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 time: 10:30pm. Wake up: 3:30am

6:30 — Why they walked away from pigs and chickens

8:00 — How the Amish moving in changed everything

Connect with Triple E

Website
Instagram
Watch full episode

Follow the tour on YouTube

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 in northeastern Arizona. This episode covers that fight, and what's at stake for generational ranching in America.

5 Key Topics:

1. How Ørsted is attempting to take Casey's winter range for industrial solar
2. Why solar should go on parking lots and brownfields, not productive grazing land
3. Ørsted's existing Arizona install powers a Meta data centre, not homes
4. The collapse of independent beef operations and what it's done to supply and price
5. Casey's strategy: state land pressure, political allies, and buying time

Timestamps:

00:00 - Casey intro
02:00 - The Ørsted solar threat
05:00 - Foreign-owned conglomerates
09:00 - Urban disconnection from food
11:00 - Where solar should go instead
18:00 - Political strategy and allies
19:00 - Ørsted's Pinal County install: homes promised, Meta data centre delivered
28:00 - Beef supply consolidation
31:00 - Feedlots and grass-finishing
36:00 - Approval timeline and how to help

Connect with Casey:
X

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 root cause
00:06:30 Age segregation & lost intergenerational culture
00:08:00 No screens - kids who can entertain themselves
00:10:00 Modeling self-sovereignty on the farm
00:11:30 Owning your day - the case for farming

Connect with Savage Mountain:

Website
Instagram

Follow the tour on YouTube

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

1. The pasture-raised label scam
2. Mobile coops as the real standard
3. Scaling regen without selling out
4. The corn/soy-free feed debate
5. Transparency over certification

Timestamps

[00:00] Intro & egg price controversy

[01:30] Patrick's military-to-farming path

[04:00] Inside a "pasture-raised" barn

[07:00] Why certifiers are grifters

[11:00] The Vital Farms breakdown

[18:00] Retail vs. decentralisation debate

[27:00] Corn & soy-free feed complexity

[37:00] Regenerative certification loopholes

[44:00] Sunnyside's growth timeline

[01:01:00] On-farm operations & rotation

Links

Website

Instagram

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

• 00:00 — The biological web that makes Tesla look simple
• 01:00 — Locust trees feeding cover crops across an entire field
• 03:30 — Cover crops and grazing replace the lime truck
• 05:30 — The moment Brad walked away from $30k in cash rent
• 07:30 — The manure spreader sinks into dead soybean soil
• 11:00 — 200 years of family memory on one piece of ground
• 22:30 — Life is designed to be a struggle

Link to the full episode:
Spotify
Apple
YouTube

Connect with Brad:
Otter Creek Farm

Follow the tour on YouTube

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

• 0:00 — Why build in America, not abroad
• 1:30 — The federalist structure and America's creation story
• 4:00 — Oklahoma's culture of self-governance
• 6:30 — Regen ag as a churn factory
• 7:30 — Triffin dilemma and hollowing out of domestic production
• 9:00 — How crop insurance locks out new farmers
• 11:00 — Foreign cattle and the 30% currency gap
• 12:30 — Land as money, not farmland
• 14:00 — Farm credit weaponized (Dustin Kittle story)
• 15:30 — Average rancher age 58.5
• 17:00 — What rural collapse looks like
• 18:30 — Sovereign debt and centralizing risk

Links:

Full podcast episode:
- YouTube
- Spotify
- Apple

Connect with Joel:
- Smoke River Ranch Website
- X

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
• Building and running a USDA-inspected on-farm processing facility
• USDA enforcement: how small and large plants are treated differently
• Constructed wetland wastewater treatment

What You'll Learn

• How paddock size and recovery time shift by season
• What to ask when you visit a pig farm
• What it costs to build on-farm processing and where permitting breaks down
• How HACCP regulation actually gives small plants flexibility if you understand it
• Why scale changes food safety risk in ways inspection policy doesn't reflect

Connect w Greg & Gunthorp Farms

Website
X
Instagram
Linkedin

Full podcast interview
Follow the tour on YouTube

Timestamps

00:00:00 Adaptive multi-paddock grazing explained
00:03:00 Pig health, thermoregulation, and antibiotic-free management
00:05:00 What consumers should ask when visiting a pig farm
00:15:00 Energy-free waterers and farrowing paddock design
00:27:00 Kill floor overview and processing plant history
00:36:00 Permitting, wastewater, and navigating USDA regulation
00:45:00 Food safety: small vs large plant accountability
00:51:00 USDA enforcement disparities and advocacy
01:02:00 Packaging equipment walkthrough
01:13:00 Smokehouse construction and constructed wetland wastewater system

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

• Direct-to-consumer beef and pork - how it actually works
• Cattle finishing and feeder calf production
• Farrowing crates - the honest case for and against
• Why feed quality determines meat quality in hogs
• Grain storage, forage systems, and matching stocking rate to grass
• The disputed river bottom and the federal land dispute

What You'll Learn

• How a small ranch runs multiple livestock enterprises on limited acres
• Why weaning date is a range management decision, not just an animal one
• What farrowing crates are actually for and why a skeptic changed her mind
• How monogastric and ruminant digestion produce fundamentally different meat
• What 115 years of private land management looks like - and what happens when it's challenged
• Why boundary disputes in the rural West are common, and criminal indictments are not

Connect with Charles & Heather

Website
Instagram
Facebook

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Introduction and context
00:02:00 — Cattle paddock: finished beef and this year's steer calves
00:04:00 — Weaning early — a drought and range management decision
00:06:00 — Grain bins: what they store and how they work
00:08:00 — Farrowing facility: why the crates exist
00:13:00 — Hog nutrition: simple stomach vs. ruminant digestion
00:15:00 — Pasture-raised pork: why quality and finish time differ
00:18:00 — Legacy equipment: grandfather's tractors and the 1948 truck
00:24:00 — The fence line: terrain, flooding, and where fences actually go
00:25:00 — The Forest Service dispute begins
00:27:00 — No written violation, no due process, criminal charges
00:28:00 — Working toward resolution: the Small Tracks Act
00:30:00 — Secretary Rollins, the temporary use agreement, and what changed
00:33:00 — The survey stakes, the crop damage, and the escalation
00:37:00 — What the land trade proposal was and why it was rejected
00:39:00 — What this case means for ranchers and private landowners
00:41:00 — Final reflections