We cover farm burnout, food labels, chicken feed and Michigan’s food freedom bill. Ashley shares how pasture and animal care shape food quality, and how Nourish Food Club connects farmers with families.

Thanks for listening.

What we cover:

• Farm burnout and better systems

• Food labels and online misinformation

• Pasture-raised chickens and their feed

• Michigan’s food freedom bill and raw milk

• Pasture, food quality and animal care

• Farmer cooperation and direct sales

Timestamps:

00:00 – Ashley returns

06:26 – Farm burnout and better systems

23:43 – Food labels and greenwashing

26:28 – Farming myths and chicken feed

41:16 – Michigan’s food freedom bill

55:51 – Reconnecting with food and farmers

01:00:04 – Pasture, phytonutrients and flavour

01:05:19 – Farmer cooperation and animal care

01:10:10 – Making farm-fresh food convenient

01:15:22 – Customer stories and food experiences

Links & resources mentioned:

Nourish Food Club

Angel Acres Egg Club

Strong Sistas

Gunthorp Farms

Red Acre Center

Dr. Stephan van Vliet’s nutrient-density research

Episode transcript

Edited for readability: spelling, punctuation and false starts have been cleaned up while preserving the speakers’ meaning and views.

Ryan

And today, alongside me, I have a returning great guest, Ashley from Angel Acres. Thank you for joining.

Ashley

Hey Ryan, it’s always a pleasure to chat with people who really get the long-term vision and the goal of the regenerative agriculture movement. It’s refreshing and really amazing to listen to the conversations you have with farmers, because so many of us out here are fighting such a hard fight. Hearing more of the stories can wake people up to the realities of what’s happening.

The reality of the modern food system can seem daunting. But the more we talk about it, the more ideas we can spark and the more connections we can make, eventually snowballing in the right direction. The food system is not in a good place, as everyone can see. But what do we expect? Given the reality of the last 100 years, of course we’ve arrived where we are today. So the question is: How do we move forward? Embracing and supporting small farmers is, in my opinion, the only path forward. Otherwise, we literally won’t have American agriculture. I’m grateful you’re allowing people to have these conversations.

Ryan

Thank you. That means a lot, especially because this is my ‘baby’. This is what I truly love the most. It’s been probably two or three months since we last recorded. A great way to start this conversation is to ask: how have the last couple of months been for you? We are in some crazy times. Every day I log on to Twitter or Google, especially with agriculture, there’s something crazy and new happening. How have things been for you?

Ashley

There’s always a lesson to learn at the farm. My farm, Angel Acres, is the original small regenerative farm of Nourish Food Club. I run a farm cooperative where my farm and a group of other small farmers work together, with the same shared Nourish Food Club standards, to produce a wide variety of food. We’re trying to create an alternative food system: what I wish existed.

It’s a struggle and a lesson every day. The farm has had a rough few years. This year has been better, because weather always changes things. I finally have help at the farm, which is amazing. I don’t think people realise how much labour, manpower and time it takes. When you look at the profit-and-loss statements of small farms, they never pay themselves for their time. That’s a sad reality. I finally have some help on the farm and feel really solid about that. I’m making decisions for next year. It’s a lot of work—I work seven days a week.

But I feel fulfilled and feel this is the path I should be on. One highlight this year is seeing great pasture diversity. My farm was a row-crop field for corn and soy, with very low soil organic matter, little soil diversity and a lot of compaction. In my first year, basically only weeds came up.

Then we tried more of a Gabe Brown and Will Harris approach to regenerating the land: seeding and gentle tillage to work the seeds into the ground. Joel Salatin’s approach is more about letting animals do it. I think both work; it depends on your ground. This year we’ve seen a return on those efforts from the last few years. The pasture has been much better, which is exciting. Elsewhere on the farm, I’m experimenting with a different pasture-seed mix. There’s always something to learn and no rule book. I think that’s one reason small regenerative farmers are disappearing. People go to school expecting instructions: ‘Here’s exactly how you do it. Copy and paste.’

There’s no rule book for farming, and it’s very different from farm to farm. You have to learn and adapt to your environment and what Mother Nature teaches you each season. It’s a challenge for a type A perfectionist like me, but I think it’s been good for me. The struggle is always real. When you ask a farmer, ‘How’s it going?’ just know they’re always struggling a little bit. But we do it because it connects us to the earth.

It’s what fulfils us. I’m grateful and humbled to produce food for people. It’s still wild that the work on my farm literally nourishes families. That’s so cool. What I enjoy most is finally doing something that lets me interact with nature. For most of my life, I just observed or ignored nature. Now I interact with it, and there’s something so human about that. We have a garden, laying hens, pigs and cows. It’s time-consuming and long-term, rather than quick dopamine hits. You plant a seed and wait weeks for it to come up.

Long story short, it’s been a long summer. I’m not going to lie: I’m a little excited for some winter rest. But overall, there have been great things.

Ryan

Winter rest is what I was going to ask about, on the topic of burnout. You mentioned working seven days a week. Above all else, that’s another thing I try to get across to consumers who view agriculture through social media, Yellowstone, television and other things. Wanting land, wanting to manage it yourself and grow food is a great thing. That’s what I want people to want. But I also want them to have a realistic view of it all, because burnout can happen so easily. People talk about burnout in their jobs, working 40 hours a week rather than seven days a week. But in agriculture, it’s very easy to burn out. It’s also long-term. If you’re a farmer, you’re most likely expecting to do it for the rest of your life and eventually pass it down. How do you approach that? You finally have some help, but being on your own must be quite challenging.

Ashley

There have been moments when I’ve been about to throw in the towel. But the more I learn about business and entrepreneurship, the more I realise you’ll always work hard. The best way to stay in it long-term is to develop systems. That’s what I’m trying to fine-tune.

The systems aren’t written out for you. You have to develop and fine-tune what works for you. By systems, I mean standard operating procedures, checklists and making sure you have enough hired help. The biggest problem is that a lot of small farms can’t afford that help. I can barely afford it. But if it gives me back time, that matters, because I’m a creative at heart. I like to dream about products, food-system standards, what I want to write about on Substack and what content I want to create. To do that, you need space and peace. With farming, you’re always doing something. My goal for 2027 is to fine-tune systems across Nourish and Angel Acres Farm. That isn’t about changing the products or the outcome. It’s about asking: can we be smarter with how we go about the day-to-day work? Can we improve the systems so the output stays the same, but I don’t burn myself out? I don’t even want to know how many hours per week I work.

I can improve there, but first I had to learn what worked and what didn’t. Now I know what works and what’s possible with our collective food club, our farm partners and at the farm. It took three to four years to get there. Now the question is: how can we do it more systematically? I’m excited about that because I think it will help make it sustainable long-term.

Ryan

On the topic of peace, you mentioned how important peace of mind is for us as humans, and as farmers. What gives you peace? Being out on the land after a hard day’s work? Sunrise as the animals wake up? Something else?

Ashley

Sunrise and sunset are the moments when everything feels worth it. You can take it in and soak it up, and it doesn’t last long. That’s what makes it beautiful: you have to experience it in the moment. If you miss it, it comes back tomorrow. Those little moments of joy and peace let you be in nature and understand what nature is bringing to the farm, and what you’re bringing back to it. For me, it’s the sunrises and sunsets. I don’t catch them every day. Last night I was working late on the computer and missed the sunset. That happens; that’s the reality of those days. But cherishing the moments when you can soak it in really helps reset things. Say you’ve had a bad day: four days of rain, everything is muddy, the tractor’s stuck and you can’t move the pigs. Everything breaks. Those days happen when you work with nature. Thankfully, I have a team to help me through. Sunrise and sunset make it worth it.

Ryan

Or if you’re moving pigs and discover a wasp nest. Hornets—that’s what it was.

Ashley

Oh my gosh, hornets!

We have pasture-raised pigs and little huts. Pigs love to snuggle together rather than sleep alone. Even with 10 huts, they’ll pile into one. It’s the cutest thing.

When we move the pigs, we move the huts, which are light enough to flip over. The other weekend, I flipped a hut onto a ground hornet’s nest—yellow jackets, ground hornets, I’m not sure. They came after me before the hut touched the ground and chased me for about five minutes. I got somewhere around seven to nine stings. Ryan, I was almost paralysed for two days.

Ryan

Yeah, those aren’t good at all.

Ashley

The back pain—something in the venom seemed to affect my nerves. I couldn’t move normally for a few days. Then it was totally fine; it cleared out. But that corner of the farm became a little scary.

I wore a beekeeper suit to move everything and wasn’t stung. So far, so good. I still don’t understand the purpose of hornets. I think every insect and animal has a purpose. Remove one, and you’ll have a deficiency or issue somewhere else. I’m still trying to figure out the hornets.

Ryan

I read an interesting comment about that. I have to find it, because I think about the same thing with ticks, mosquitoes and no-see-ums. I live in the South now, and no-see-ums are worse than mosquitoes. They’re tiny dots and their bites itch much more.

Ashley

I think we call those gnats. You guys call them no-see-ums? Okay.

Ryan

I think these might be different from those.

But they actually might be the same—now that you’ve said that, I don’t know.

Ashley

Yeah, they all have a purpose. One of the biggest problems with conventional agriculture is that, over the last 100 years, we’ve disconnected from nature. We’ve had this superiority—excuse me for saying it—this white-man supremacist thought: ‘I know better than Mother Nature and can outsmart her with chemicals.’

We see something annoying and kill it. Now we’re seeing the consequences. Whatever path you take to decimate something, Mother Nature will adapt and grow back stronger. That’s the difference between degenerative and regenerative agriculture: with degenerative agriculture, you try to outsmart nature with chemicals.

I’m sorry, but biology always wins. We don’t know enough about nature to think we can outsmart it with chemicals. Today we have superweeds developing resistance to the pesticides we use. Of course, this is great news for Big Ag: now they can keep developing more and more products.

It’s a continuous product line: one stops working, then they make another, and another. They love it. But corn and soybean farmers are realising they can’t make money doing this. Plenty of farmers around me decided not to plant this year and took crop insurance instead, because it was more profitable than planting an acre of corn.

We’re at a pivotal point. People are waking up to the fact that what we’ve done for 100 years no longer works. Once you understand degenerative agriculture and the importance of soil health, you can’t keep going down that path.

I don’t know if support is going to come from the top down. People in government understand that there are a lot of issues, and there are really great people working there. But the reality is that a lot of people are bought out. Big Ag and big chemical companies spend millions, sometimes billions, in lobbying dollars.

They pay for decisions on bills so the status quo isn’t touched: ‘Let our company keep doing what it does and destroying the environment, because we’re making money.’ I’m not hopeful about top-down changes, meaning government passing transformative laws that change the food system. Given the last 100 years, I think it will be more bottom-up: consumer demand and where people spend their money will add up. If we keep supporting the conventional food system, we allow it to continue.

They have the money to keep going. If we spend less there, they have less money to continue. Buying directly from farmers or co-ops makes a difference. In conventional grocery sales, the farmer gets a small percentage, and Big Ag has a hand in it. Of course, government doesn’t want to make direct sales easy for small farms, because it doesn’t get a percentage.

Ryan

It takes away control, too. Everything is so heavily centralised, which makes it easier for them. This could be a good segue into your efforts to start a bill in Michigan and the massive red tape around that.

Ashley

Consumers don’t realise how much red tape farmers face. It isn’t just cost. Everyone knows about filing with government, getting permits and licences, and so on.

Government gets a little cash from each one. You sign things without necessarily understanding the fine print. That happens in everyday life and to farmers. Many of these licences and warehouse registrations didn’t exist 50 years ago.

They’ve been added in the name of food safety, but, as you said, I think it’s control. Farmers are already busy. Now they have paperwork to fill in, submissions to make and fees to pay. It’s time-consuming and costly, and it prevents things that would make it easier for them to sell directly to consumers. There is a lot of government red tape that makes it very hard to be a small farmer. That’s a reality, but it’s what the powers that be—the big guys, the Big Ag groups—want. If it’s harder for small farmers, more farmers will keep selling to the conventional market. They’ll adopt the mindset of ‘go big or go home’, or keep buying these chemicals. At the end of the day, farmers have to sell what they make. If they don’t sell it, they don’t make money. If they don’t make money, they have to close their doors. We’ve lost over 67% of farmers since around 1950. Those are insane numbers. As a listener, think about that: 67% of farmers since 1950. That’s ridiculous.

It’s largely because of the conventional food system shaped by Big Ag companies. It didn’t used to be this way. My biggest wake-up moment was asking why we have to operate in this model, when it clearly isn’t working. Americans’ average lifespan is declining, and chronic disease rates are rising.

Most people are overweight or obese, and diabetes keeps rising. There are so many issues with feeding the nation. But that allows Big Ag to maintain control and make money. Then there’s the Big Ag–Big Pharma connection: feed us bad food and make us reliant on pharmaceuticals.

It’s a sad reality. The refreshing part is that, as a country, we know how to produce food outside that model—we did it for hundreds of years. Let’s go back to a more regional, cooperative approach.

Ryan

And there are a lot of people today doing it. Yeah.

Ashley

A regional, cooperative style has farmers working together to produce a variety of food. Once I learned what an old-fashioned farm cooperative was, I thought, ‘I want to make one. Let’s do it. Let’s go back in time and make one.’ That’s what Nourish Food Club is. My farm isn’t producing everything. There wouldn’t be enough hours in the day; I wouldn’t sleep. I’d work myself to death. So we need to work collaboratively rather than rely on this big behemoth system.

Farmers are so disconnected from what consumers want because they’re bought into selling to the conventional system. That was a long tangent, but it’s refreshing and grounding to recognise that it doesn’t have to be this way. It wasn’t this way before. We can operate outside the big, ‘go big or go home’ conventional model. But consumers have to participate with us.

Ryan

As time has gone on with Nourish and Angel Acres, do you feel more consumers are walking with you?

Ashley

I think so. An important next step that some consumers are starting to see—but we need to talk about more—is that most labels at the grocery store are complete BS. There’s so much greenwashing and fancy label marketing. People see a nice-looking label saying ‘grass-fed’ or ‘pasture-raised’ at the grocery store, but it’s often not that different from the conventional model. There’s so much greenwashing, yet they charge more than the conventional product. That’s my concern: people think it’s a better product. But is it really? I don’t think so. The more steps you can remove between farmer and consumer, the more transparency, trust and higher-quality food someone will get. To get farmers back onto the land, we need to reverse the trend. We’ve lost 67%; we need that number of farmers to rise. We need less government red tape. I don’t think the government should try to fix it.

I think the government needs to get out of the way for some people. Food-safety regulation for the conventional system, where thousands of cows are in a single barn producing dairy—yes, regulate and monitor that. The conventional food system has a purpose for mass production, for people who want those foods, for airports and so on. Let that be. But the big thing is reducing red tape—a ‘get out of the way’ model. We need both more consumer support and less government red tape, so direct farmer-to-consumer relationships can happen.

Ryan

When you interact with consumers in person, by email or on social media, what are those conversations like? More people are waking up, but there’s also so much misinformation.

Do consumers ask questions or make assumptions about your practices because of what they see online? Seeing that stuff infuriates me.

Ashley

We’re in a dangerous place in alternative health. Influencers speak confidently about food quality, but as a farmer, it’s painfully obvious some have no farming experience. That misinformation hurts small farmers. If a health influencer is listening, please be careful what you say.

What if you’re hurting a small farmer by sharing information you don’t know enough about? I see it more with food-rating apps. Is it a good idea to have food rated by someone with no farming experience? I’ve gone through their ratings, and it’s obvious they’ve never stepped on a farm.

As a consumer, be careful who you listen to in both mainstream and alternative health. Listen to farmers with experience. I cringe at what I said five years ago, before farming. I was disconnected and thought I understood. But farming and going through a full food-production cycle showed me what goes into it from start to finish. I’m not talking just about raising a chick into a finished chicken. Where do you get the chick? Where is the chicken processed? How is it packaged? There are so many steps. As a consumer, be careful about where you get information. Are you just reading headlines? Does that person have farming experience? The specific post Ryan is talking about is from Seed Oil Scout. The guy who started Seed Oil Scout is a great guy; I’ve had him on my podcast, and I think he’s doing a lot of great things. But that post was misinformation. It showed that a conventional chicken ate feed, while a pasture-raised chicken ate only grass and worms. That’s false and inhumane. The chicken wouldn’t get enough calories or protein—there aren’t enough worms. Unless you’re raising it in a worm-farm container, you have to provide feed.

If you didn’t give it feed, it would take about a year to finish and be very stringy and tough. I don’t even know if it would survive. That misinformation hurts small farmers. At Nourish, we get emails asking, ‘Are your chickens 100% grass-fed?’ Then when people hear that we feed grain, they say, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not interested. I have to have grain-free chicken.’ I love you guys, but that doesn’t exist.

I love how passionate people are about regenerative agriculture and supporting small farms. But I ask health influencers to be careful with their wording. What if something untrue hurts farmers? I’m concerned about AI, too. Image and video generation are getting so good. I can still tell the difference.

I work with Amish people every day of the week. They don’t record themselves. If you’re following an Amish-person account, it’s an AI-generated video account. They aren’t recording themselves and posting it on the internet. I’m worried about how much this has progressed in the last year. Where will we be a year from now? I’m leaning towards more messy social media. I’m tempted to use whiteboards or hand-drawn graphics again. I’m interested in livestreams. I’m getting turned off by AI slop: I scroll Instagram and see the same story I just read above it.

It’s the same story and headline, with different AI-generated colours and text. I’m tired of it. The more we learn from real humans and farmers, the better we’ll be—not only about farming. Farmers are well-rounded people. I’m not saying I’m well-rounded; I still have plenty to learn.

A mutual friend of Ryan and me is Greg Gunthorp. He’s one of my favourite humans, and I’ve learned so much from him.

Ryan

He’s awesome.

Ashley

My phone calls with him are always fun and entertaining. As a farmer, you have to be skilled at everything and prepared for anything, every day. That’s the best way to describe a farmer. I hope people can support small regenerative farmers however possible. If you can’t afford to support them financially, share their social media content. Pin it, post it, send it to friends or put it on your story. It helps. Farmers are spending precious time they don’t have generating content to share their message. I’m leaning towards more real content: sloppy, live, messy. Hopefully I can do more in-person things at my farm next year. I want to host one event at the farm and start there. I hope more things like that pop up.

Ryan

One hundred percent. We’re in another Wild West of the internet. The early 2000s were the Wild West—YouTube was vastly different from now. But with AI where it is today, it’s like Wild West 2.0.

There are a lot of passionate people, but I think some are passionate about being the one who ‘saves agriculture’, while taking advantage of the movement financially. I don’t think they’re actually passionate about farmers or agriculture, or they wouldn’t do these things.

There are other names I want to mention. They’ve helped by talking about agriculture, but there are posts they’ve made that they would never have submitted if they really gave a damn about agriculture and farmers.

It can be disheartening. I’m trying to bridge the gap, but I see people taking advantage, hurting farmers and consumers—hurting everyone. They’re essentially like the big corporations.

They criticise Big Ag, but act like Big Ag, using the same models to take advantage of consumers and farmers while they rake in money, get clout and become more famous on social media.

Ashley

All in the name of virality. Virality, y’all.

I’m at a point where I ask, ‘Why am I on social media?’ That’s an important question to reflect on, because it impacts my nervous system. I have a system: I work with a team that uploads posts and helps with editing. They take care of the actual posting. I don’t think people realise how much work posting is when they’re scrolling. You have to post to Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook—all the channels. It’s time-consuming and stressful. I’ve recognised that it takes too much time, and affects my creative space. Having someone else post gives me separation from the craziness. I still go on social media, but with misinformation on all sides, I ask what the purpose is. What value am I adding? I keep coming back to sharing the journey and the truth. There isn’t a long-term plan. It’s sharing as we build, along with helpful recipe videos and tips. At the end of the day, I don’t know where social media is going because of AI. It may go away in a year. It may just be bots versus bots—what’s the purpose? It’s a difficult time to be a creator. You see misinformation, but social media is where consumers get information. If we’re absent, are we giving up and letting them hear it unchallenged? I think, Ryan, please make more reaction videos calling out the BS. We need people doing that.

Ryan

Loaded, loaded.

Ashley

I should start sending you posts: ‘Ryan, react to this one. Call out the misinformation.’ It’s needed.

Ryan

I probably should start doing that.

Ashley

Some of it really is hurting farmers. The biggest thing to take home from building the farm and food club is that there’s a reason the conventional food system developed: farming with nature is hard. I planted my garden, nourished it, cherished it and loved it. Then a hailstorm ruined the whole thing.

All my squash plants died. I had to replant everything. In my first year farming here, a 94-mile-per-hour wind gust took our chicken coop five acres away, completely damaged it and left 200 chickens homeless. Working in nature is challenging. Farming is hard. Every season and every year, something different happens. It’s never perfect.

There are good and great days, but also horrific, tragic and hard days. The conventional system separates animals from nature: concrete slabs, cages and buildings. That’s easier and more predictable. It’s a factory: inputs, outputs, push a button, output.

Farming is hard. That’s the biggest lesson. Conventional production makes sense in that it’s easier, but at what cost? Soil, small farms, the environment, more toxins and more veterinary drugs contributing to antibiotic resistance. Nobody’s talking about it. I’ll make content about drug use in animal agriculture. There are so many consequences we’re leaving for the next generation. You and I are part of a generation raising flags and saying this isn’t what we want. We don’t want pesticides in our food.

We don’t want bland, tasteless food or high amounts of omega-6 polyunsaturated fats—PUFAs—in all our food. We have work to do to reverse that, but I don’t think it will come from the top down. From trying to get bills passed and working with legislators, I think we need to put more time into removing red tape. I don’t know if there will be some massive federal, top-down nationwide change that suddenly makes it easier. It will have to be state by state: remove the red tape and get out of our way. Let us do what consumers and farmers want. The legislation is out of date and needs updating. Many of these bills were passed in the 1990s and early 2000s. It’s 2026—we need a refresh, because a lot has changed.

I look at these food laws and think, ‘None of this makes sense.’ It’s like Mr. Potato Head: there have been all these changes over the last 50 years. It makes sense for the big guys, but not the small guys. Unfortunately, legislators aren’t going to make the changes on their own. We have to work towards that. It’s painfully slow, time-consuming and disheartening. But what other option do we have?

Ryan

I completely agree. I realised I didn’t ask more about the new bill.

I remember videos of you in offices with people in Michigan, talking about raw milk. Before recording, you said the bill was about more than raw milk. Could you explain what trying to start a bill has been like?

Ashley

I’ve learned more about government in the last year and a half or two years working on this bill than I ever did in school.

I don’t remember what I learned about government at school. This has been eye-opening.

Ryan

Not much.

Ashley

There’s the House of Representatives and the Senate. A bill goes through the House and Senate, then to the governor’s desk. The governor signs it, and it becomes law.

It’s a painful process even to get it into the House. We worked with Representative Matt Maddock, a Michigan House representative, and presented a bill. I worked with my dad, who is a lawyer and can read the mumbo jumbo. It’s really hard to read. It says, ‘Refer to this section.’ You go there, and it says, ‘Refer to this section.’ Then you go there, and it refers you somewhere else.

It’s purposefully so hard to read.

We created a bill, but you can’t just show up on the House floor and ask them to vote. You have to get it accepted into a committee, which means getting to know legislators. I hosted a raw-milk-and-cookies event.

I visited offices and asked their thoughts on raw milk and food freedom: ‘Should government have its hand in everything between farmers and consumers?’ We needed co-sponsors—representatives who like the idea and sign on to support it when it reaches the House floor.

We needed enough co-sponsors for a committee to look at it and vote on whether it should go to the House floor. We got 32, which is awesome. Then you choose a committee. There are lots of committees, and it’s a political game: who heads it, and will they want the bill?

Will they block it? We were strategic about which committee to choose, then presented to it. Those are probably the videos you saw. Committees have Democrats and Republicans who can ask questions in real time. I’m not making a party-political statement. I don’t stand with Republicans or Democrats. I stand for food freedom and real food: get out of the way and let farmers produce it. We’ve had opposition from Democrats, and I’ll get to opposition from Republicans, too. We have to talk to everyone because this is bipartisan. For Democrats, we’re standing up for small farmers and producers against Big Ag and corporations. For Republicans, it’s food freedom and informed consent. We can access raw oysters, sushi, raw-egg cookie dough, vape pens, marijuana and alcohol, knowing the risks. We can do those things because we’re free to understand the risks and decide the benefits outweigh them. We don’t have that in the food system. It’s a bipartisan issue. Initially we faced opposition from Democrats. They kept bringing up CDC data from 2013, saying that 150 people got sick from raw milk in California. I responded that more people got sick from cucumbers that same year. Safety comes up every time. At committee meetings, they ask questions, we present counter-evidence and then they vote: yes, let the bill move forward, or no, shut it down. People can send letters supporting or opposing it. You can guess who opposed it: Farm Bureau, Michigan Milk Association, Dairy Producers of America, Milk Producers of America and Mom’s Milk Association.

All those came in, alongside about 350 consumer cards supporting it. We passed the first committee with flying colours.

Ryan

How long ago was that?

Ashley

That was early 2025. Rather than going to the House floor, some Big Ag lobbyist did some magic behind the scenes and said we had to go to another committee. So we had to do it all again.

It went to another committee and we did the same thing. At that point, my friend Chelsie from The Grazing Life joined us. You need to talk to her—you’d love that conversation. We recruited her into our food-freedom lobbying team, which gets paid zero dollars. She started helping us present at the next committee hearing. It was a new committee, but the same style of process.

There were Democrats and Republicans. By then, one of the Democrats was a huge supporter because he’s a farmer. We got his signature as a co-sponsor and became a bipartisan bill, which is huge.

Ryan

Hm. That is huge. Especially in today’s society.

Ashley

Once you have both sides, people take you more seriously. We passed that committee hearing early this year, in 2026.

Now it’s in limbo, waiting for a vote on the House floor. The committees said it was worth voting on. But a single Republican stands in the way of putting it on the floor. That Republican is paid by Farm Bureau, milk associations, Michigan Milk Association and other Big Ag companies. So it isn’t just one side causing problems.

It’s a bipartisan matter. It makes sense. We’re not doing something extreme like bringing crack cocaine across the Mexican border, but that’s what it feels like. It threatens big dairy producers, but we’re not getting rid of their system. We’re providing an alternative path.

It’s frustrating. We’ve had a long few months of nothing, because legislators go on summer break and don’t meet for a while. This is an election year. On Tuesday this week, my dad, Chelsie, Representative Maddock’s office and I had Zoom meetings with a few other legislators to get more co-sponsors. Three more people joined us.

They were completely supportive and said they’d vote for it. We now have over 40 bipartisan co-sponsors, but it still isn’t being released to the House floor. It’s been a year and a half without even reaching that vote. I think the House would pass it. Then it goes to the Senate, and we do it all again. My legislator friends say it won’t pass in the current Senate.

We may have to start over and tweak it. Is there an end in sight? I don’t know. I have amazing friends in Utah, Sara and Symbria Patterson. I’ll speak at their food-freedom conference, January 14–16, at Red Acre Farm. They’ve changed over 40 bills or laws in Utah, creating so much food freedom. They encourage and empower me, and tell me it will take a long time. If we get to a House vote, it’s time to meet senators from both parties and ask their objections. At first I was nervous, with a script to read and only 15 minutes with them. Now it’s: let’s get to the point. You have their attention for five minutes, so you have to ask right away, ‘What is your issue here?’ Let’s work through the misinformation. It goes back to health information on social media. There’s misinformation there, too. A lot of legislators are really good people.

But what if their decisions are based on misinformation from the CDC, FDA or whoever they get news from? More conversations and updated information can move things forward. I’m hopeful, especially with consumer support. If we have consumers call in and say, ‘This is what I want. As my representative, I want you to say yes to this,’ that helps. We’ll need more of that over time. Unfortunately, it depends on who’s in power. What if you get a bill to a certain point and a new governor vetoes it? They dealt with that in, I think, New Hampshire.

They did all this work to get an on-farm slaughter bill to the governor’s desk, and the governor didn’t sign it. That kills the bill right there. I’ve talked a lot, but it is a long process.

Nobody’s telling us exactly what to do. I don’t know what I’m doing, but we’re doing it. We’ll learn a lot by the end, and hopefully more people can do it regionally, state by state, and remove more red tape so farming becomes easier and more profitable.

Ryan

I’m glad you went into detail. When friends ask, ‘How’s The Regenaissance going?’ my answer is usually that I’ve peeled back another layer of the onion. Agriculture feels like an infinite list of onions to peel back.

Whenever I search Google for farming news or raw-milk news, I expect another crazy, insane thing to be going on. What you said about legislators is interesting, too: what information are they being fed?

With raw milk, critics always bring up infants dying in the 1800s. It’s technically true that infant mortality rose in cities in connection with raw milk. But I never see those critics provide context. They don’t explain the conditions the cows were kept in, what they were fed, or the lack of electricity, sanitation and refrigeration during transport. They say infants drank raw milk and died, so we shouldn’t drink raw milk now. Even after learning about it and working on a farm, I was nervous the first time I drank raw milk because of the ideas I’d grown up with. That mental model is hard to break. Conversations, especially in person, can help. Visiting a farm and trying the milk makes you question the claims and propaganda.

I think the root of our problems is disconnection from food, because when we look at this conversation, many of the problems involve farmers not being in the room. People aren’t listening to a farmer with experience. They’re listening to someone who cares about health but has never grown food, worked on a farm or spoken with farmers. The same problems keep happening in agriculture: farmers are left out, or their microphones are blatantly muted.

Ashley

Farmers need to be back at the table in every room. You’re right. Five hundred years ago, farming was part of everyone’s life; everyone had to participate in food production. Over time, it became more inconvenient.

Not having to farm is seen as progress. It’s amazing that people can use their time and creativity for other things and advance technology. But we have to accept that it also disconnected us from nature, food traditions and food culture, from farming and soil health. There are real consequences. I’m grateful I was heading down that path, came back to farming and now have experience of being nourished by food produced in a certain way.

It’s hard to explain unless you’ve been part of it. Comparing factory-farmed food with small regenerative farms is a joke. There are so many compounds, along with blood, sweat, tears, love, taste, flavour and character, in food from a small farm, which we’ve lost in factory-farmed and ultra-processed food. French chefs have a word for it: terroir, the taste of place. Other countries won’t eat American meat because they find it bland, fatty and bad-tasting. America has become a factory farm.

I wrote about this in the Nourish newsletter that came out today. I write a newsletter every Thursday for Nourish Food Club. The title was ‘The Food System Has Become Sysco’d.’ We heard a story the other month about most American restaurants buying through a massive distributor called Sysco. Sysco supplies something like sixty-something percent of restaurants with food.

It’s the same bland food. Restaurants coat it in oils and spices. It isn’t just restaurants; the whole food system has become inputs and outputs. Everything looks perfect and identical: the red pepper, the ribeye, the eggs’ shape and colour.

That’s industrially produced food. We’ve come to expect perfection and lost touch with nourishing food. People go to Italy or France and say the food is amazing, that they could eat bread again or taste the difference in tomatoes. That’s because it’s small-farm production with real soil. That doesn’t happen in America’s conventional system. It’s a bizarre way to produce food. As consumers taste the difference, they’ll realise these are different production models.

The taste comes from phytonutrients, which give plants their bright colours. Phytonutrients have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer health benefits. Dr. Stephan van Vliet wrote a review showing animals on regenerative farms eating a wide range of phytonutrients on diverse pastures and passing them into meat, milk, cheese and eggs. That’s what provides health benefits and better taste. Mainstream health people say there’s no difference between grain-fed and grass-fed meat. Maybe if you look at outdated USDA data from 1995 comparing B vitamins, but what about phytonutrients? There’s a huge difference: none detectable in grain-fed meat, and significant quantities in grass-fed meat.

There are health implications. That’s why I’m such a fan of Dr. Stephan van Vliet’s lab work. I don’t remember whether he’s at Duke now or has moved to another university. His lab is trying to understand the benefits of more phytonutrients in the diet: metabolic benefits, blood-sugar benefits, anti-inflammatory effects. A lot of the data is showing yes.

We’ll see differences in fatty-acid composition, which Nourish has shown with our eggs, chicken and pork, and in phytonutrient content. Phytonutrients give unique character and flavour. It isn’t bland. One pasture-raised pork chop won’t look like another, because animals express their instincts and move different amounts.

We have to normalise what real food is.

Ryan

Even with grass-fed and grass-finished meat, taste varies enormously. Ranches may undernourish cows while trying to stay fully grass-fed, or other variables may make the meat taste terrible. The best beef I’ve had was grass-fed and finished. The worst beef I’ve had, which tasted like shoe leather, was also grass-fed and finished. I’d have been upset if I’d bought a whole cow. I worry about consumers buying half a grass-fed cow, finding it tastes terrible and losing faith in the whole idea.

This goes back to nuance and why we think in black and white.

We always compare America and Europe, but they’re different. America is gargantuan. I think the average distance food travels to your plate is about 1,500 miles. That affects taste, too. Sometimes the apples you buy in summer were picked the previous fall. Of course the taste is gone. Sometimes berries mould immediately or have no taste. I’ve stopped buying berries at grocery stores because of that. So often I’ve bought them and there’s no taste. I think, ‘What am I even eating?’

Ashley

A lot of that stuff I freeze immediately.

Ryan

Good call.

Ashley

This year was a big grass-fed-and-finished experiment with Nourish. I’m excited for next year because we learned so much. We tried diverse pasture species suited to southwest Michigan and northwest Indiana, where our farm partners are. We seeded a mix and moved cows two or three times daily. The beef was incredible. Watching them grow and seeing what they did to the soil was fun. We did a lot of soil testing. ‘Grass-fed’ isn’t always the same thing. We import enormous amounts of grass-fed beef from Uruguay and Argentina. You buy Aldi 100% grass-fed meat, but it’s coming from another country. Maybe those cows are eating on golf-course-style grass farms. If they stay in one open field, that’s different from a diverse, regenerative pasture. I’ve seen and tasted that difference in real life. It’s fun to be part of.

Farmers who are excited about those things need support. That will yield better flavour and more nutrients, and rebuild soil faster. It’s been fun to be part of.

Ryan

I’m curious: in Michigan, how often do you talk with other farmers and ranchers, especially younger people? You mentioned Greg Gunthorp. As you said, a hundred or five hundred years ago, farmers worked together.

Ashley

We have regular meetings with farmers, including a lot of Amish farmers. Most weren’t farmers before. Our support team is me, Nate, Robert, Martin and Richard. We have a big Nourish Food Club standard-operating-procedures booklet. Those rules guide new farmers who don’t know exactly what they’re doing yet. We have a support team that visits each week, and another team that asks what’s going well and what isn’t. I have experience now, but we’re still building this as we go. Farmers tell us where they want more support and where they haven’t felt supported.

It’s a community, one of my favourite things about Nourish. Yesterday I spent about six hours with farmers, discussing what worked and didn’t this year. We have a breakfast coming up with our laying-hen partners. Bringing farmers together has been rewarding, and it’s missing from agriculture, where everyone is isolated.

A farmer with 100 acres of corn grows it, takes it to the conventional mill, gets a cheque and is done until spring. They don’t need to talk to another farmer. It wasn’t always like that. Reconnecting people, learning from them and seeing improvements on their farms is fun.

I’m grateful and humbled to work alongside farmers doing this for the right reasons. It’s a management-first mindset. Conventional thinking asks what drug, supplement or feed to add to fix an animal. Management-first thinking asks: What are an animal’s fundamental needs? Enough calories, a dry place to rest, sunlight, contact with the earth and space to express natural instincts. Let’s take care of those needs. Is there enough drinking space? Do some chickens feel pressured because there isn’t enough room to drink? Is there enough space at the feeders?

If they get bullied, run away from the coop and don’t eat, they won’t lay. Their immune system suffers because they’re not getting enough calories, and they get sick. A management-first mindset means meeting the animals’ fundamental needs. That’s working with nature—the mindset we need to return to. Instead of asking what drug we can add to fix something, ask what need we aren’t meeting for the animals or plants.

What is this squash or tomato plant missing from nature, rather than from a synthetic input? Correcting those small management decisions, which add up over time, is how we raise food without drugs or pesticides. Dialling in that management-focused mindset has been our focus for the last few years. It’s the main thing with regenerative agriculture. Not everyone can have that mindset or should be a regenerative farmer, because working with nature takes a different way of thinking.

Ryan

Everything you just described is within Nourish Cooperative—or Nourish Food Club?

Ashley

Nourish Food Club, yeah.

Ryan

For listeners who farm and ranch themselves, what advice would you give? If they’re isolated, how could they rebuild communities where they are?

Ashley

This started by knocking on someone’s door and saying, ‘Here’s what I want to do. Do you want to participate, or do you know someone?’ He introduced me to Nate, who helped get it off the ground and connect farmers. If you want to do this, don’t be afraid to pursue what we want. Who cares if you don’t know the next step? Ask questions and talk to people. Reach out through email or social media: ‘I produce great beef. You produce great chicken. Do you want to come together and work on this?’ The problem Nourish is trying to solve is that a family can’t spend an entire weekend going to one farm for milk, another for eggs, two states over for sourdough, home for pork, across the state for raw cheese and then to a pesticide-free produce farm a state away. Nourish tries to solve that. I want farm-fresh food to be easy to access by bringing it together.

One checkout, one cart, all small regenerative farms, conveniently delivered to members’ doors. We lose to conventional food because of convenience. It’s convenient, and convenience wins.

Ryan

And sometimes cost—a rotisserie chicken, for example. When people see a pasture-raised chicken operation and visit its website, the comments often say, ‘You’re ripping me off. I can go to Costco and get a five-dollar rotisserie chicken.’

Ashley

Yeah. That’s another topic: loss leaders. The conventional food system can afford to sell products at a loss. Costco’s rotisserie chicken doesn’t cost only five dollars to produce. They lose money on those sales because they know you’ll come into Costco and buy high-margin processed foods. Cheap staples lure you in, and that hurts farmers. Stores may sell milk at a loss because families need it. You walk through aisles to the milk at the back and pick up high-margin items on the way. They don’t mind if they lose money on those staples. Small farmers can’t afford to do that.

Ryan

Costco has it in-house, too, with its own chicken houses. I wouldn’t even call those farms; they’re mass-industrialised torture chambers for chickens.

Ashley

Food freedom is full of incredible people who’ve done this much longer than me. They’ve dealt with government bullying, learned a lot and are willing to help. Earlier this year, I spoke at a conference at Abby Rockefeller’s farm. I know: ‘Oh my gosh, the Rockefellers.’

I think she’s an outcast from that family. Her incredible raw-milk farm in New York is Churchtown Dairy. Food-freedom speakers came from around the US. It’s encouraging that people chip away at this daily, even though there’s no instant change. It’s day by day, doing a little and chipping away. Meeting Max Kane in Wisconsin, and the people at Abby Rockefeller’s event, is encouraging. It fires you up again. If you stay in a silo doing everything alone, the days can be long and exhausting. Becoming part of a community where you can talk about these things is important. Who knows what will happen or what doors will open from that experience?

Ryan

My final question is about relationships with consumers since starting Nourish Food Club. Have you had any cool stories or feedback about how the food you’ve grown and produced has impacted their lives?

Ashley

I remember a point when I was vegan, egg-free, dairy-free, grain-free, gluten-free—free of everything. I don’t even know what I was eating.

Then I found old USDA booklets for farmers from the late 1800s and early 1900s, and looked at an average grocery list: dairy, eggs, potatoes and bread, things people say they can’t eat now. They were staples of our ancestors’ diets. But bread isn’t bread, eggs aren’t eggs, pork isn’t pork and chicken isn’t chicken. Sourdough isn’t conventional bread.

Different production methods yield different food that people digest differently. I didn’t realise there were different farming models; I just thought all those foods were bad.

That was a light-bulb moment. What happened? This used to be what people ate, and now people say they can’t eat or digest it.

One rewarding thing is hearing people say they can eat eggs again. We have reviews saying, ‘I haven’t digested eggs in 40 years, but I can eat yours.’ Soy proteins can pass into eggs, and someone with a soy sensitivity can be sensitive to eggs from soy-fed chickens. We’ve seen that. People have shared blood work, too.

They’ve shared blood work showing high inflammatory markers or poor fatty-acid results on their OmegaQuant tests. After six months or a year eating Nourish Food Club food on a low-omega-6-PUFA diet, their results looked completely different—much better. People say they can eat bread again because it’s real sourdough made with pesticide-free grains. I wonder whether we have a gluten problem or a problem with pesticides coating much of American bread. Are people not digesting gluten well, or not digesting pesticides? People tell us they can eat food again. That’s freeing: more culinary experimentation and more life. Food is meant to nourish us and to be enjoyed. We’re supposed to have fun cooking, create cuisine and learn from ancestral traditions.

Giving that back to people is a cool experience. I haven’t fully come to terms with it. Old-fashioned farming changes food’s makeup in a way people can digest better, because conventional inputs have changed so much that outputs are different.

Let’s go back to how it used to be, and the outputs will be different. We see that more every day. That keeps things going on the long days. It’s the ‘why’: bringing back small farms and creating food people can eat again. They don’t have to stick to just three foods they can digest. They can add more to their plates. Life is more fun, fulfilling and nourishing, because the wider the variety of food you include, the more micronutrients you can get in your diet.

Ryan

Love that. Disconnection from food is disconnection from our reality and what makes us human. My time working on a farm wasn’t long. I wasn’t there from the first planting or when they first got the cows and pigs. But being there on the final day, working farmers’ markets and talking to customers was memorable. That farm had some of the best ginger I’ve had, and really great tea. At one market near Pittsburgh, customers’ eyes lit up when they saw it. It was the same with shiitake mushrooms. Those interactions rebuild community, and you look forward to those conversations again. Even though I got up at 4 am, barely slept and sometimes forgot things—we even forgot the ginger for one market, which cost money—we still had great conversations and spoke with the other vendors. Looking back, that was one of my favourite experiences.

I’m not the best morning person, which isn’t ideal for farming, but it ruled. We did it Saturday and Sunday, then rested Monday. It was fulfilling to be there on that final day and share it with other people.

I remember hearing about ‘bring your tractor to school day’ in high school. I laughed and didn’t think much of it. Now I wish I could go back and experience it as a kid: driving a tractor with all your farming friends, who have their own tractors.

That’s one benefit of social media. Despite the bad parts, if you keep being authentic and showing what you do on a farm or ranch, the right people will find you. There are people looking for that; they just don’t know where to go.

Even with only 1,000 followers, 100 may live locally and become customers. You never know what doors will open. Find the good to keep going.

Ashley

For sure.

Ryan

Thank you again. This was a great conversation. I’ll include everything in the show notes.

Ashley

Thank you for caring—from all the farmers out there. Thank you for this space to speak and for truly caring about us. I think there’s something in those reaction videos. I’ll send you some.

Ryan

Yeah. I’m gonna start doing those.

That’s good, because I have the perfect spot to start making those.

Ashley

Great. Cool. Well thank you, Ryan.

That’s the margin regenerative farmers operate inside. Where biology, bureaucracy, cash flow, and weather all collide at five in the morning.

Raw milk sits at the center of that collision. So does pasture-based livestock. So does any farm trying to sell directly to customers instead of through a commodity channel that decides price for them.

The tension and dis-incentives are structural. If you want independence from the industrial system, you inherit new risks. Regulatory gray zones, shipping logistics, labeling language, and customer education (to start).

Not to mention the constant economic struggle making you think “Can I keep the farm alive by only selling direct to customers?”

That’s where this conversation begins.

Why This Conversation Matters

Most people don’t understand why nearly 90 percent of U.S. dairies have disappeared since 1980. They assume efficiency won or that independent farms couldn’t compete with Big Dairy because they’re great businesses.

What actually happened is more mechanical than moral. The system is rigged against independent dairies with…

• Higher equipment costs.

• Higher feed inputs.

• More production to cover fixed expenses.

• Flooding milk markets.

• Aggressively lowering prices.

• Forced dairy scaling to survive.

It’s a treadmill that rewards volume and punishes independence.

Our talk with Tony Eash highlights what happens when a farmer steps off that treadmill and tries to build a direct-to-consumer model around pasture, transparency, and raw milk.

It challenges a few assumptions:

• That “grass-fed” is simple.

• That regenerative automatically means profitable.

• That labeling and compliance are minor details.

• That switching from grain to grass is just a management choice.

It also adds nuance that often gets lost: independence doesn’t remove constraints. It changes them.

Who’s In the Conversation

Tony Eash
Farmer, co-owner
Triple E Farms
West Virginia

Tony grew up farming with his brother. Today, he and his family operate a diversified pasture-based farm producing raw milk, beef, pork, poultry, eggs, and other nutrient-rich farm products. They ship nationwide and sell direct to customers.

Day to day, that means:

• Milking cows at 5 a.m., seven days a week

• Rotating cattle twice daily

• Testing every batch of milk in a small on-farm lab

• Managing grazing recovery windows

• Navigating labeling and regulatory compliance

• Coordinating contract growers for poultry and pork

• Monitoring water access across limited well capacity

Tony’s not someone waxing about the values of regenerative system. He’s trying to make payroll and feed his family with them.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

This conversation moves through the real mechanics of running a pasture-based dairy outside the commodity system.

You’ll hear about:

• What actually drove their jump from 10 shipped orders a week to 30–40, and how marketing and grants changed their trajectory

• How raw milk is filtered, bottled, tested, and shipped (including the limits of a 24-hour bacteria test window)

• Why labeling language like “antibiotic-free” or “100% grass-fed” can become regulatory friction points

• The economics of independent dairy, from $60,000 mineral bills to equipment escalation, and why production volume alone doesn’t fix margins

• The genetic fallout from transitioning high-producing grain-fed cows to all-grass systems

• Why covered soil stays dramatically cooler than bare ground, and how that affects both cattle comfort and soil biology

• The difference between grass “recovery” and true “rest,” and why that distinction matters for long-term soil building

• Water constraints on small farms, including 500-foot wells producing barely a gallon per minute

• The trade-offs between keeping everything in-house versus working with nearby contract growers

Regenerative operations and raw milk dairy production isn’t perfect. There are setbacks like lost cows during transition. overly thick manure patches that kill pasture in the short term, and even dry holes from expensive well drilling.

What’s inspiring about Tony’s story is his ability to adapt to whatever is thrown at him.

This week’s episode literally takes us into the woods. Walking us through Vermont sugarbush with Jacob and Jenna at Baird Farm Maple Syrup to break down something most people think they understand… but don’t.

Real Vermont maple syrup.

Maple syrup is one of the clearest examples of working within natural constraints. There is no forcing nature to scale. No forcing production once the window closes. No optimizing your way around tree biology.

You get a short season. You respect it. You make the most of it .Or you don’t make syrup. That reality makes sugaring worth paying attention to.

The Start of the Syrup You See on Shelves

In the episode, we start with a sugar maple tree named Phoebe.

From the outside, tapping a tree looks simple. Drill a hole. Insert a spout. Collect sap. But here’s what’s really happening.

Sap is water pulled up from the roots. Through photosynthesis, the tree stores energy as starch. As winter shifts toward spring, that starch converts to sugar. That sugar dissolves into the water moving through the xylem, the tree’s internal superhighway.

When farmers tap a maple tree, they drill about 1¾ to 2 inches past the bark and into healthy, conductive xylem.

Tree health determines yield. Sugaring isn’t guesswork. It’s careful management of living organisms you depend on for income.

On this farm, that means roughly 14,700 taps drilled before the season even starts. That’s before a single drop of sap flows.

The Most Important Sprint of the Season

One of the most important moments in the conversation was this:

Taps are drilled starting January 4 > Sap starts moving on February 26 > From February 26 to April 16 entire annual income is produced.

Then it’s over.

Sugaring ends when the buds open. Once trees shift toward leaf production, sap chemistry changes. Sugar concentration drops. Flavor turns. The season closes whether you’re ready or not.

The entire year’s revenue is determined in about 6 weeks.

That’s a level of biological dependence most modern industries have insulated themselves from. It’s not possible with maple syrup.

Sugaring in the Same Woods for Generations

There are trees on this farm that were tapped by Jenna Baird’s great-grandmother in 1918. Those same trees produced syrup this year.

There’s an abandoned sugarhouse in the woods built in the early 1970s. Before that, her great-grandmother’s operation stood on the same ground.

You feel time differently in places like that. You’re not just harvesting sap. You’re participating in a pattern that predates you and, if you do it right, outlasts you.

That’s the essence regenerative agriculture.

What This Really Shows Us

We talk a lot about resilience. Maple syrup production forces it.

You drill in the dead of winter. You work in thigh-deep snow. You wait for temperatures above freezing. You monitor tree health. You stop when nature says stop.

There is no workaround and no amount of investment will changes it. Even if you had a bigger sugarbush, they’d still follow the same schedule.

In a world obsessed with scale and speed, sugaring reminds us that some systems only function when you operate inside their limits.

If you haven’t watched the full farm tour and conversation yet, you can find it here.

Please leave a comment below, I guarantee you we read and respond to every single one.

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And if you want more field-level conversations like this, subscribe. These stories turn viewers into readers and readers into long-term rebels building something better.

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That’s what this conversation with Jason Rick of Rick Ranches in western Colorado captures.

Jason isn’t running a massive operation. He sells about 35 beefs a year, raises registered Angus bulls, and runs his ranch direct-to-consumer. The clarity and connection Jason has to his operation is what makes this conversation remarkable.

When people criticize weaning, Jason doesn’t dodge the emotion. He acknowledges it. Calves bawl for a couple of days. Anyone who lives on a ranch hears it. But he also explains why the process exists, how it protects the long-term health of both cows and calves, and why romantic ideas about “letting nature handle it” usually ignore how brutal nature actually is.

The same honesty shows up when he talks about water. His irrigation water comes from snowmelt tied to an 1899 water right. Some years, it runs well. Other years, it doesn’t run at all.

In the last two decades, he’s had more drought years than good ones.

That reality forces hard choices like selling cattle early, keeping a full year of hay in reserve, and thinking about hay not just as feed, but as fertility brought back onto the land.

One of the most important threads in this conversation is context. Jason makes it clear that regenerative agriculture isn’t a checklist. What works in Virginia doesn’t work in western Colorado. Blanket prescriptions fail. Stewardship only works when it’s grounded in place, climate, and economics.

And economics matter. A lot.

Jason is blunt about something many people avoid saying out loud: you can’t praise farmers into survival. If consumers want a different food system, they have to support it financially. Not someday. Now. That might mean buying direct, prepaying for beef, or simply building real relationships with the people feeding you.

This podcast isn’t about the ‘Regenerative ideology’. It’s about what actually works, what doesn’t, and why small producers keep getting squeezed by systems built for scale, lawyers, and corporate compliance.

Connect with Wrich Ranches and Jason

Website: https://www.wrichranches.com/
Ranch IG: https://www.instagram.com/wrichranches/
Ranch Stay IG: https://www.instagram.com/wrichranchesranchcamp/

That’s not what happened here.

What you’re about to watch is the physical place where a century-old fence line turned into federal criminal charges against a ranching family who believed they were acting in good faith, the same way their family had for generations.

Before you watch the video, here’s the context that matters.

A Fence Older Than the Dispute

The land at the center of this case has been in the Maude family for more than a hundred years. The fence line in question was placed before 1950 by Charles Maude’s great-grandfather. Long before modern federal agencies existed in their current form, that fence served as the practical boundary for grazing, flood management, and access along a volatile river bottom.

In the West, fences aren’t drawn for aesthetics. They’re drawn where they can survive.

Rivers flood. Banks collapse. Hills erode. Straight survey lines often run through places where fences simply cannot stand. So ranchers put fences where they can keep them up, and land is managed accordingly.

That’s what happened here for generations.

How This Escalated

According to the family, everything began with a single “No Trespassing” sign placed on a gate near a road. The sign wasn’t meant to stop foot traffic. It was meant to prevent vehicle access into sensitive ground.

From there, things escalated quickly.

No written violation.
No formal notice of wrongdoing.
No opportunity for civil resolution.

Instead of a boundary clarification or survey-backed discussion, the situation jumped straight to criminal prosecution.

At one point, Charles and Heather Maude were facing the possibility of 20 years in prison and $500,000 in fines over roughly 25 acres of land that had been managed the same way for more than a century.

Walking the Exact Acreage

One of the most important things the video captures is something indictments don’t show: contrast.

On one side of the disputed line, the land is actively managed. Green growth. Controlled weeds. Clear signs of care.

On the other side, where the family stopped all activity after being told not to touch it, the land is visibly unmanaged. Standing weeds. No cultivation. No grazing.

The ground itself shows where the Maude’s land stopped!

That visual difference directly contradicts claims that the family continued using land after being instructed not to. The evidence is literally growing out of the soil.

The Maude’s Attempts to Resolve It Peacefully

What rarely makes headlines is how many chances there were to resolve this without courts or criminal charges.

The Maudes repeatedly tried to work toward resolution:

• They requested a proper survey conducted through formal protocols
• They offered land trades that would have benefited both sides
• They proposed using the Small Tracts Act, a process designed specifically for cases like this
• They were willing to pay for acreage discrepancies

None of those paths were taken.

Instead, survey stakes were driven through planted crops. Boundary markers appeared. Management stopped. Charges followed.

Once criminal charges were filed, everything froze. Resolution wasn’t delayed because of refusal. It was delayed because the system shifted from problem-solving to punishment.

Why This Alarmed So Many Ranchers Nationwide

This story didn’t spread because it was dramatic, even though it clearly was. It spread because it was familiar.

Across the West, countless ranches operate with historic fence lines that don’t perfectly align with modern survey descriptions. That’s not negligence. It’s reality.

If a family that cooperated, complied, and sought resolution could still be criminally charged, the precedent becomes dangerous.

It tells landowners that intent doesn’t matter.
History doesn’t matter.
Stewardship doesn’t matter.

Only lines on paper do. And those lines can be enforced retroactively.

That’s why this case broke out of agriculture circles. It wasn’t just about ranching. It was about property rights.

Where Things Stand Now

The criminal charges were eventually dismissed.

Since then, efforts have resumed to resolve the boundary properly, including allowing existing practices to continue while a permanent fix is pursued. That distinction matters. This land is the family’s feed base. Their operation was built around it. Shutting it down wasn’t neutral. It was existential.

Progress has been made, but the underlying question still lingers:

If this could happen once, what prevents it from happening again?

Why You Should Watch the Video

This video isn’t commentary. It’s a walkthrough.

You see the fence.
You see the terrain.
You see why straight-line fencing doesn’t work here.
You see how thin the line is between “historic practice” and “criminal allegation.”

It’s hard to dismiss what’s right in front of you.

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In 2024 and 2025, lawmakers in Florida and Tennessee tried to pass laws that would make it nearly impossible to sue pesticide makers if their products harmed people or crops — even if those products caused cancer, Parkinson’s, or wiped out an entire orchard. The only requirement? That the chemical had EPA approval.

And that’s a low bar. Companies like Bayer (maker of Roundup), Syngenta (maker of paraquat), and BASF have deep pockets and are friends with the rule-makers. But folks fought back. Farmers, teachers, moms, cancer survivors, and even some lawmakers said: not today. The bills stalled. And it’s worth knowing why they showed up in the first place.

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The Bills Exists Because Big Ag Got Scared of Lawsuits

A few huge lawsuits you’ve probably heard of flipped the script. Most people had no idea how dangerous some of these sprays were until the court cases started making headlines. Once the truth was out, pesticide companies started looking for their government friends to bail them out.

Glyphosate (Roundup): In 2018, a jury awarded $289 million to Dewayne Johnson, a school groundskeeper with terminal cancer after using Roundup. The case was later reduced to $20M but opened the floodgates. Bayer, which had bought Monsanto, has since paid out over $10 billion to settle roughly 125,000 claims, and still faces tens of thousands more.

“They said it was safe. Now tens of thousands of people are sick, and Bayer’s paid out billions — with thousands still waiting for justice.”

Paraquat: Linked to Parkinson’s disease, paraquat is banned in over 60 countries, except in the U.S. Over 8,000 lawsuits are in motion. Syngenta and Chevron quietly settled the first scheduled trial in early 2026 before it could reach a jury.

Dicamba: This one isn’t about cancer, it’s about chemical drift (when pesticide or herbicide sprays move through the air and land where they’re not supposed to). A Missouri peach farm sued Bayer and BASF after dicamba sprayed on their neighbors property wiped out their orchard. The jury awarded $265 million and hundreds of similar lawsuits followed. The peach farm was forced to close.

2,4-D (part of Agent Orange): Still legal and now being used more often, especially in GMO crops. The WHO says it’s possibly carcinogenic. Farmers say it’s already damaging specialty crops, and studies have shown its harmful effects.

Florida Failed to Shield Pesticide Sellers

In 2024, Florida lawmakers introduced HB 347 to make pesticide sellers immune from lawsuits as long as they used products with EPA-approved labels. Opponents pointed out that this would also protect bad actors, like an exterminator spraying banned chemicals or a seller ignoring health complaints. Still, the House passed it. But the Senate didn’t take it up.

In 2025, lawmakers tried again with HB 129/SB 992. This time, more people were watching. Farmworker groups, environmental advocates, and even some Republicans spoke out. The bills were pulled before final votes. Public pressure worked.

Tennessee Tried A “Get-Out-of-Jail-Free” Bill That Didn’t Make It

Tennessee’s HB 809 was almost identical to Florida’s HB 129/SB 992. If a pesticide had an EPA label, you couldn’t sue the company, even if it harmed your health. After pushback in 2025, lawmakers delayed the bill. In 2026, they tried again. It failed again.

Advocates rightly called it what it was: a corporate immunity bill written for Bayer. And lawmakers, feeling the heat from constituents, didn’t want to be the ones who stripped families of their right to sue after getting cancer.

The Bigger Picture: Other States, Same Script

Florida and Tennessee aren’t alone. Similar bills showed up in at least a dozen states. North Dakota and Georgia passed them. Iowa, Missouri, and others backed off after public outcry. The playbook is the same: use farmers as a shield claiming they need the law, but really it’s Bayer and its lobbyists pushing it.

Even Congress got involved. In 2025, a rider was added to a federal spending bill that would’ve done the same thing nationwide. It got stripped after people raised hell.

This isn’t just legal fine print, these bills would have:

• Blocked families from suing after toxic exposure

• Let pesticide companies avoid accountability

• Removed pressure to reform dangerous products

We’re not talking about banning all pesticides. We’re talking about keeping the right to hold someone accountable if their product gives you cancer or kills your orchard. In Florida and Tennessee, people stood up. And they won, for now. But these bills will be back. And when they do, we need to be ready.

— Brian

Links to 2,4-D Studies

1. Association between increasing agricultural use of 2,4-D and population biomarkers of exposure: findings from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2001–2014

2. Biomonitoring Data for 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic Acid in the United States and Canada: Interpretation in a Public Health Risk Assessment Context Using Biomonitoring Equivalents

3. Toxicological Profile for 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic Acid (2,4-D), Potential For Human Exposure

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Last Week on YouTube

Family Beat Criminal Indictment for Farming Generational Land
Walking the Maude ranch made clear how much everyday farming reality disappears once land is reduced to lines, permits, and abstractions. Seeing the livestock systems, infrastructure, and the disputed river bottom in person reframed the story as one about continuity and stewardship, not conflict, and raised questions about how easily long-standing practices can be misread when context is removed.

How a Ranching Family Faced and Beat a Federal Criminal Indictment
Listening to the Maudes walk through their story revealed how quickly a routine land question can escalate when process replaces judgment. What stood out most was not just how the case unfolded, but how much of the burden fell on family, community, and long-term thinking while the legal system moved slowly and impersonally.

How a Disputed Fence Line Turned Into a Criminal Indictment on a Farming Couple. In this clip from our podcast with the Charles and Heather Maude, what stood out was how quickly a long-standing, working landscape became a legal abstraction. Standing on their land made it clear how much context disappears when land is reduced to lines on a map, and how high the stakes become when that context is ignored.

Last Week on Substack

It’s one thing to hear a headline about a federal indictment over something small like a fence line.

It’s another thing to stand on the land, walk the fence yourself, speak with the owners, and learn about the family that nearly lost generational land because of it.

In this farm tour with Charles and Heather Maude, we wanted to add real-life context to a story that’s often reduced to headlines and legal language. You see the cattle, the hogs, and the infrastructure. But more importantly, you hear the unfiltered impact on a family when enforcement escalates faster than due process.

The Maudes didn’t just wake up one day in conflict with the federal government. Their operation has been managed, grazed, and worked for generations. The land in question wasn’t secretly farmed or altered by them in recent years. In fact, much of it sat untouched while the family actively tried to resolve the boundary issue through surveys, land trades, and existing federal tools meant for situations exactly like this.

Instead of resolution, they were indicted on four criminal counts for “theft of government property.”

It’s easy to miss how thin the line can be between a civil disagreement and a criminal prosecution when power is unevenly applied. The Maudes are a testament to the resilience it takes to keep farming when the pressure isn’t just weather or markets, but the weight of the state itself.

Watch the full farm tour below:

If this kind of on-the-ground reporting matters to you, liking this video and subscribing to our YouTube channel is one of the simplest ways to support it.

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Most land disputes between a farmer and the government begin and end as civil issues. A survey gets ordered, lawyers get involved and eventually, someone writes a check or a boundary gets adjusted.

That’s not what happened with the Maudes.

It’s Good Friday in 2024, Charles and Heather Maude, whose family has worked the same land for FIVE GENERATIONS had two U.S. Forest Service agents show up at their home unannounced. The issue, they were told, was a no trespassing sign and a section of fence that might not be perfectly aligned with a federal boundary.

The Maudes complied and removed the sign immediately. They agreed to meet to discuss and propose multiple legal paths to resolve the issue, including land swaps, special use permits, and the Small Tracts Act — a federal tool specifically designed for isolated parcels like this one.

Then things escalated.

Within weeks, a Forest Service agent entered their private property without permission, drove survey stakes through a planted field, and declared, without an authorized survey, that he had “found the line.” When the family pushed back and involved local law enforcement and congressional staff, communication stopped.

Days later, the agent arrived at their home again…now with criminal indictments.

Four felony counts for theft of government property.

The precedent that was trying to be set here should alarm anyone who owns land near federal property.

This video documents the Maudes’ firsthand account of how a disputed fence line turned into criminal charges, the rapid escalation ladder, and how quickly things can spiral…all the while you’re doing what you’re “supposed” to do.

Watch the full video below:

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In our talk they trace their roots in agriculture, from childhood chores and community work to building a ranching life together, grounded in stewardship and an assumed responsibility to be their neighbors and land.

But, then a long-running boundary fence issue with the U.S. Forest Service got outta hand. What starts as meetings and paperwork spirals into a federal criminal indictment. Charles and Heather recount the confusion of navigating federal land rules, the shock of facing criminal charges over what they believed was a civil matter, and the moment they realized this issue could upend their lives.

In this conversation we walk through their fight to clear their names, detailing the emotional, financial, and personal cost of being pulled into the federal justice system. From Washington, D.C. to the eventual dismissal of the case, the Maudes reflect on what the experience taught them about power, land rights, and vulnerability for ranchers operating near public land.

Their story is not just about what happened to them, but about what could happen to anyone living and working at the edge of federal authority.

Connect with Charles & Heather

Maude Hog & Cattle Co.
Western South Dakota

Website - https://www.maudehogandcattle.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/maudehogcattle
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/maudehogs/

Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts https://theregenaissance.news/subscribe

What’s the Purpose of All of This?

When I used to think of farming, I used to think of Little House on the Prairie.

I didn’t think about sustainability, where the food came from, what it took to grow it, or any of those things. I thought about Little Carrie Ingalls tumbling down that big hill in the tall grass, wide open county, and their family.

The point is… I don’t really know much about farming, a lot of my knowledge is limited to random facts like the one above. I don’t know much about sustainable agriculture. I had to look up what regenerative agriculture even was whenever I first met Ryan, and I mostly just stared glassy eyed at the computer screen at a few articles before I went back to my pantry for another bite of processed food.

That’s just it though, isn’t it? The sheer volume of information, or sometimes lack thereof, is just so intimidating for someone who is just waking up every day in this busy life we all live, just trying to make it to the next check so we can spend half of it at the grocery store.

And that right there is the kicker, all that money spent on food at the grocery store, food designed to satiate quickly, and poison slowly. New connections pop up every day about food we have been consuming for years and another debilitating disease to not look forward to. It’s honestly extremely frustrating because you just want to make the right choices so you can live a healthy life.

Then, just when you think you are ready to make the investment (meaning spend more money at the grocery store on more expensive items), you find out that the food distributors with the fancy packages are at least in some way being dishonest with you by coloring their egg yolks, so they look ‘healthier’.

I might be new to this, but I’d wager that most people who have decided to homestead or make a huge switch to healthier living have also felt the disappointment of trying to do the right thing and still being met with resistance because EVEN THE PEOPLE YOU ARE PAYING ARE STILL LYING.

But, you know, at a premium price.

What does this even all come down to for a person like me? I’m not about to pack up my family and move to an acreage out in Arkansas so I can homestead with them. I like convenience and live music too much.

I just feel like I could be doing more.

At the end of the day, there are seemingly millions of different companies out there selling food products in the United States, but they are just packaging them or mixing them into different things. The origin of our food is just as important as anything else.

And that food comes from farms all around America (or at least should). What gives? I’ve known farmers, I grew up in Florida and Texas, what’s stopping the food they are producing from the very Earth that gave us life from being good for our bodies at the same time? Where are the good farms and farmers?

Or … have they just been overtaken by a plethora of companies that are simply scheming to make an extra few dollars by deliberately misleading Americans that are just trying to make healthy decisions for themselves and their families?

This just seems like something that should be SIMPLE to me, but is made complicated and practically gatekept by so many people both inside and outside of the industry. None of it seems right, and this should be easier for people to make the right choices than it is, but I’m looking to start prioritizing my family’s health by learning what I can, and doing it right here with you guys, because I know I’m not the only one on this journey.

I don’t know everything (obviously), but I do know I want to learn and act on as much as possible to care for my family, my kids, and this beautiful planet that we get to live on.

So, I guess here goes, for the foreseeable future I’ll be learning as much as I can, sharing my take on different things with y’all, and finding out what ‘good farming’ is. I invite you guys to come with me. Send me articles and help me learn what comes next, because I’m excited.

Until next time, much love y’all!

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Here’s what we were paying attention to last week, in case you missed it.

Last Week on YouTube

Bears, Broken Lines, and Vacuum Leaks: Inside a Real-World Maple Syrup Farm
What we noticed was how maple syrup production has shifted away from the tap itself and toward managing pressure, flow, and miles of tubing spread across uneven forest terrain. Jacob Powsner walked us through how a single air leak can quietly reduce yield from trees more than a mile away, reframing sugaring as ongoing systems maintenance rather than seasonal harvest.

Last Week on Substack

Last Week On Instagram

A quiet moment in Western Colorado as barrels are prepared and wine is finished at Peony Lane. Ben Justman walking through the final decisions before wine goes into storage. It was a reminder that “natural” winemaking still involves constant judgment calls and responsibility

→ See the final steps in his wine making process

Centralization shapes nearly every part of our food system, from who controls processing to who carries the risk. It’s made life harder for farmers and ranchers while leaving consumers further removed from how food is actually produced.

→ This statistics is INSANE

The 1980s farm crisis reshaped rural America in ways that still linger. As land values collapsed and foreclosures spread, entire communities felt futures quietly disappear. Jr Burdick shared what it was like to witness this as a kid, watching classmates who planned to work the land full time suddenly pulled in different directions.

→ JR recalls how his community was changed

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Hello, my name is Ryan Griggs (guy on far right in picture above, and the incredible Maude Family next to me), and I am the founder of The Regenaissance. The Regenaissance, which started as an apparel brand and has now become a media company, is all about educating us about agriculture and our food system, and reconnecting us to our food! We have never been more disconnected, with most never visiting a farm, let alone speaking to a farmer or rancher! I am trying to help change that, raising awareness about what has happened over the last century that has led us to where we currently are in the food system, heavily centralized, and the only winners are everyone but the farmers/ranchers and consumers!

I would never have guessed I would find myself in agriculture, with the dream of starting my own ranch down the road, but my life took a major turn that changed everything. I spent the first 6 months of 2021 being my older brother’s caretaker.

At age 31, he had stage 3 colon cancer at the start of the pandemic, which progressed to stage 4. I had no idea what to expect. I knew cancer was terrible, but I did not realize the true horror of it. The best way I can describe cancer isthat I watched my brother be tortured to death over the span of 6 excruciatingly long months. He passed away in June of ‘21 at the age of 32, 3 days before his 33rd birthday.

My brother is the biggest reason I am the man I am today. Watching the most important person in my life cry out my name in pain, knowing full well all I could do was sit there and watch, was the most helpless feeling in the world. He’s my inspiration; he handled battling cancer better than I handled being his caretaker. And he’s the biggest reason why I changed the trajectory of my life. While I was taking care of my brother, I was also helping a very ill mother.

She had:

• Shingles

• Gout

• Sleep apnea

• Anxiety & depression

• Psoriasis

• Coronary artery disease (most common form of heart disease)

• Kidney & liver failing (needed transplants for both but because of her heart, was deemed inoperable)

• In total, 12-14 liters of fluid drained from her lungs

My mother was suffering just as much as my brother did. She was in very rough condition for quite some time and had to retire in ‘19 because of it. She was just slowly suffering and dying. The Regenaissance launched on May 28th, 2023. I got a call four hours after launch that she had passed away. It’s just my father & me now.

But there is more. The stress and trauma of helping my brother destroyed my body. I spent thousands of dollars trying to get answers from the medical system about what was going on with my gut. Blood and stool tests, endoscopies and colonoscopies, yet I got zero answers from them, ZERO. As a result of this PTSD, my gut was in shambles. I also was dealing with

• 0 energy

• Not waking up refreshed

• Awful memory

• Joint inflammation

• And so many other problems that were compiling, adding to an already stressful time.

During all of this, I was working on a regenerative farm trying to learn about something that has been foreign to me my whole life. All the while, I could barely function. I turned to Youtube where I thought I had SIBO. I hired independent help, luckily, and tested negative for SIBO.

I still did not have answers as to what the hell was going on. And with how laborious farming is, my health was only getting worse, as was my mental/stress around the situation. I ended up having to leave earlier than expected, and so I looked for alternative ways to find out what’s going on with me. I hired @realalejandroAD

and he was incredibly helpful. He recommended thyroid blood work and an extensive vitamin/mineral panel. This answered all of my questions.

NOT A SINGLE DOC RECOMMENDED ME DOING THIS, NOT ONE.

Turns out I was deficient in quite a few vitamins & minerals, but more importantly, I discovered I have Hashimoto’s, a more severe version of hypothyroidism. It explained all of my awful symptoms. Major shout-out to Alejandro for all his help @realalejandroAD

So I began to address my health issues, sticking to a diet because I would yoyo between carnivore, fasting, too many fermented foods, etc. I wasn't patient. I started to take a Thiamine supplement, and my body had a SEVERE reaction. One week before starting on a bison ranch in Montana in Jan 2022, had the worst health scare of my life, ending up in the ER twice on the same day. I knew the quickest way to get answers was to head back to Austin, where I had lived since 2018.

My brand idea came to me while recovering. I don’t wish this on my worst enemy, but what’s worse is that this is a common story that will only become more common in America as the years go on. This is why I started The Regenaissance. I love this country too much to not try and do anything about it.

We are the most disconnected from our food we have ever been in our history. The Regenaissance aims to reconnect people with the people who produce our food, stories straight from the land. But what exactly does The Regenaissance do?

The Regenaissance Podcast

Since September 2023, I have been running a podcast featuring the very folks who produce our food (103 episodes and counting)! I also speak with other folks in the industry, like policy and law, butchering, logistics, and all other aspects of ag that are not directly related to farming or ranching.

The Regenaissance Farm & Ranch Tour

In July of 2025, I hit the road, traveling 12,500 miles across America, visiting farms and ranches. Here, I would tour their facilities to better understand what they do, while also sharing stories to help bridge the gap between producers and consumers. There is a wealth of knowledge from these incredible people that isn’t being shared very much!

If you want to watch and learn from the incredible folks growing our food, access them HERE

The Regenaissance Substack

A couple of members of my team and I have been writing on Substack to raise awareness of what has been going on in our food system, educate on all things agriculture, and share stories from the folks producing our food.

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The Regenaissance Apparel

I started this as an apparel brand because I noticed that most agricultural-related apparel was pretty outdated. I also wanted to help provide apparel made from natural fibers, steering away from synthetic materials like polyester. Even though this is now a media company, apparel will always be a part of this brand. I currently have my apparel closed for the remainder of 2026, but will reopen next year (with improved prices compared to the past).

The Regenaissance Social Media

You can find me on all social media platforms, where I talk about current events in our food system and agriculture, snippets from my podcast, farm tours, and the history of how we got to where we are now (covering the last century).

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theregenaissance/

Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@the_regenaissance

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheRegenaissance

X - https://x.com/_Regenaissance

Closing Remarks

Since 1980, we have lost:

• 91% of hog farms

• 89% of dairy farms

• 52% of cattle operations

And these numbers continue to dwindle, furthering the massive consolidation in agriculture. It’s never been more important to support AMERICAN farmers and ranchers!

This is why it’s imperative that you support your local farmers and ranchers. And if that is not possible in your area, find one you can support directly. Here are a few options to search from:

• https://www.regenerativefarmersofamerica.com/

• https://fromthefarm.org/

• https://www.eatwild.com/

• https://myhealthforward.com/pages/maps

• https://localfoddr.com/

• https://www.goodranchers.com/

• https://getrawmilk.com/

• https://www.realmilk.com/raw-milk-finder/

Cheers,

Ryan

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We spend the day at Rucker Farm with Garrett, walking fields, following animals, and letting the land explain itself. The conversation starts with hay as necessity for their operations. Garrett explains how rainfall dictates each cutting and why, once equipment, fuel, and storage are counted, hay is often the most expensive feed on the farm.

From there, we move through poultry and into cattle, tracing how management decisions ripple across the entire operation. Turkeys forage behind electric netting, raised longer and handled differently than their conventional counterparts, producing a bird more flavorful than anything you could find in the grocery store.

In the pastures, cattle rotate through paddocks with buried water lines, mineral access, and shade carefully planned around animal behavior and soil health. All of the infrastructure exists to reduce stress on both land and livestock, and to keep local waterways clean.

What ties everything together is Garrett’s approach to regenerative ag. There is no dogma. Grazing rotations change constantly adapting to grass growth, weather, and animal behavior. He makes the plans but the land and animals have the final say. At the end, Garrett reflects on fulfillment, on choosing land over cities, and on the belief that regeneration means more than sustaining what remains, it means rebuilding what’s been lost.

Follow Solistice Beef Company

Solstice Beef Company,
Central Virginia

Website: https://solsticebeef.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/solsticebeefco/

Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts https://theregenaissance.news/subscribe

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Before we start: I’m not a farmer. I’ve never moved a fence line, put animals on pasture, or had to decide whether to pull animals early because rain didn’t come. I’m learning this from conversations and farm visits I’m helping Ryan to produce.

If you run livestock or have more experience with these grazing models, can you help me learn more? As you read, drop a comment with what you’ve seen work, what’s failed, and where you disagree. That’s how I can learn and we can educate others in our community.

Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP) grazing is something I’ve heard about ALOT, often as the gold standard of regenerative grazing. The gist is usually that once you adopt AMP, you’ve “figured it out.”

But the more I listen to farmers’ stories and watch their operations, the clearer something becomes: there isn’t a single grazing system that works everywhere, all the time.

Every system I’ve seen (set-stock, rotational, mob, or AMP) has situations where it works well and situations where it breaks down. What I’ve learned is that the difference isn’t the label. It’s how rigid or responsive the management behind it is.

And in practice, these grazing methods sit on a spectrum:

Set-stock (continuous grazing) → Traditional rotational grazing → Mob grazing → Adaptive multi-paddock grazing

To me what separates them isn’t philosophy. It’s flexibility.

The Core Difference Between Grazing Systems

At a high level, grazing systems differ across four variables:

1. Stock density (animals per acre at a moment in time)

2. Duration of grazing (how long animals are pasture)

3. Length of soil recovery (time animals are off-pasture)

4. Flexibility of decision-making

Everything else is detail.

The more I learn, the more it seems that regenerative success isn’t about maximizing any one of these variables but adjusting them based on what’s actually happening on the land.

Set-Stock (Continuous Grazing)

In set-stock systems, animals stay on the same pasture for long periods with little or no movement.

Strengths

• Low labor

• Minimal infrastructure

• Simple to manage

Limitations

• Chronic overgrazing of preferred plants

• Uneven manure distribution

• Weak root systems and soil degradation

• Declining forage quality over time

Set-stock systems optimize for ease, not resilience. They work until they don’t, and when they fail, the pasture usually tells you first.

Common signs set-stocking may be working against you:

• Animals keep returning to the same spots: Livestock are grazing the same areas over and over while other parts of the pasture grow tall and go untouched.

• Bare ground shows up around water, shade, or gates: Soil exposure increases where animals spend the most time, leading to compaction, runoff, and erosion.

• Weeds start replacing grass instead of filling gaps: Animals are only eating their favorite grass so less tasty plants start taking over the pasture.

• Pasture looks uneven all season: The pasture never looks uniformly healthy with patches of grasses and large barren areas.

• Forage runs out earlier than it used to: Hay is being brought in sooner each year even though rainfall is the same.

• Recovery after grazing gets slower over time: Grass takes longer to bounce back, or never fully does, even in good growing conditions.

• Carrying capacity quietly declines: The same number of animals are run on the same pasture, but the land looks more “tired” every year.

None of this happens overnight. Set-stock systems usually unravel slowly, until one dry year or one feed bill exposes the limits.

Traditional Rotational Grazing

Rotational grazing divides pasture into paddocks, moving animals on a set schedule and resting ground between grazings.

Strengths

• Built-in rest and recovery

• Better forage utilization

• Improved manure distribution

• Reduced parasite pressure (especially for sheep)

Limitations

• Often schedule-driven rather than growth-driven

• Can still over- or under-graze if timing is wrong

• Limited responsiveness to weather variability

Rotational grazing is considered a major improvement over set-stocking, but only as good as the assumptions baked into the rotation.

Most rotational systems are built around fixed decisions:

• Animals move every 7 days

• Paddocks rest for 28 days

• Stocking rates stay constant

The problem is that grass doesn’t grow on a schedule.

Growth rates change with temperature, moisture, day length, soil health, and previous grazing pressure. When rotations don’t adjust, two failures show up:

• Grazing too early, weakening roots and long-term productivity

• Grazing too late, producing mature, tall grasses that animals selectively avoid

In both cases, the system rotates but management isn’t adapting to the land conditions.

Without constant feedback, rotational grazing becomes set-stocking with movement. Better than nothing, but not regenerative by default.

Mob Grazing

Mob grazing uses ultra-high stock density for very short periods, followed by long recovery.

Strengths

• Strong soil impact and manure compacting

• Uniform grazing and trampling

• Weed suppression

• Rapid changes in ground cover

Limitations

• High labor and management intensity

• Lower short-term animal performance if forage is mature

• Not well suited for all classes of livestock year-round

From the outside, mob grazing looks extreme. From what I’ve seen, it’s better understood as a tool, not a system.

When used intentionally to reset pasture, knock back weeds, or build litter, it can be powerful. When used everywhere, all the time, warning signs appear.

Common signs mob grazing may be working against you:

• Animals look less healthy despite “plenty of grass”: Pasture looks tall, but forage is too mature or fibrous, forcing animals to eat low-quality feed.

• Excessive trampling with slow or weak regrowth: Litter builds up, but plants struggle to recover beneath it.

• Soil stays compacted instead of loosening: Hoof impact outpaces recovery. Instead of healthy looking soil, the surface is tough and puddles after rain.

• Recovery periods become guesswork: Long rest is assumed to be beneficial, but paddocks are re-grazed before they’re truly ready or left too long and go rank.

• Labor load overwhelms management capacity: Moves become rushed or inconsistent, maximizing movement not animal or soil health.

• High-stress classes of livestock underperform: Dairy cows, growing stock, or lactating animals struggle to meet nutritional needs on mature forage.

• Weeds persist despite heavy impact: Trampling alone doesn’t reset plant communities without proper recovery and grazing control.

From where I’ve seen this model used and what I’ve read, intensity alone doesn’t regenerate land. Matching impact to conditions does.

Adaptive Multi-Paddock Grazing (AMP)

AMP grazing borrows from rotational and mob systems but rejects fixed rules.

Instead of asking “How many days per paddock?” it asks:

• How fast is the forage growing right now?

• What stage of recovery is this paddock actually in?

• What do the animals need this week?

• What impact do I want here: harvest, trampling, rest, or avoidance?

Strengths

• Responds to real biological signals

• Balances animal performance and ecosystem recovery

• Scales across species and climates

• Avoids dogma

Trade-offs

• Requires observation and decision-making

• Less “set it and forget it”

• Demands comfort with uncertainty

AMP grazing isn’t a formula. It’s a management discipline that pays attention early instead of reacting late.

Two farms can both “do AMP” and look completely different. What they share isn’t paddock size or move timing. It’s decision-making rooted in biology instead of routine.

AMP doesn’t replace other systems. It governs how and when they’re used.

Choosing the Right System Isn’t About Labels

The real question isn’t:

“Which grazing system is best?”

It’s:

“How much flexibility does this farm need and how much management can it support?”

A useful rule of thumb:

• Low labor, low flexibility → Set-stock

• Moderate labor, moderate flexibility → Traditional Rotational

• High labor, targeted impact → Mob

• Variable labor, high responsiveness → AMP

Most regenerative farms move along this spectrum over time. Seasons change. Finances change. Experience changes.

What separates success from failure isn’t stocking density or paddock count. It’s whether management is:

• Calendar-driven or biology-driven

• Rule-based or feedback-based

• Static or responsive

Adaptive grazing works not because it’s complex, but because it lets reality lead. And from the outside looking in, that seems to be what regeneration actually requires.

I’m still learning this, but like I said earlier I’ve never done it. One day I want to own my own land and I’d truly appreciate your insight.

If you manage grazing systems, I’d love to hear from you in the comments:
What’s worked on your land? What failed? Where do you think I miss the mark?

That shared experience is how we can help more people learn about regenerative agriculture

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Otter Creek Farms, which now holds pigs, chickens, and cattle moving across pasture, was once managed very differently.

Before rotational paddocks and soil biology became the guiding metric, this farm in upstate New York functioned like thousands of others in the region: a conventional dairy shaped by efficiency, inputs, and inherited thinking about how farming had to work.

What makes this place different today isn’t the new faces or structures. It’s the human decision that reshaped it.

Elizabeth Collins is a first-generation farmer. She didn’t inherit this land through a neat lineage or marry into a thriving family business. Instead, she walked away from a previous life entirely to rebuild something new alongside fifth-generation farmer Brad Wiley.

A Farm With History and Friction

Like much of rural New York, the land carries a long agricultural memory. Dairy shaped the landscape, the infrastructure, and the expectations of what “success” looked like for generations.

Barns were built for confinement. Fields were managed for extraction. Output mattered more than resilience.

Elizabeth wasn’t raised inside the logic of “this is how we’ve always done it.” That freedom defined the early years and created no small amount of tension.

She speaks openly about the cost of that choice: leaving a job, leaving a marriage, and temporarily distancing herself from family. It wasn’t romantic. It was destabilizing. And it shaped how she approaches farming now, with humility about what real change actually demands.

Regenerative transitions don’t happen in a vacuum. They happen inside lives that already carry risk, responsibility, and constraint. All the trials of starting a farm are only compounded by the trials the farmers face.

Why This Wasn’t a Simple “Dairy to Regenerative” Flip

One of the clearest themes from the farm tour is that you can’t just quit and do a 180 — especially if you’re embedded in a conventional system.

Infrastructure locks you in. Debt locks you in. Markets lock you in.

In our conversation, Elizabeth made it clear that her path isn’t replicable for everyone. Instead, she frames the farm as a learning environment, not a prescription. The goal isn’t regenerative ideology or doing everything “by the book”. It’s learning how to adapt, something you only understand after moving through real change and uncertainty.

That perspective shows up everywhere on the land: fields that don’t look “perfect” by conventional standards, grass left to mature longer than planned, seed heads standing, and makeshift structures that reflect years of adjustment. What might look odd at first makes sense when viewed in the context of learning how to farm without generational knowledge.

Across the ranch, nothing is done because it fits a label. Decisions are provisional, shaped by what the land demands. In practice, regeneration is about paying attention, not control.

Learning to Read the Land Again

When we visited, we found cattle grazing mature forage that would normally be cut weeks earlier. A wet spring pushed haymaking back, the grass went to seed, and the timing was far from perfect. The cows weren’t happy and they let us know it.

But the system didn’t break.

Instead, the cattle were stocked tightly, moved intentionally, and used to trample mature forage into the soil. Seeds were pressed into the ground. Manure and urine fertilized the field. Roots went deeper because plants were allowed to fully mature.

“This wasn’t planned,” Elizabeth explains. It was improvised. It reinforces the idea that regenerative management is about how you respond when things go wrong, not trying to control for perfection.

She describes how farmers can measure forage with tools and formulas, but eventually your eye replaces the clipboard. You learn how long animals can stay in a paddock not from spreadsheets or watches, but by observing cow behavior, bite depth, and field recovery.

That shift from prescription to observation marks the real departure from conventional thinking.

Beyond Cows: Rebuilding a Whole System

The former dairy is no longer single-species by design.

Pigs rotate through ground to disturb, fertilize, and reset areas cattle can’t. Chickens follow ruminants to spread nutrients and manage insects. Each species plays a role without being forced into a system for maximum productivity.

Feed decisions are guided by outcomes, not ideology. Instead of assuming nutritional quality based on labels, the farm tests omega-3 and omega-6 ratios to see what the animals and land are actually producing. Grain is used strategically where it supports animal health and provides necessary calories when the land falls short.

Maybe the largest physical contrast from traditional dairy to modern regenerative ranching is that the infrastructure is lighter, more mobile, and deliberately imperfect. Permanence and large scale don’t fit into an evolving system.

Why the Consumer Is Part of the System

Elizabeth is clear that regenerative farming isn’t something farmers can do alone.

She’s skeptical of the idea that this regenerative food will wind up neatly packaged on grocery shelves. After all, physical and relational distance from farms is what allowed industrial systems to flourish in the first place.

It’s not realistic to expect more traditional farming practices to thrive in an environment ruled by modern expectations. Quick and cheap are what consumers expect, but that’s not what regenerative ranching (or nature) can deliver.

Instead, Elizabet talks about proximity: farm stands, on-farm meals, tours, and direct relationships.A return to a time when farms and communities worked together to support one another. When people taste food raised this way and see the land that produced it, something shifts. It becomes personal and they feel the responsibility to help the land flourish.

It’s not about growing the output to meet the eaters’ demands. It’s about shrinking the gap between eater and producer.

What This Farm Actually Represents

This ranch isn’t proof that regenerative farming is easy. It’s proof that it’s possible, even on land shaped by decades of conventional management.

It shows what happens when soil health becomes the decision-maker instead of yield targets, when animals are treated as ecological tools rather than units of production, and when adaptation is valued over rigid systems.

Just as importantly, it acknowledges human and ecological limits. That’s because the biggest change isn’t on the land, it’s in the people making the decisions. And that’s the hardest part.

This story won’t offer easy answers. It does offer a clearer picture of what change can look like, for farmers and consumers alike… gradual, imperfect, and shaped as much by people as by the land.

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In this episode, first-generation farmer Elizabeth Collins and fifth-generation farmer Brad Wiley walk through how pigs, chickens, and cattle are rotated across the farm, how wallows and disturbance factor into regeneration, and why infrastructure decisions shape what’s possible more than theory ever could. The conversation moves through pasture poultry design, predator pressure, feed sourcing, and the nutritional trade-offs behind omega-3 and omega-6 ratios—along with how and why they test meat rather than rely on claims.

The episode also turns the lens toward consumers: why food labels fail, what responsibility shifts back to eaters in decentralized systems, and how trust is rebuilt through transparency rather than scale. Collins and Wiley speak candidly about mistakes, losses, and learning curves, offering a grounded look at regeneration as a long-term relationship with land, animals, and people—not a shortcut or a brand.

Follow This Farm

Otter Creek Farm,
Upstate New York

Website: https://agreenerworld.org/northeast/otter-creek-farm-johnsonville-ny/
Farm Stays: https://ottercreekfarmny.com/page/graceful-acres-farmstay
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gracefulacresfarmstay/

Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts https://theregenaissance.news/subscribe

In this live farm tour from August 2025, Ryan visits J&L Green Farm in Virginia, where farmer Jordan Green walks through the operational heart of the farm. From on-farm poultry processing and cold-chain management to multi-species shelters, brooder systems, and grazing rotation, the conversation focuses on why systems are built the way they are and how they’ve evolved through years of iteration.

Jordan explains how trial and error shaped the farm’s infrastructure, where early designs fell short, and how incremental changes reduced labor, improved animal welfare, and increased long-term land productivity. The episode offers a grounded look at regenerative farming as a design problem—one defined by constraints, economics, and long-term resilience rather than ideology.

Connect With A Rancher

J&L Green Farm
Virginia,

Website: https://jlgreenfarm.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlgreenfarm/
X: https://x.com/JLGreenFarm

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In this live farm tour, Ryan visits Peony Lane Wine in Paonia, Colorado, where winemaker Ben Justman walks through what it actually takes to grow grapes and make wine under these conditions. Moving from vineyard to cellar, the conversation covers vine training, freeze damage and retraining, irrigation strategy, and how pressing and fermentation choices are downstream of the land itself, not abstract philosophy.

Justman explains why truly place-based wine offers a different drinking experience, how additives and labeling often obscure reality, and why commodity wine and site-focused wine are fundamentally different products. The episode is a grounded look at what low-intervention wine means when farming comes first—and why regions like Colorado deserve far more attention in conversations about quality and resilience.

Farms & Resources Mentioned

Peony Lane Wine
Paonia, Colorado
Website: https://www.peonylanewine.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peonylanewine/
X: https://x.com/PeonyLaneWine

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In this on-the-ground episode of the The Regenaissance Podcast, we walk the pastures of New York’s Hudson Valley with Michael Greco, a first-generation farmer building a regenerative sheep operation entirely on leased land.

Michael breaks down why sheep can make regeneration viable on smaller landscapes and what that actually looks like day to day. From stocking density and daily moves to shade, minerals, predator protection, and on-farm harvest, this conversation is a clear-eyed look at the systems thinking behind profitable, humane, and resilient food production.

If you’ve ever wondered how regenerative agriculture scales down—not up—this episode is worth your time.

Connect with Michael Greco:
Website | Instagram