Changing Horses
Carl Bell
Regional Advisor - Invasive Plants
My Friends, Colleagues, Collaborators, and Blog Readers,
I will be retiring from UC Cooperative Extension at the end of June. It's been a great ride, but time to change horses. I came into this organization 35 years ago and spent my first 20 years in the Imperial Valley, one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world with unique production practices and a very, very professional and experienced group of PCA's, growers and colleagues. But I made it, I learned and I contributed as much as I could to managing weeds in large scale farming and also in small scale produce operations (including organic, but mostly with minority farmers and ethnic crops). I was lucky to get re-assigned in 2000 to work on invasive plants in wildland areas in Southern California. I grew up and went to college in the LA area, so this has been an interesting and fulfilling 15 years doing work that is personally important to me.
From early on I realized how lucky I was to be working as a Weed Scientist, both with UC and with the larger world of weeds outside the ivy-covered walls. Weed scientists and practitioners have always been inclusive, supportive, and interesting; and populated by fun loving, intelligent, hard working, and egalitarian colleagues. I never felt like I was being treated as a second-class citizen by specialists or campus academics; they all showed me that they respected me and wanted to see me succeed. My years with UC have shown me that this is not often the case.
So thanks, but really I'm just changing horses, the ride is not over yet, I still have work to do. It is just time to leave active employment with UC. I will have a consulting business in Southern California on invasive plants; I'll try to get the word out on that later this summer.
Hits on this blog have grown consistently since its' beginning in November 2013. Lately there have been about 150 hits per day on this blog, which is not huge, but very personally gratifying, but this will be the last post here. Most of the blog posts are cross-posted on the UC Weed Science Blog. This is a great blog well worth connecting to even without my contributions. I am setting up a personal website which will include a resurrected blog later this summer, so please watch for that.
See you on down the trail.