The Freeport woman’s work with the Organic Consumers Association means fighting to keep Ben & Jerry and other companies honest.

Katherine Paul is the associate director of the Organic Consumers Association, a national nonprofit with the tag line “Campaigning for Health, Justice, Sustainability, Peace, and Democracy.” We called the Freeport resident up to see what she does for the group and found out about the impulse move to Maine that changed her life.

ON THE JOB: Paul publishes the weekly online newsletter for the Organic Consumers Association, writing blog posts and essays for the site. She also runs the online fundraising wing of the group and writes grant proposals. “And just overseeing communications strategy in general.” Two years ago, she picked up another media relations responsibility when Organic Consumers Association was one of the founding partners of Regeneration International, a group advocating for regenerative agriculture worldwide. The premise behind regenerative agriculture is that soil rich in organic material will trap more carbon in the earth and thereby help us combat climate change. (Want to know more? Source wrote about this on Oct. 29.)

NEWSIE: How did Paul end up in the business of advocating for organics in and out of the earth? As a young mother in Ohio, Paul stayed home with her children, then prepared to re-enter the workforce in the field she’d studied, as a French teacher. But as she was getting her teaching certificate updated she realized she wanted to be a writer instead. “It was not unheard of then to get a job at a newspaper if you didn’t have a degree in journalism, if you could actually write and think.” She found a job at a small-town paper called the Record Courier. “I wouldn’t have walked into the Cleveland Plain Dealer and gotten a job.” She liked writing features very much. The salary not so much; she was raising children on her own. From there, she went to the business-oriented publisher Crain Communications, writing for trade publications in Ohio. “It is amazing what interesting things you learn about that you never thought about when you are forced to delve into an industry.”

ALL THE PRETTY HORSES: As her children were leaving the nest, about 15 years ago, Paul started to get the urge to move away, along with the realization that she could. “I was at the time still working in the corporate world as a freelance writer and marketing communications person, and it honestly didn’t matter where I did it from.” She kept horses at the time, “and wanted a place to ride them near the ocean.” She took a quick trip to Maine with her daughter and liked what she saw. She bought a farmhouse in Alfred on a dirt road and moved horse and home. “My move to Maine was pretty impulsive I guess.”