Carl Joseph Vogelpohl
Food-loving former political consultant manages state attorney general’s office by day, tends crops and livestock nights and weekends
Carl Vogelpohl is chief of staff for Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge. Before that, he held a similar job for then-Congressman (now Lieutenant Governor) Tim Griffin.
In 2004, Vogelpohl founded Split Rail Consulting, an Arkansas-based firm that provides campaign strategy, management and other services for political clients. Not coincidentally, perhaps, the firm successfully managed and provided advice to Griffin’s and Rutledge’s successful campaigns.
Once he leaves his downtown Little Rock office each day, however, Vogelpohl sheds his sports coat and dons the jeans, flannel shirt and boots appropriate to his other job as a farmer.
At Split Rail Farms in western Pulaski County, he and his family raise animals for his extended family’s consumption, truck-garden crops and a wide variety of heritage breeds of livestock.
It’s also no coincidence that he named his consulting firm after the farm. “Split Rail,” he explains in his official biography, “salutes the tradition of small farm agriculture and agrarian lifestyle passed down through his family as well as recognizes the split-rail fences his maternal grandfather built as a way to earn extra income for the family.”
Vogelpohl quips that he was involved in the farm-to-table concept long before it became trendy.
“I grew up on a little bit of a family farm, and we raised a lot of our own meat and vegetables, raised our own livestock,” he says. “I grew up that way, my parents grew up that way. We came off a long tradition.
“I think the taste of the meat is better, the taste of the vegetables is better, when you grow them yourself. Maybe it’s the sweat equity that goes into it.
“I laugh at the ‘farm-to-table’ movement, because that’s how I grew up. It’s just a way of life. It probably is in a lot of Arkansas.”
COMPETITION CO-CHAIRMAN
Vogelpohl insists he’s not a foodie: “I like to eat. ‘Foodie’ might be an exaggeration. My love of farming is as much due to my love of eating as anything.”
Nevertheless, he is translating his love of eating to his role as co-chairman of this year’s Diamond Chef Arkansas competition — promotionally dubbed A Decade of Diamond Chef — Thursday at the University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College’s Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management Institute in Little Rock. It’s
“There’s two things I like in this world, that I am passionate about, and that’s education and food.”
a benefit for the UA-Pulaski Tech Foundation. Vogelpohl’s wife, Sharon Tallach Vogelpohl, is his co-chairman.
Carl Vogelpohl has a connection to the competition and to the school. “I’ve gone to the event for a few years, and have gotten to know the folks at Pulaski Tech through work that I’ve done at the congressional office,” he says.
He and his wife hosted what Vogelpohl calls an “engagement party, to get people involved,” in October. “We brought back prior [chairmen], prior winners, to get them excited about this 10th anniversary,” he adds. “It’s nice to get that kind of energy, and look at the next decade. We’ll host the actual event, and help come up with some ideas to help the foundation.”
However, the Vogelpohls weren’t involved in fundraising, most of which the foundation does, expecting $100,000 through sponsorships and ticket sales. Tickets: $150, available online at pulaskitech.edu/diamondchef, by calling (501) 812-2771 or by email at ghudson@pulaskitech.edu.
The foundation and the culinary school also create the format, which winnows down the seven participating chefs to two finalists, who get to compete against Donnie Ferneau Jr. of The 1836 Club, who as defending champion gets a bye to the final round.
Vogelpohl does get to sample the results. “There’s two things I like in this world, that I am passionate about, and that’s education and food.” This event neatly blends them, he says.
FAMILY FARM
Vogelpohl grew up in Ferndale, “way out in the country,” and went to Catholic schools in the city, including Our Lady of Good Counsel and Catholic High, from which he graduated in 1991. (He remains a firm believer in Catholic education. His two children, Carson, 8, and Jonathan, 5, are enrolled at Our Lady of the Holy Souls Catholic School. The family attends Holy Souls Catholic Church.)
The Vogelpohl family was the 2006 Pulaski County Farm Family of the Year, recognized for their sustainable agricultural practices. He bought an adjoining property and now has 350 acres, straddling the Maumelle River conservation easement.
“I grew up in 4-H, and goats were my 4-H project,” Vogelpohl says. “We have about 50 nanny goats grazing right now,” (with Anatolian Shepherd Dogs to guard them), “and hopefully this spring we’ll have two more per mama goat.”
The goats provide milk, meat and weed control, but, although he has a half-dozen hair goats, “we don’t harvest hair from goats. We had the greatest intentions of it, but I don’t have time to weed goat hair.”
He likes to attend the weekly Saturday goat auction in Beebe, the state’s largest, not just for the animals, but because “I get to meet a lot of real Arkansans.”
The Vogelpohls have focused on developing hardy, low-input stock that perform well in the area’s damp conditions. “One of the passions I have is preserving rare breeds of livestock, and one of the ways you [do that] is to provide a market for people to sell them,” Vogelpohl says. “There’s something to be said about heritage breeds of livestock — the way they grow up slower, what they eat, the flavor of the meat. How you raise things makes a difference in how they taste.”
The livestock list includes Dark Cornish poultry and Delaware chickens. “We raise 50-100 for the family every year, free-range out on the pasture, let them eat bugs in the sun, and they taste fantastic,” he says.
“We raise grass-fed beef crossed with a heritage breed called Black Galloway. I think the taste and the texture of beef that’s been raised on pasture is much better than what you get out of traditional lot-feeders. We’ve got some pasture pigs, Large Black Hogs. We have three American Blue rabbits — we raise them for meat and fur.”
Part of the farm is a traditional truck garden, where the family raises green beans, black-eyed peas, tomatoes, okra, potatoes and corn. “We
have an ongoing challenge with local wildlife that like to eat them,” Vogelpohl says with a grin.
“Right now we have a lot of kale in the ground. I ate way too much kale as a child. It was a big surprise when it became a super food. You can’t put enough vinegar sauce on kale to make it palatable in my opinion, but it’s a super food now. Who knew?
“It makes very good forage for livestock. The goats love it, the cows love it, the pigs love it.”
His parents are still the farm’s primary operators. He, his wife and kids share the responsibility, weeknights after work and on weekends. “It’s important for children to understand how food starts,” he says. “And we still value hard work.”
PRACTICING POLITICS
Vogelpohl says he got interested in politics and government in high school, and after graduating from the University of Arkansas Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences Honors Program and getting some professional private-sector background with technology, pharmaceutical, medical and medical device companies, he turned his passion into a full-time job.
Split Rail Consulting still exists, he says, though “other folks run it.” After managing Griffin’s congressional campaign in 2009-2010, he joined the congressman’s staff.
“We were friends in ’09, not too awfully long, and we were talking about working together on some private sector projects, and the next thing you know, I was running for Congress,” Griffin recalls. “I asked Carl to be my campaign manager. We won and
I made him district director, the head of operations for my district office in Arkansas. I consider him an adviser and a friend.” Their families occasionally get together for meals, “and we talk quite frequently,” Griffin adds.
Vogelpohl, says Griffin, is “solid as a rock, very much reliable, smart, trustworthy, confidence-inspiring, responsible. He’s the type that if he says he’s got it, you’re not going to worry about it. He did a really good job of capturing my priorities and making sure they were executed.”
Working in Griffin’s office brought him in contact with the staff at what was then Pulaski Technical College. Vogelpohl and Griffin recall it involved Caterpillar deciding to build a plant in North Little Rock and the college agreeing to partner on training welders.
After Griffin decided not to run for a third term in Congress, Vogelpohl rejoined his consulting firm. He got involved in Rutledge’s 2014 campaign and subsequently took the top job in her office. He says there’s no average workday. “I handle operations, policy, agenda, day-today office management. It’s a glamorous title, but it’s not a glamorous job.” The advantage of his current job, he says, is that it affects the entire state, as working for a congressman doesn’t, quite.
‘CARL’S RULES’
If you’d like a glimpse of what Vogelpohl’s management style is like, he has a list of 40 “Carl’s Rules,” including:
“We work for Arkansans, not the government.”
“Treat everyone as a VIP because they are to someone.”
“Importance is relative. Because it isn’t important to you doesn’t mean it’s not important to someone.”
“Leaders meet people where they are and show them how to get where they want to go.”
“Excellence is a journey … not a destination.” “Embrace change.”
“A vast difference exists between an open door and an open mind.”
“What you know matters more to me than who you know.”
“‘That’s not my job’ is never an acceptable attitude.”
“Some of those probably came from our working together,” Griffin says. “All effective managers have rules like that. Not everybody writes them down.”
POLITICAL PLANS
State Rep. Warwick Sabin, whose District 33 includes all of Hillcrest, Leawood, Briarwood, Capitol View/Stifft Station and parts of downtown Little Rock, says he met Vogelpohl while they were students at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
“We were political even there,” he says. “The year I was student body president, he was president of the Residents Interhall Congress, representing all the students who lived in the residence halls.
“I’ve always respected him. Carl has always been consistently measured, intelligent, straightforward, practical and easy to work with. We’re able to solve problems together, help each other and generally accomplish mutual goals together. He has a way of working well with everybody looking for ways to solve problems in a way that benefits all sides.
“I would hope that Carl would someday run for office himself.”
Vogelpohl, however, insists that, though he has enjoyed the opportunity to influence public policy, he has no such plans.
“I didn’t have ambitions to be in government service in the first place,” he says. “If I could, I’d find a way to retire as a consultant with a herd of goats. But who knows?”