The Regenaissance Podcast

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 animal science degree, and years running large-scale feedlots before he became one of ten ranchers who sued major meatpacker IBP in 1996 over market manipulation, a case that ended in a $1.28 billion jury verdict the judge later overturned.<...

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 Midwest, most garlic sold in the U.S. is imported, and a soil-borne fungal disease can make land unable to grow garlic for 20 to 40 years once it takes hold. This is a risk C...

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, Joel breaks down exactly how that herd-share structure works economically, and then walks through the legal fight he's currently in.

He gets into why that claim doesn't hold up, who's helping him fight it (including...

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 January 2025.

We talk through how the app works, why convenience is the real barrier between consumers and local farms, and what it actually takes to build something like this without outside funding...

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 to families.

What We Cover

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

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 he left USDA butchers 
06:00 – PSE meat explained: what stress does to pork quality 
09:00 – Electro stunning abuse and burn wounds on the meat 
16:00 – USDA butcher threatens to ice him out as a custom...

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 — Why farmers not making money is everyone's problem

1:00 — What on-farm milk testing actually costs

2:00 — Building a farm from scratch while working full-time

5:00 — Quitting...

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 the companies could do it if they wanted to, they just won't because it's cheaper and easier to go after open range.

Casey Murph is a fifth-generation cattle rancher i...

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 Regenaissance archive - real voices from American farmers on the systems, economics, and communities shaping food and land in the US.

Timestamps

00:00:00 Why they homeschool
00:01:30 School as fear, not learning
00:03:00 Preserving curiosity over teaching content
00:05:30 Disconnection from food as r...

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 to scale what he calls the only truly regenerative egg operation in the country.

5 Key Topics

Timestamps

[00:00] Intro & egg...

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 communities shaping food and land in the US.

Timestamps

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 systems, economics, and communities shaping food and land in the US.

Timestamps

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

What You'll Learn

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 podcast episode for the complete story behind what you're seeing on the ground.

Key Topics

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 responsible for translating Joel's system into daily practice. 

Together they walk us through mob grazing at extreme stocking densities, a heritage genetics breeding program built for a wo...

Fascinating episode, touring a regenerative bison and pecan farm! A first for me. 

A bit about the ranch & tour...

TLC ranch is located in Souther Oklahoma. It's ran by Cindy Sheffield (who tours us today) and her husband Tread and their two daughters and husbands, where they raise bison and manage a large organic pecan orchard. The ranch began in 1997 when the family purchased land that many others had passed on, seeing potential where others did not.

What started as weekend trips for hunting and time outdoors gradually turned into a long-term commitment t...

Caden and Patrick run Cable Family Farm in Piedmont, North Carolina, where they manage a small 80 bed no-till market garden along with pasture-raised eggs and chickens. Caden started the farm at 18, and then a few years later was able to convince Patrick to join him.

Their main concern starting the farm was how would they make money? This tour shows how they produce their crops and animals in a healthy, sustainable way, along with their marketing and production approach to creating a viable small-scale farm production.

It was fascinating and productive to hear from these...

About Rehoboth & Josh & Jessica:
This was a really fun tour. The farm has an interesting backstory. It was initially just a backyard chicken hobbyist farm, and then after feeding themselves and friends, they saw the health impact and the localized food impact - then began trading meat for land access. 

Josh spent years during 2015-18 waiting for the right property top open up, with multiple failed attempts, before securing the current farm in 2018. 

They launched full-time in 2019, saw rapid growth during 2020 with that demand spike, and then developed th...

Our farm tour of Tony Eash's pasture raised pork, chicken and beef farm.

Tony grew up farming alongside his brother Phil in West Virginia, learning animal care and haymaking at a young age. After the sudden loss of their father, the brothers leaned on their Mennonite community for support and chose to continue farming. Tony tours us through his farm, his way of life, and you're able to see how much he cares about farming, the land and animals, and the importance of delivering quality food to consumers.

He's had a few battles with the...

This one was fun. Jacob and Jenna tour us through Baird Farm, a fourth-generation Vermont maple farm operating since 1918. They walk me through the sugarbush, tubing systems, and sugarhouse, and how its all made/stored/sold and its history. Fascinating stuff - hope you get something out of it. 

Key Topics

What You’ll Learn

A walk-through tour of Wrick Ranches in western Colorado with rancher Jason Wrick, covering calf weaning, water systems, drought realities, regenerative grazing decisions, and how a working ranch stays financially viable through direct-to-consumer beef, on-farm retail, and diversified income streams.

Key Topics

What You’ll Learn

Charles and Heather Maude are fifth-generation ranchers in South Dakota who farm home raised beef and pork direct-to-consumer. In this episode they describe their family history on the land, their early lives in agriculture, and the events that led to a criminal indictment by the United States Forest Service over a disputed boundary fence.

The episode documents their personal background, the mechanics of Western land use, and a detailed account of how a civil land issue escalated into a federal criminal case.

Key Topics

In this episode, we tour through Rucker Farm with Garrett Heydt to see how a large, leased regenerative operation actually works; covering hay, turkeys, water systems, minerals, and grazing decisions that shape animal health and land outcomes over time.

Key Topics 

Why You Should Listen

Otter Creek Farm is located in upstate New York. First-generation farmer Elizabeth Collins walks through how herself and 5th generation farmer  Brad Wiley rebuilt a former conventional dairy into a small, regenerative, animal-welfare-driven operation.

The conversation moves from soil-health principles and rotational grazing to the practical realities of feed decisions, omega-3/6 tradeoffs, infrastructure design, and why consumer responsibility is central to fixing the food system.

Key topics 

This live farm tour back in August 2025 was at J&L Green Farm in Virginia, where Jordan Green walks us through the operational heart of the farm. From on-farm poultry processing and cold storage to multi-species shelter design and silvopasture development, the conversation is delves into why certain farming infrastructures and layouts exist, how animals are rotated, on-farm problems with certain infrastructure, and how design iterations have helped him reduce labor, improved animal welfare, and increased land productivity.

Key Topics

Ben Justman takes me inside Peony Lane Wine in Paonia, Colorado for a live farm tour of one of America’s highest-elevation vineyard regions. 

He educates me on how grapes are grown, how vines survive harsh winters, how low-intervention wine is made, and why true place-based winemaking creates a totally different drinking experience. 

It’s interesting to see how he constantly adapts to the seasons, soil, weather, and other farming variables to keep the operation productive and high quality.

Key Topics

This on-the-ground episode explores Michael Grecos first-generation regenerative sheep operation, run entirely on leased land in New York’s Hudson Valley.

We walk the pastures with Michael as he explains stocking strategy, grazing philosophy, shade management, lambing, predator protection, mineral systems, on-farm slaughter, and why sheep can make regenerative agriculture viable on smaller landscapes.

Key Topics

In this live farm tour episode from July this year, I visited Julie Friend and her farm, Wildom Farm, a regenerative livestock farm where cows, sheep, chickens, and pigs are raised together on pasture and in forest systems. The discussion covers daily pasture rotation, animal behavior, predator dynamics, soil health, and how regenerative management affects animal welfare, meat quality, and ecosystem resilience. The farmer walks through real trade-offs, processing challenges, and why transparency and letting people visit farms matters.

Key Topics 

This episode was recorded during the Colorado farm tour and features a long-form conversation with Jason Wrich from Wrich Ranches, a regenerative cattle operation built on leased land, rebuilt soil, and decades of hands-on learning.

We walk through the origins of the ranch, the economics behind conventional vs regenerative systems, the realities of grazing management, and the cultural disconnect shaping how Americans think about food.

The discussion moves from land stewardship and plant physiology to market forces, subsidies, meat processing, the American diet, and why local food systems matter.

It’s a grounded lo...

This episode comes from our recent farm tour at White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia, where Will Harris walked us through the land and the systems that support it. 

White Oak is a multigenerational operation that has shifted from conventional row-crop agriculture to a diverse, closed-loop ecosystem of grass-fed cattle, wildlife, and restored soils. Will explains how these relationships work in practice, the long-term effects of pesticides and monoculture, and why ecological cycles - not industrial extraction - determine the health and future of the land.

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Hickory Nut Gap is a century-old family farm in Western North Carolina, now run by Jamie and Amy, who shifted the operation toward grass-fed beef, pastured poultry, and regenerative grazing. Their model connects soil health, animal welfare, and community resilience - from rotational grazing that builds biodiversity to supplying local restaurants and retailers. This tour looks directly at how they raise animals, manage land, and keep farming viable in the Appalachian mountains.

Key Topics 

Ben Justman of Peony Lane Wine grew up on this Colorado orchard, returned in his mid-20s, taught himself winemaking, and now runs a small high-elevation Pinot Noir winery on his family’s land, built alongside his father. 

Key Topics 

Why Listen 

JR Burdick of Nourishing Family Farm explains how losing his family’s farm in the 1980s and later being forced out of his dairy co-op shaped his path toward raw milk, soil-based farming, and local food independence. His story exposes how modern agriculture breaks families and communities - and how rebuilding begins one farm at a time.

Key Topics

Why Listen

August Hortsmann is a first-generation Missouri cattleman and founder of Hortsmann Cattle Company, a regenerative ranch built on his family’s land near St. Louis. 

What began as a childhood passion grew into a full-time operation which, over the past eight years, has integrated adaptive grazing, direct-to-consumer beef sales, and long-term soil-focused practices. His education was established through years of study, observation, and trial. August spent countless seasons working ranch jobs integrating regenerative practices, allowing him studying grazing systems and testing various methods. 

Augusts story shares undertones of the uncertain, long road taken for each farm...

Will Harris is a sixth-generation cattleman and owner of White Oak Pastures, a 158-year-old family farm in Bluffton, Georgia. Since 1866, the Harris family has practiced land-based farming rooted in regeneration, humane animal husbandry, and zero-waste production. 

In this episode, Will reflects on the farm’s evolution from industrial cattle operations to a living ecosystem. He discusses soil, community, balance, symbiosis in an ecosstem, rural farming communities, stewardship, organic matter, his family history, and more. 

Key Topics

Ryan sits down with Joel Hollingsworth of Smoke River Ranch in Oklahoma, who lays out a clear, unflinching diagnosis of America’s decline. 

He then takes you through the solution, step by step, exactly whats required. In short, the miracle ahead has only one path, and that is a restored and vitalized rural America. 

Key Topics:

Why You Should Listen:

 - Learn how rural collapse happened.
 - See how fi...

When chronic illness left Cindy bedridden in her twenties, she began questioning everything she’d been taught about health - and later, about farming. What started as a search for healing led her and her husband to rebuild their land in Burneyville, Oklahoma, where TLC Ranch now stands: a regenerative bison ranch and certified organic pecan orchard rooted in living systems rather than chemicals. Through decades of trial, floods, and faith, Cindy discovered that the same principles that restore the body also restore the soil. This episode traces how her recovery became the land’s recovery - and what it r...

Caden and Patrick are first-generation farmers in North Carolina who started Cable Family Farm while still in high school. Together, they’ve built a small-scale regenerative farm focused on pasture-raised poultry and no-till market gardening, proving that young people can make a living from the land through hard work, curiosity, and faith.

Cable Family Farm practices regenerative farming focused on soil health, animal welfare, and local connection through small-scale, community-based food production.

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This episode is a little different: instead of a sit-down podcast, I join Justin Rhodes for a live tour around his North Carolina farm.

When you think of homesteaders, Justin Rhodes is the first person you think of. With over a million followers on YouTube and multiple successful books, Justin and his family have paved the way for new homesteaders through documenting their journey. A fourth-generation steward of his family’s land in North Carolina, Justin and his wife Rebecca raise their five children on it.

What we cover: