Carnation Farms is a historic farm in Washington’s Snoqualmie Valley, devoted to regenerative agriculture practices and resilient food systems. KK&P started working with the farm in late 2023 to recruit their first Director of Regenerative Agriculture and helped select Eric Popp for the role in April 2024 after an extensive national search. KK&P continued working with Eric in a coaching capacity for six months after that and led the development of the farm’s first ever impact report, completed in November 2025. Karen Karp had a conversation with Eric last month to talk about his work at Carnation Farms.

What can you tell us about the history of Carnation Farms as it relates to your role as the Director of Regenerative Agriculture?

We’re lucky to work at a farm that’s been so consistently progressive and with a legacy of innovation, not just in terms of agricultural progress broadly, but also in specific matters like animal and employee welfare. Those have always been at the core of Carnation Farms and still inform how we operate. We name our animals—a lot of people in the meat industry say you shouldn’t do that. But I think that when we consider our relationship to these animals, if we give them a name and recognize their lives, we think about them differently. We also work with what I consider to be some of the most talented people in the regenerative grazing space so in every way possible we make sure we’re keeping the animal welfare legacy alive.

That leads us to Carnation Farms’ famous beef breed and how they fit into your regenerative agriculture mission.

We raise Belted Kingshires—a registered breed developed to grass-finish in two years in King County. If you put that animal side-by-side with an Angus on the same pasture, the Angus is going to pick out its favorite grasses, whereas the Kingshire is going to leave you a nice clean cut. Their breeding means they do very well on the pastures of western Washington. I believe we’re still the only farm where you can get USDA-processed Belted Kingshire beef. Ultimately, the farm and the breed are a way to create a value chain around these animals and help build a local farm ecosystem.

What about the sheep? I understand those are critical to your regenerative approach as well.

The Avondale is an unregistered breed created by Jeff Rogers, who was perhaps one of the most scientific shepherds the world has ever seen. He bred the Avondale with similar characteristics to the Kingshire—resilient to this climate and a great forager, among many other characteristics. I believe that we’re the only farm where you can get USDA-processed Avondale. Sheep are much easier than cattle for facilitating regenerative practices for tree fruit, agroforestry, and silvopasture, so we use them in our cropping areas as a part of the fertility cycle and graze them in areas that don’t have a lot of fencing.

Thinking back to KK&P’s recruiting process, you were an internal candidate but didn’t apply initially. How did you decide to put your hat in the ring, and how did you think about strengths and gaps for the role?

I thought that I might be a good fit for the role but also assumed they were looking for somebody a little bit older for the position, and somebody who came from a different background than mine, maybe a little bit more conventional leaning but with an organic focus. One of the ways I talked to myself into it was by taking your advice about not changing anything for at least six months after taking the role—sit back, learn, and understand all the things I’ve just described. My focus had mostly been in the extremely sustainable market-garden space. I had also raised animals for custom exempt processing and worked with sheep and goats for fertility management, habitat repair, and fire suppression, but not much for meat production. It’s worked out well because I have an extremely competent livestock team that I can lean on for the things I’m not as familiar with.

How do you think about directing the farm along its regenerative agriculture trajectory in the next three years? What’s possible in this role that wasn’t as a farmer?

The big thing that I can do as director that I would not have been able to do as easily as a farmer is ensure that this business stays grounded in its regenerative mission. This is the largest farm in King County, and that brings assumptions that we can do anything because we’re so close to Seattle and have so much land. But nothing in agriculture is a linear equation and we should do things with the minimum amount of resources, inputs, and detrimental impact to the land. Efficiency will always beat scale and that’s kind of a regenerative concept in itself.