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 or corporate backing. Enjoy :)

What we talk about:

- How the Mulberry Tree App works - farm-to-fork recipes, local farmer discovery, 24/7 farmers market
- Why they don't charge farmers listing or marketing fees
- Facebook censorship of farm products during COVID and why it pushed them to build their own platform
- The grassroots marketing approach: vendor events, merchandise, one-on-one outreach
- Alpha-gal syndrome - what it is, how misinformation is hurting people, and why the app has 300+ alpha-gal-safe recipes
- Mold illness, raising four kids on a farm, and the tribulations behind building the business
- The case for food sovereignty and why 77 farms closing per day is a national problem

Timestamps:

0:00 — Intro
1:10 — What is the Mulberry Tree App?
6:45 — How it handles the convenience problem for consumers
12:00 — The origin story - a dream, a husband, and no coding experience
18:30 — Facebook censorship and why decentralization matters
26:00 — Grassroots marketing: vendor events, shirts, 400 downloads in two weeks
32:00 — Consumer patterns and what makes the app experience different
39:00 — The town square, courses, live animal listings, and cottage industry sellers
47:00 — Growing up on farms, moving to Arkansas, raising kids outside the system
54:00 — Mold illness, alpha-gal, and the year their son was on steroids
1:04:00 — Why most businesses fail and why they didn't
1:09:00 — Final thoughts: know your farmer, know your food

How to Support Francine:

Download the app via their website
Connect with her via X 

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

• How Ashley went from graduate school to building a regenerative farm from scratch
• Why conventional chicken and pork now have a fatty acid profile closer to seed oils than real meat
• The 100-year shift in dietary fats and what it's doing to human metabolism
• How Nourish Food Club is reviving the farm cooperative model to support small farmers
• The bureaucratic bullying small farms face daily - and why the system is designed against them

Timestamps

00:00 – Ashley's health crisis and path to farming

06:30 – Building Angel Acres from scratch

13:00 – Lessons from 12 years of competitive golf

18:45 – How Nourish Food Club works

26:00 – Why cheap and quality food can't coexist

33:30 – The 100-year shift away from saturated fat

42:00 – How corn and soy changed pork and chicken

49:30 – Phytonutrients in pasture-raised meat

56:00 – Why grocery labels are meaningless

01:03:00 – The problem with indoor farming

01:09:30 – Bureaucratic bullying and the jerky incident

01:17:00 – Why small farm costs are structurally higher

01:28:00 – Where consumers can start

Links

Website
Instagram
YouTube

Regenaissance YouTube Channel

About The Podcast: The Regenaissance Podcast explores the people, farms, and ideas rebuilding our food system from the ground up.

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

1. How maple syrup is made (and why most people have it wrong).
2. The modern sugar bush (100+ miles of tubing, vacuum systems, and leak-chasing).
3. Reading labels (how to spot fake or blended "maple" products at the grocery store).
4. The full production season why it's a 6-week sprint, what starts it, and what ends it).
5. Farm succession and conservation (how the Baird family is transitioning a 107-year-old farm to the next generation). 

Timestamps

00:00 — Welcome to Baird Farm: 107 years of maple and dairy history

02:00 — Why it's so hard to keep a farm across generations

08:00 — Sap vs. syrup: what you're actually pulling from the tree

09:00 — How to read a maple syrup label (and spot the fakes)

11:00 — How vacuum tubing works and why it doubles production

17:00 — How tapping actually works: drilling, spouts, and tree health

21:00 — The production season: a 6-week window from February to April

34:00 — Farm succession: leasing to own and navigating family transitions

43:00 — Reverse osmosis and the sugar house: how sap becomes syrup

47:00 — Sugar maple vs. red maple: how to tell them apart in the bush

Connect with Jason & Baird Farm:

Website
Instagram

Follow our Youtube Channel

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 customer 
19:00 – The final straw: filthy shop, wrong pig returned, going full PMA

Connect With Bryson:

Website
Instagram

Follow the tour on YouTube

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