Growing up in Placerville, CA, the son of a saw filer and the fourth generation of loggers and mill men, Jim began helping his father by the time he was tall enough to align band saw teeth as they passed by on a grinder and by age sixteen, had completed apprenticeship as a filer. Instead of moving on to work as a filer's helper Jim enrolled in Forestry at Oregon State (OSU). During college and graduate school, summer employment was found in a box factory as machine operator and at a saw mill as a laborer around mill and woods; including cat skinner recovering rails left behind by scrappers.
Following a twenty year professional career in management in the mid-westestern and eastern U.S., Jim returned to California and worked for eleven years for Michigan-California Lumber Co. and its successor Sierra Pacific Industries as a machine operator and quality control technician. Jim retired in 1997 to work on his organic farm.