Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece, and welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today my special guest is Kirby Powell. Hey, Kirby.
Kirby Powell: Hi, Toni. How are you?
Toni: I’m great. How are you doing today?
Kirby: I’m doing fantastic.
Toni: Good. Glad to hear it. It’s a beautiful day out there.
Kirby: It’s gorgeous. It’s already 75 degrees. The sun is shining. People are out.
Toni: What are we doing in here?
Kirby: That’s a good question.
Toni: Take a moment, Kirby, and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Kirby: Okay. I’m a Berks County, pretty much lifelong resident. I wasn’t born here, but grew up here in Berks County. Went to Penn State for electrical engineering technology, and then furthered my education at Albright College in computer science, so it’s pretty clear, I’m a technology geek as far as my education and my main career goes.
I’m married, have two daughters, and I work for an organization called Kline Process Systems, an engineering firm. Also, I’m a partner at Saucony Creek Brewing in Kutztown, and if that’s not enough on my plate, I also have a small vineyard that I sell commercial grapes, and I play in a band called Agent 99.
Toni: And that’s a pretty good band, too. I think I’ve heard it once or twice…and all the other things you do, too. That’s amazing. You must be one busy guy.
Kirby: I like being busy. That’s my life mantra. I want to experience things, do things, and have a good time doing it. There’s a saying that I picked up off of a backpack that I bought for college years ago. It resonated with me back then, and I still have that backpack. It is, “Life’s a journey. We’ll help you pack.” That was the logo on the backpack. That backpack has been with me ever since then. It’s been to Europe. It’s been to Alaska. It’s been on numerous business trips. The amazing thing is, it still looks almost new.
Toni: Oh, that’s fantastic. So it goes with you along the ride, right?
Kirby: Right.
Toni: Let’s get into the Project. So, what does inspiration mean to you?
Kirby: Inspiration to me, I think it takes two forms. On one side, inspiration is a spark or an idea or a trigger that takes place when you see something or you hear something and you’ve got an idea that says, “Connecting some dots. This and this and this…boy, if all those things came together, wouldn’t that really be cool? Wouldn’t that be a neat thing to see happen?” That’s inspiration on one level for me.
The other side of inspiration is kind of what I alluded to with the backpack where life is a journey. Those little inspirational sayings can come up at the least expected time. I’m out there buying a backpack, and I see this, and it resonated with me. I still have that backpack, and I’ve tried to actually live that. Life is a journey, and it’s what you want to make out of it. You can sit back and let that journey pass you buy, or you can experience it and be an active part of it.
Toni: Do you remember the last time you were inspired? How about with all of these businesses that you have, and being in technology, and that spark you speak of?
Kirby: Right. Some of the inspirations that come along I see, say for example in the brewing industry. Some of the people come up with interesting ideas on beers and I say, “Gee, that’s really stupid. That’s not going to sell well,” and then it does. It opens your eyes. In the brewing industry, a lot of people talk about Sam Calagione from Dogfish Head as being inspired, and I think that even recently, some of the things that he has done in the brewing industry, certain recipes he’s come out with have been inspirational to me. Another piece of that is all the people in Berks County. You see people every day that inspire you just walking on the street.
Toni: So, you know when you’re inspired. You feel it.
Kirby: Yeah. It’s hard for me to describe. It’s more like a feeling. It’s like, “Wow, isn't that cool? Isn't that neat?”
Toni: How do you take all of that, all of the sparks and all of the ideas and this journey that you’re on, and how do you put some of that inspiration into practice here in Berks County?
Kirby: There’s a quote from Orlando Bloom which goes something like, “Life is about balance, and we all need to do what we can to enable ourselves and enable others.” To me, part of inspiration is getting an idea and talking with other people about it, whether it’s a colleague in my engineering life or a person at the brewery coming up with that idea and collaborating on it. To me, inspiration should be shared with people when you have an idea, and it grows better and faster with many people involved.
Toni: Have you done that with the businesses that you are in, as far as that you’ve been inspired by an idea, you bring people together to collaborate, and then viola, there’s this really cool thing happening?
Kirby: Yeah. I could give an example of that. Someone approached me that was opening a hops farm up in the New Jerusalem area. Happens to be my neighbor maybe a mile or two away. He said, “Gee, we’d really like to sell some hops to a brewery. Would you guys be interested?” We said, “We’re focused on producing beer and other foods from locally grown ingredients.”
That, I would say, was a time that I got inspired and said, “Yeah, you know what? Let’s take some of these hops. It’s their first harvest. It may not be real good. It might be great. We don’t know. Let’s get that recipe together and let’s brew a beer that really shows the local heritage and the local producers that we’re trying to build in this particular area.” We had a bunch of ideas about how we should brew it and the recipe and so forth, but I guess that would be an example of that.
Toni: That is very cool. So, who in Berks County inspires you?
Kirby: In Berks County, this might be a surprising answer, but it is the farm community. You think about we eat food every single day, but we don’t think about where it came from. That probably should be a little bit scary to people if you really, really think about it. Living out in the New Jerusalem area, I live in a farm community, and the people out there, the Mennonite families are so dedicated to what they do. They work 10, 12, 14 hours a day. I’ve gotten to know a few of them.
We have a farmer behind the brewery. His name is Dalton. He comes in every day that we brew to pick up our spent grain. Doesn’t matter if it’s raining, doesn’t matter if it’s snowing. He has cows to feed, and he’s out there 10, 12 hours a day doing his thing. We talk about inspiration. We saw his dedication to farming and how he was just such a friendly local, no-nonsense guy, and we named that beer that I talked about with the local hops after him. We called it “Dalton’s Ride Home.” We load the spent grain into his pickup truck, and he rides home and feeds the cows.
Toni: What a great story!
Kirby: It’s really resonated well, and it’s been a very popular beer.
Toni: Oh, that’s awesome! So, Dalton inspires you.
Kirby: Yes, he does. Just his dedication to the farming community and his family and cows. Another person in Berks County—again, it’s that idea, that spark, that I said, “Wow, that’s really cool,” is Steph Angstadt from Valley Milkhouse. She went to Belgium to learn how to make cheeses, and now she makes cheeses here in Berks County by hand, in small batches. Another person that’s supporting local farmers with organic milk, goat milk, things like that, all coming from a local area. I’m inspired by the dedication that the local farming community has to keeping it alive here in Berks County.
Toni: Oh, what great stories. So, Kirby, here’s the last one. What do you want your legacy to be?
Kirby: My legacy…boy, that’s a tough question, but it really comes down to, as I said, I think that life’s a journey, and that people should learn from each other. I’m hoping that through my relationships and business and so forth that things that I have learned, I’m passing along to other people, and somewhere along the line someone can say, “Hey, I learned something from him one day.” That would be my legacy.
Funny this comes up. My daughter texted me this morning and she said, “Hey Dad. I just had a flashback. I had a squeaky door, and I sprayed WD-40 on the hinges of the door so that the door would swing smoothly and quietly. I had a flashback to when I was a kid and we were building pine box derby cars, and we used WD-40 on the axles of those wheels.” Just those little things like that. I would like to know that people were able to apply some of the things that I helped them with.
Toni: Well Kirby, those who listen to this Project know that I say this more often than not, but people don’t realize that you’re already living your legacy, and people are learning from you. You’ve told some great stories just within this Project. The work that you’re doing is very far-reaching. The joy of the music, of the brewery, of your day-to-day work that you’re doing, your vineyard, the way you’re looking at life, that’s joyful. That feels good, and that’s inspiring to others. Thank you for showing up for the Get Inspired! Project.
Kirby: Thank you. Let’s continue the journey.
Toni: Absolutely.
