The Regenaissance Podcast

I speak again with Ashley Armstrong about farming, food freedom and rebuilding our food system. 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 misin...

I speak with Courtney Feigl of Green Pastures Cattle Co. about her family’s Texas Longhorn farm in Wisconsin, a proposed 765 kV transmission line raising questions for local landowners, and the community work she has helped build through Ranch and Root. Courtney shares how she and her husband started their Longhorn herd in 2019 and how she moved from healthcare into farming, running a local farmer...

I speak with Kelsey Beck Fernandez about moving from restaurant and wine work into homesteading in Southern California, and how raising a family on one acre changed his view of self-sufficiency. We talk about why communal sufficiency lasts longer than going it alone, building a local network, scaling back before burnout, whole-animal butchery, preserving food, and bringing family and community tog...

I speak with Jade Koyle of Grand Teton Ancient Grains about ancient wheat, regenerative farming, the economics of growing food, and why so many people are trying to understand what has changed about modern bread. Jade is a sixth-generation farmer who runs Grand Teton Ancient Grains in eastern Idaho, where his family grows, mills and sells ancient grains including einkorn, spelt, emmer and khorasan...

I chat with Chaz Self of Grassway Organics about his fight to keep selling raw milk in Wisconsin, the decline of small dairy farms, and what the future of farming might look like amid consolidation, regulation and new technology. Chaz is a first-generation dairy farmer who runs Grassway Organics with his wife in East Troy, Wisconsin, managing roughly 640 acres and milking around 50 cows in a grass...

I chat with Mark Ellison of Grandad Farms in Emmett, Idaho, about how a health-driven search for better food eventually led him to start raising his own chickens, pigs and laying hens. Mark started with a borrowed patch of ground and a few hundred meat chickens. Today, Grandad Farms is raising animals on pasture, developing corn-and-soy-free feed, working toward organic certification and trying to...

I chat with Jesse Zimmerman, owner of Renick Valley Meats in Renick, West Virginia, to get into the butchering side of our food system - something I hadn't covered that deeply on the show yet. They have a fascinating story: Jesse and his wife bought a struggling custom butcher shop four years ago and have since transitioned it into a state-inspected facility. We get into the real differences betwe...

Who's Jason? Jason Hansen spent 14 years with the NRCS watching conservation rules bend for bigger, better-connected operators, and running cost-share programs structurally set up to fail the farmers they were meant to help. In 2018, he left USDA and founded Yield Unlimited. What is Yield Unlimited? Yield Unlimited is Jason Hansen's nonprofit that pays farmers directly, long-term, to run five core...

In this episode we cover why beef and dairy prices are climbing for reasons that go far beyond inflation, and what three decades of farm policy have cost rural America.  JR Burdick runs Nourishing Family Farm in north-central Missouri, milking dairy cows and raising hogs, and has sold direct-to-consumer since 2023 after leaving conventional commodity markets and USDA subsidy programs in 2022. This...

Ep 120: Mike Callicrate Mike Callicrate runs Ranch Foods Direct and Callicrate Beef out of Colorado Springs and St. Francis, Kansas. He built a fully vertically integrated operation involving raising cattle, slaughtering on-site, cutting, and selling direct to consumers. Our conversation follows his life story from his childhood on a small Colorado farm, a rodeo scholarship that led him into an an...

Matthew runs Cottage Pastures on 26 acres in Switzerland County, Indiana, raising pigs, chickens, cattle, and sheep alongside garlic and herbs - everything sold under the name is raised on the farm itself. He and his wife bought the property in 2022 and built it up from a homesteading project into a full working farm.  Our conversation centers on garlic: despite ideal growing conditions across the...

Joel Hollinsworth runs Smoke River Ranch in Oklahoma, where he's built a herd-share community of about 40 families co-owning cattle together - a model that's taken his herd from 15 animals to 425 in four years. But, this could all be taken away, as he's fighting two subpoenas from the Oklahoma Department of Securities on claims his shares are unregistered financial securities. In this episode, Joe...

Francine is a farmer, mom of four, and co-founder of the Mulberry Tree App - a farm-to-fork platform that lets consumers buy ingredients directly from local farms, with no listing fees, no middleman, and no data selling. She and her husband built it from scratch, self-funded, while navigating mold illness, alpha-gal syndrome in their family, and a bunch of scammers! They launched the app in Januar...

Ashley Armstrong is a first-generation regenerative farmer and co-founder of Strong Sistas, a health platform born out of her own autoimmune diagnosis. She built Angel Acres Farm in Southwest Michigan from the ground up, producing corn- and soy-free eggs, and went on to found Nourish Food Club - a cooperative network of small regenerative farms supplying clean, transparently raised food directly t...

Baird Maple Syrup Farm in Vermont has been producing maple syrup for over a century. I visit with farm managers and sugar makers, Jacob and Jenna Baird. Jenna is the fifth generation of her family to work this land. What We Cover How maple syrup is made (and why most people have it wrong). The modern sugar bush (100+ miles of tubing, vacuum systems, and leak-chasing). Reading labels (how to spot f...

Farmer Stories pulls the best conversations from The Regenaissance archive - real voices from American farmers on the systems, economics, and communities shaping food and land in the US. Triple Oaks Farm is a family-run regenerative farm in Virginia, raising pastured pigs and other livestock with a focus on food sovereignty, stewardship, and community. Timestamps: 00:00 – Biblical dominion and why...

Tony Eash runs Triple E Farms in West Virginia with his brother Phil - a raw dairy and pasture-raised operation built from bare land, rooted in regenerative principles and faith in community. Farmer Stories pulls the best conversations from The Regenaissance archive - real voices from American farmers on the systems, economics, and communities shaping food and land in the US. Timestamps: 0:00 — Wh...

Ørsted, a Danish renewable energy giant, is trying to lease 4,000 acres of Casey's state grazing land in Arizona to build an industrial solar array - land that he depends on for winter range, without which the ranch isn't viable. Casey believes productive grazing land shouldn't be touched when there's no shortage of barren desert, parking lots, and brownfields that could take solar instead - and t...

Ben and Hannah Yoder run Savage Mountain Farm, a 150-acre diversified, full-diet CSA on the Pennsylvania–Maryland line, rooted in Amish–Mennonite heritage and natural methods, raising produce, mushrooms, and pastured livestock while blending regenerative farming with homeschooling, community engagement, and a family-centered lifestyle. Farmer Stories pulls the best conversations from The Regenaiss...

Patrick Samuels is the founder of Sunnyside Egg Co., a Kentucky-based regenerative egg operation built on mobile coops and Amish/Mennonite farming partnerships. A former US Army Special Forces officer with no agricultural background, Patrick stumbled into farming through pandemic-era homesteading, worked inside one of the largest pasture-raised egg brands, and launched Sunnyside in December 2024 t...

Brad Wiley's family has farmed the same land since 1790. In this episode on our Farmer Stories series, he share shis wonder at the invisible web beneath his fields - and what it means to carry 200 years of family memory on a single piece of ground. Farmer Stories pulls the best conversations from The Regenaissance archive - real voices from American farmers on the systems, economics, and communiti...

Joel Hollingsworth runs Smoke River Ranch in northeast Oklahoma. This conversation from our Farmer Stories Series talks about why Joel believes we need to keep manufcaturing in America & why Oklahoma's culture of self-governance is a cultural model the country can build around. Farmer Stories pulls the best conversations from The Regenaissance archive - real voices from American farmers on the...

Gunthorp Farms is a 3rd generation pork and poultry operation in northern Indiana with on-farm USDA-inspected processing. This tour covers the full farm from farrowing paddocks to kill floor, smokehouse, and wastewater treatment. Watch alongside the full podcast episode for the full story. Key Topics Adaptive multi-paddock grazing in practice 50-paddock farrowing system and piglet management Build...

Charles and Heather Maude are 5th generation ranchers in South Dakota running a direct-to-consumer beef and pork operation built on land their family has worked for over 115 years. This tour covers the full operation - cattle, hogs, grain storage, equipment, and the irrigated river bottom at the center of a federal land dispute that drew national attention. Watch this alongside the full-length pod...

Joel Hollingsowrth has spent years doing something most people wouldn't dare try - building a regenerative cattle ranch from scratch, with no money, no inherited land, and no roadmap. And yet, it has become one of the pioneering regenerative farms in the nation.  Joel is joined by David, who left an Ivy League PhD program to ranch in rural Mexico before landing here, and Daniel, the herd manager r...