, Kimberlee, for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. See you, everybody.