How patient design and ideological diversity are reshaping food production

Ashley sits down with Ryan Blosser and Trevor Piersol, co-founders of Shenandoah Permaculture Institute and authors of Mulberries in the Rain, to explore permaculture beyond the stereotype of backyard herb spirals. We discuss what sets permaculture apart from regenerative agriculture, the evolving demographics of people drawn to food production, and how ideological diversity from left-wing environmentalists to conservative land stewards strengthens the movement.

We dive into the practicalities of perennial systems, why comfrey matters more than you might think, and the often-overlooked messiness of annual vegetable farming. Ryan and Trevor challenge permaculture dogma around native plants and invasive species, sharing our own experiences with bamboo and autumn olive. We also discuss Ryan's innovative farm-based education program that integrates Virginia's K-12 curriculum standards with food production and how it's showing promising results for student achievement while producing thousands of pounds of organic food for the community.

As the discussion turns philosophical, we explore what "doomer optimism" really means: preparing for an uncertain future not out of fear, but because building local food systems, land relationships, and community resilience are inherently fulfilling. We examine land access challenges, the psychology of sustainable living, and why relationships, especially those forged across ideological lines, may be our most valuable resource as we face systemic change. Perfect for anyone interested in permaculture, regenerative agriculture, education, and building meaningful alternatives to industrial food systems.

The Shenandoah Permaculture Institute teaches practical, hands-on permaculture with a focus on building healthy, resilient communities. Co-founded by Ryan Blosser and Trevor Piersol, along with Dr. Ted Butchart and Emilie Gooch Tweardy, SPI offers Permaculture Design Courses and workshops that blend ecological knowledge with human-centered design. Their mission is to equip communities with the tools and strategies for health and resilience, from soil to self.

@shenandoahpermaculture

https://www.shenandoahpermaculture.com/

Ashley Fitzgerald sits down with Elizabeth Oldfield to explore how we can foster genuine connection across ideological and cultural divides and why it matters more than ever.

Drawing on Elizabeth’s experience leading the Theos think tank, hosting the acclaimed podcast The Sacred, and living in an intentional community, they discuss the power of combining rigorous research with compelling storytelling to actually shift culture and change minds. They dig into why demanding ideological purity fractures movements and how to build real coalitions across genuine disagreement instead. Elizabeth shares her hard-won insights into the neurobiology of listening, understanding our fight-or-flight responses and the human tendency toward homophily, and how this knowledge can help us create spaces where people can actually hear each other.

The conversation takes a deeper turn as they wrestle with the surprising case for institutions. Even imperfect ones like churches, schools, and intentional communities are essential scaffolding for human flourishing. Elizabeth shares her own journey from childhood cultural Christianity through atheism and back to a grounded, mysterious faith, and reflects on the spiritual hunger she’s been witnessing emerge over the past several years, even among those who thought they’d moved beyond religion.

Throughout, they keep returning to the unglamorous, essential work of showing up locally: sitting on school boards, knowing your neighbors, breaking bread together. In a time of fragmentation and uncertainty, they suggest this might be the most radical and necessary act of all.

Surviving Consolidation, One Pig at a Time

Greg Gunthorp, a fourth-generation Indiana hog farmer, joins Nate for a wide-ranging conversation about survival, stubbornness, and adaptation in the American meat industry.

Greg grew up raising pigs on pasture as part of a diversified family farm, using livestock as a tool to care for the land and keep the operation afloat. But by the early 1990s, the writing was on the wall. In 1994, Greg’s father, Theodore, told him that the era of the independent hog farmer was over. Greg didn’t accept it. Determined not to be the last Gunthorp to raise pigs, he bought the sow herd from his father and struck out on his own on 65 acres just down the road.

Then the market collapsed. By 1998, Greg was selling pigs for less than what his great-grandfather had earned during the Great Depression. Walking away would have made sense, but instead, a chance conversation after a conference changed everything. Someone suggested he call a Chicago restaurant that was buying whole hogs. Greg picked up the phone, not knowing who Charlie Trotter was. “Bring me a pig,” the chef said. That delivery, into one of the most celebrated restaurants in the world, marked Greg’s entry into foodservice and a niche that would keep the farm alive.

As farm-to-table gained momentum in the late ’90s and early 2000s, Gunthorp Farm grew rapidly, at times doubling year over year. Greg talks about what that growth felt like, and why it eventually slowed as larger brands entered the space and redefined what “farm-to-table” meant. “The big guys woke up,” he says. “Most of it comes from them now.”

The pandemic brought another shock, especially as downtown Chicago restaurants shut down and office workers disappeared. Greg speaks candidly about the fragility of restaurant-driven farm businesses, thin margins, and how quickly demand can vanish.

Throughout the conversation, adaptation is the throughline. From expanding into poultry, sheep, and on-farm processing, to developing fully cooked products and partnering with other farmers, Greg shares how flexibility, and a refusal to quit, has sustained the operation. Today, Greg, his wife Lei, and son Evan farm 240 acres with a growing team, raising and processing pigs, poultry, and sheep using practices rooted in past generations and refined with modern tools.

This episode is an unvarnished look at modern meat production, the limits of food trends, and what it really takes to keep farming on your own terms when the odds aren’t in your favor.

You can find Greg at Gunthorp Farms, a family-run pasture-based livestock and USDA-inspected meat processing farm in LaGrange County, Indiana.

https://gunthorpfarms.com/

Nate sits down with Jason Mauck to discuss his hard-won experience running Munsee Meats, a small-scale meat processing operation in Indiana. What started as an opportunistic response to empty shelves during COVID became a two-and-a-half-year battle with regulatory bureaucracy that ultimately revealed the deep structural problems plaguing America’s food system.

Jason estimates the regulatory burden cost him over a million dollars in inefficiencies, despite buying the facility for just $200,000. Meanwhile, imported beef faces far less scrutiny than his local operation ever did.

Jason and Nate explore what a revitalized rural food system could actually look like—one built on diversified farms with animals integrated back onto the landscape. They discuss Jason’s innovative relay cropping systems that capture 80% of corn yields with 40% of the seed, while simultaneously raising chickens, pigs, goats, and sheep in the same fields.

They examine the creative marketing strategies that worked, like automated fundraisers that gave 25% back to schools and churches while capturing retail margins, and freezer kiosks that allowed convenient pickup. Rural America has been systematically hollowed out over decades of consolidation, with farmers forced to compete against one another rather than collaborate.

Jason argues that the same regulatory frameworks supposedly designed for food safety have become firewalls that protect corporate interests while making it nearly impossible for small operators to succeed.

Bringing animals back to the land could restore soil health, replenish aquifers, revitalize rural economies, create meaningful employment opportunities, enhance human health through improved nutrition, and break the corporate stranglehold on our food supply. The technology and knowledge exist; what’s missing is the regulatory reform and political will to let it happen.

Antitrust attorney Basel Musharbash discusses recent political whiplash in beef markets and the broader question of how actually to enforce anti-monopoly law. The conversation covers why ranchers erupted over being blamed for high beef prices, the history of promises versus lackluster execution going back to early 1900s meatpacking cases, and how the Packers and Stockyards Act was supposed to regulate these companies but never really worked except briefly in the 1940s, Reagan's 1982 announcement ending merger enforcement and the five year transformation that followed, the difference between free markets and accessible competitive markets, why monopolies arise even without government help through predatory pricing and exclusive contracts, the paradox of needing to use power to break up concentrated power, Robert Jackson's 1937 speech on economic democracy without bureaucracy or regimentation, concrete immediate actions like debarment from government contracts versus multi-year DOJ investigations, why Congress could pass a breakup bill instead of waiting on agencies, the political opportunity for either party to outflank the other on this issue, Dan Osborne's economic dictatorship framing, and why economists should maybe just be ignored entirely when they dismiss rancher testimony with modeling exercises.

Basel is Managing Attorney at the Antimonopoly Counsel, specializing in antitrust and trade regulation with a focus on agriculture, rural economies, and consumer protection. He has represented farmers against meat processors, defended workers from illegal noncompete agreements, and advocated before the FTC, DOJ, and USDA. Basel authored the landmark 2024 report “Kings Over the Necessaries of Life” on monopolization in American agriculture. His work has been featured in Reuters, AP, Time Magazine, CNBC, and other major outlets.

Welcome to Beef Week! 🐄

Nate sits down with rancher, entrepreneur, and farm advocate Mike Callicrate for a deep dive into the crisis facing America's cattle industry—and the path forward.Mike traces the devastating consolidation of the beef industry from the 1980s to today, explaining how we went from 20 competitive cattle buyers to just four dominant packers controlling 85% of the market. He shares his firsthand experience of being blackballed by the industry after speaking out, forced to watch his 12,000-head feedlot sit empty despite having 14,000 cattle ready to sell.But this isn't just a story of corporate capture—it's a blueprint for resistance. Mike details how he built Ranch Foods Direct, creating a model that bypasses the exploitative middlemen by connecting producers directly to consumers. He reveals the shocking inefficiencies of industrial meat processing (700 gallons of water per animal vs. 30-50 gallons in small plants) and explains why the "efficiency" narrative is a myth designed to justify consolidation.The conversation covers critical topics, including:How boxed beef became a weapon to eliminate small regional packersWhy USDA inspection protects big players while crushing small operationsThe real reason beef is safer when carcasses hang for 6-7 days (and why big packers won't do it)Mike's vision for "maker-owned markets"—community food hubs where producers own the real estate and control their destinyWhy breaking up retail giants like Walmart is as important as addressing packer monopoliesMike offers a third way between predatory capitalism and socialism: distributed ownership. His maker-owned market concept shows how communities can rebuild local food systems that create wealth, foster connection, and produce genuinely better food.Whether you're a producer fighting for survival, a consumer wanting better food, or someone concerned about rural America's collapse, this conversation provides both the context to understand how we got here and the vision to imagine something better.

Building an Edible Perennial Nursery with Nick Wren Nick Wren of Living Soil Tree Farms joins Jason to talk about the practical realities of starting and running an edible perennial nursery. Nick shares his journey from civil engineering to tree farming, explaining why he became passionate about native nut trees, fruit trees, and woody perennials.They cover the nuts and bolts of nursery operations, including seasonal rhythms throughout the year, the use of air-pruning beds for propagating seedlings, and the advantages of growing trees from seed versus grafted cultivars. Nick discusses the challenges of meeting market demand, balancing online shipping with local sales, and the economics of different scale operations.Key topics include strategies for protecting seeds from rodents, managing deer pressure, the role of composting and soil biology in tree health, and why greenhouse infrastructure is less critical for native tree production than many people assume. Nick makes a strong case for black walnuts, hazelnuts, and other underutilized native trees that could play a larger role in regional food systems.The episode also explores the broader philosophy behind small-scale tree nurseries, including the importance of preserving genetic diversity through seed saving, the potential for silvopasture systems, and how this work connects to building more resilient local food economies. Nick shares practical advice for anyone interested in starting their own nursery operation, from building air pruning boxes to grading and pricing trees. For those interested in edible landscaping, permaculture, or small-scale agriculture, this conversation offers both inspiration and actionable knowledge about working with native and edible perennial plants.Connect with Nick:Website: livingsoiltreefarm.comYouTube: Living Soil Tree Farm

Jason and Ashley welcome back Chris Smaje to discuss his new book, “Finding Lights in a Dark Age,” now available for purchase. Chris is a returning guest who first appeared on the podcast to discuss his influential book “Small Farm Future,” which helped shape many of the show’s conversations about agricultural futures and sustainability. He returned previously to discuss “Say No to a Farm-Free Future,” his critique of George Monbiot and proponents of lab-grown food alternatives. In this episode, Chris discusses his third book, which assumes a transition to a lower energy future and explores practical approaches to living well despite new challenges.

The conversation covers his solar system model of political organization, distributism and Catholic social teaching, the complexities of managing commons and collective resources, lessons learned from running his own farm, and the potential for relocalization of food systems and community structures.

Chris draws on his experiences managing a small farm with a community of people, including challenges with woodland commons, cooperative work arrangements, and the practical realities of collective decision-making. The discussion explores demographic challenges, migration patterns, the role of family and household economies, and the distinction between romanticized visions of agrarian life and the nuanced, practical arrangements required to make local systems function effectively.

The book argues for a more distributed, locally-oriented approach to politics and economics, moving away from centralized state power toward bottom-up community organization. Chris explores how people might navigate the breakdown of high-energy modernity by developing local autonomy, access to land, and new forms of community organization that balance individual agency with collective needs. The conversation ends with reflections on what flourishing might look like in a post-abundance future and why the so-called Dark Ages may not have been dark for everyone.

Nigel Best doesn’t have time for your bullshit. He’s too busy welding gates, rotating cattle, building spiral staircases, and conducting “illicit beef transactions” in Craigslist parking lots.

Missouri woodworker and regenerative rancher Nigel Best joins Jason and Nate to talk about what it actually takes to make a living on the land—without going broke, without selling your soul, and without waiting for Washington to save you.

In this episode:

• Why coming up hard isn’t a strategy (but flat tires and crooked fingers are part of the deal)

• The truth about rotational grazing: genius in wet years, dumbass in droughts

• How to raise beef when customers complain about prices and the president says you’re greedy

• The case for land value tax as the only moral tax (and why nobody’s entitled to your heartbeats)

• Why the informal economy beats W-2 farms and digital surveillance every time

• Meat packer monopolies vs. the last stand of independent ranchers

• Two competing theories of change: political antitrust warfare or agorist opt-out

• Why every kid should work construction with crotchety old men before graduating high school

Fair warning: Nigel solves exactly zero problems in this episode. What he does offer is three decades of hard-won wisdom from someone who’s actually been “out there in the rain at midnight with their hand up a cow.” No Instagram-perfect farm content. No verbatim regurgitation of regenerative ag books. Just the unvarnished reality of feeding yourself, your family, and your neighbors in a system designed to extract value from everyone who touches it.

If you’re tired of influencers peddling theories and want to hear from someone who’s actually dragging their knuckles through it, this one’s for you.

Guest: Nigel Best (@NigelBest5)
Hosts: Jason & Nate
Topics: Regenerative Agriculture, Land Tax, Agorism, Beef Industry, Rural Economics, Informal Markets

Why We Need Each Other More Than Ever

https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268210335/the-dignity-of-dependence/

https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-feminization/

Ashley welcomes back Leah Sargeant to discuss her new book, The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto. They explore two core arguments: that women's equality with men doesn't depend on being interchangeable with them, and that no humans are truly autonomous; we're all dependent on one another throughout our lives.

The conversation moves from "doom" to optimism, examining how modern society tries to flatten sex differences and promote an illusion of self-reliance, particularly around pregnancy, motherhood, and the workplace. Leah critiques the approach of treating women as "defective men" who need to suppress their biology and feminine qualities to succeed in male-normed environments.

Ashley and Leah discuss Helen Andrews' controversial essay on workplace feminization, the false ideal of the independent individual, and how this myth fails everyone—from infants to aging populations. They explore practical solutions, including community building, workplace flexibility, policy changes like baby bonuses and caregiver Social Security credits, and the importance of creating space for interdependence at every scale.

The episode celebrates the seasons of life, the necessity of mutual dependence, and finding dignity in our need for one another, from the everyday juggling of school pickups and neighborhood networks to the profound vulnerabilities of pregnancy, illness, and aging.