The Highwire with Del Bigtree - RETHINKING SUSTAINABILITY: THE ENGELHART AWAKENING

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

Ryland and Mollie Engelhart sit down with Del to share the hard lessons learned as their celebrated plant-based restaurant empire ran headlong into the realities of today’s food system. From Café Gratitude’s rise to their unexpected shift into regenerative farming, they reveal how bureaucracy, restrictive policies, and cultural pressures forced them to rethink what sustainability truly means. Their journey exposes the real challenges small farmers face—and why soil health and community resilience matter far more than marketing claims.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Our family has been serial entrepreneurs and when we get a vision, it's not about we have the experience or the expertise to do it, it's just we figure it out. My parents were hippies who wanted to do less harm and they read books like Be Here Now from Ram Dass and Autobiography of a Yogi and from a spiritual, cultural perspective to say I don't want to participate in the harm of animals for my nourishment made a lot of sense. And there's a lot of Hindu and philosophical belief systems that, you know, Ahimsa, the idea of trying to do the least amount of harm as possible. Eating meat just seemed like a clear option of I don't want to have death and cruelty and harm behind every meal. Growing up as a vegan, I don't have a very strong relationship with death.

Death was something to be avoided. My parents worked really hard. We were left alone a lot. That led to us being self-reliant and making food together. We and my brother are both really good at cooking. I can go to a restaurant and taste something, and I can go home and recreate that. We were really just a family of vegan entrepreneurs.

My father was living in San Francisco. My mother and him divorced, and his life fell apart. He met a woman named Terseys, fell in love. They ended up saying, well, how can we merge commerce and the sacred? Cafe Gratitude is an experiment in sacred commerce. In other words, a place of business, as well as a place of transformation.

You get to really experience being loved and accepted and being worthy, as well as eating some of the best foods. You are lusciously awake. My dad had invented this game called The Abounding River. Cafe Gratitude was a live version of his board game. The board game is a journey through six ways of being. You practice being the creator of your experience, being worthy, loving yourself.

One of my jobs was the game maister. I was not only just serving people their food, but I was also inviting them to pull a card or to practice laughing out loud for a minute, and we'd encourage the whole restaurant to engage in a social experiment of laughing out loud. This was radical and strange and awkward in San Francisco. We brought a lot of foods that we now know that are totally ubiquitous. Kinoa and kale were not foods that people ate. I believe that we were the first to serve a turmeric latte.

When we were making raw milk from soaking almonds, there was no almond milk in any grocery store in this country. We opened up a huge rush of energy around veganism, plant-based foods. What is it that you're doing that's so cult-like in here? It's making me come back. I had a vision that we were going to bring Cafe Gratitude to Los Angeles to the belly of the beast, and that we were going to transform the world. I think I'm going to get the I am luscious.

You are on Luscious. Oh, thank you. Cafe Gratitude. You guys actually have a lot of national press. Cafe Gratitude has been committed to providing a plant-based menu that is healthy. It was a lightning in a bottle. We couldn't imagine it. Every celebrity in Los Angeles was waiting at the door. It was a total scene.

You all are a staple in the community. We were seen as the vegan royalty of Los Angeles where it was Cafe Gratitude, it was Gracias Madre, and then my sister was saved vegan bistro. I literally never thought, oh, I should open a restaurant. There is something between McDonald's and just kale and quinoa. My goal is to have super accessible comfort food. Where we were like kind of hippie-dippy. She went vegan, local comfort food.

You could choose pizza. You could choose with. Within three or four years, she was outperforming our best performing Cafe Gratitudes. It's one of my favorite restaurants on the planet. Look at that. This is my squad. We had no idea that by 2012 we'd be the hottest vegan restaurants in all of Los Angeles. Did we believe that our restaurants were saving the planet?

For sure. I think I'm just doing the best for the planet. I'm driving my hybrid and I'm drinking my oatmeal glatte, and I just get obsessed with you. get obsessed with the idea of wanting to have a vegan farm and nothing is ever going to die. Very shortly after moving on to the land and farming, I realized that there is no food without death. We're killing ground squirrels to keep our orchards safe. My avocado toast has a thousand dead ground squirrels attached to it. What am I doing? My dad started Be Love Farm as they were growing vegetables for Cafe Gratitude, they realized we'll have

How do we get cow manure continuously on these fields? And if we have cows continuously on the fields, how are we managing the expense of them? And if they don't bring anything to the economy of the farm, then they can't be part of the farm. They started drinking raw milk. To have raw milk, you need to have cows giving babies. Then you have male cows, and then what do you do with those male cows? And that became a big awakening of, oh, wow, in India, they don't really have a narrative

of how the male cows fall into the sacred cow identity because they are oftentimes just eating trash on the side of the street and die, not a great life. To grow vegetables, we need the constituents of animal byproducts, blood meal, bone meal, fish emulsion, cow manure, and where's that cow manure coming from? Well, it's coming from a concentrated animal feedlot operation. We realized almost no farmers are vegans

and almost no vegetables are vegans. My entire identity is based on I'm a vegan chef. And I'm realizing veganism is not the path for humanity. And I am terrified about what that means. My dad's a 35 year vegetarian. I'm a 33 year vegetarian. And we take these two cows out to pasture that one and my dad have been taken care of for like six years,

loved and you know ultimately we pray like god if this is not the way show is a sign well i'm honored to be joined by rylan and mollie inglehart uh thanks for joining us today thank you for having us watching the incredible videos myself with the team and just thinking what an outrageous and unbelievable journey you guys have been on uh to start start out with I want to sort of meet you because we have similar backgrounds. I've talked about it some of my show. I've said I grew up with parents that were like very radical in how we were raised. Many of the same, you know, ideas. You know, my parents, you know, marched in the 60s. They were total hippies. We were mostly a vegetarian, macrobotic when I was a kid.

Us. Yeah. We went through a macrobotic. Yeah. And we went through a macrobotic. Yeah, and a Yeah, exactly. And a huge, you know, kingship with all life. We don't hurt and kill animals. We never hunted, you know, things like that. I remember every once in a while my dad's, I wanted to go fishing because I saw like a, you know, I don't know, leave it to beaver or something. And so dad, I remember him just like freaking just killing the worm. He was like an absolute disaster. So anyway, you know, and I've been a vegetarian. You know, I did that for years when I went to New York and I was. was an actor in doing that stuff. But I've had my own moments in that. As far as Cafe Gratitude, this place, first of all, it is a staple. It was, I think, two or three blocks away from Paramount Studios where I worked on the doctors. It was our favorite place to go to lunch. I always got the same thing.

I am whole. And now that I know that you guys are here, there are a few things in that dish. And it was like you said, what is in here? It's like crack. Maybe you can help me understand how to make it. this journey, you know, first of all, to grow up in a family where this becomes a celebrity, you're essentially a celebrity idea around eating. What was that experience like?

Was it weird as a kid? Was it weird as it started getting the type of attention that it did? Well, we were both grown-ups by the time it started to. But yes, because before Cafe Gratitude and Sage and Gracious Madre, vegan restaurants were kind of a hole in the wall where you got a little sprout sandwich. there wasn't that like full on bar full on we had a beer guard like there wasn't that full on restaurant culinary experience as a mainstream thing but we kind of were out on the skinny branches we weren't sure it was going to work and a lot of people said it wasn't when he brought cafe gratitude to LA and they got big locations big rent people were kind of like oh we'll see if that's going to work out and I think it surprised honestly all of us I think we were all surprised at the success of the trifecta of those three vegan restaurants. And at some point, I felt actually trapped by that success.

You know, at some point I was like, whoa, this is where we are. This is how we make our living. And he introduced me to regenerative agriculture. And when I started to understand our place on the planet, I really started to realize. And vegans may be the originators of cancel culture, as we know it, in this now moment. Because, I mean, we had COVID and the vaccines, but vegans were canceling people for stuff way before that. I mean, I know you've gotten the heat, but before we get into that, I'm just, it became a cult. You decide, let me bring this out of San Francisco, I guess it was, into L.A.

So if you're picking expensive locations, that's on you. Like, you went big. Why? What was the thinking there? I mean, there's multiple different elements of it, but I'm definitely the ideological, visionary enthusiast that's like, it's, you know, I'm laughing at myself because we literally, you know, in our minds thought, I remember the conversation I had with my brother was, we're going to bring Cafe Gratitude to L.A., and it's going to be this transformational,

moment, you know, on the planet for our business model of sacred commerce, for plant-based organic food, and we're going to kind of awaken this whole message, you know, and as I said, in the belly of the beast. Yeah. And, you know, in the utmost, you know, naive, passionate, you know, enthusiasm, I felt that was true. And, you know, my dad is also, you know, the aboyant optimist in himself, and he had this big, bold vision.

But, you know, we had done Cafe Gratitude for seven years in the Bay Area and it was it was great people loved it. It was that it did have a cult following But it wasn't till we and we were doing you know three to five to seven thousand dollars a day Okay in sales and then to the volume of 20 to 25 thousand dollars a day and you know lines out the door and as you said celebrities coming in and we were like you know on some in our in our minds we were like we were gonna come to L.A. and be a big thing, but we didn't really know what being a big thing in L.A. was even going to look like or, but ultimately, you know, there was dynamics of we had some amazing partners who joined my father and stepmom and me and my brother, and they really brought the expertise of real estate and beautification and making, you know, these restaurants

much more less hippie-dippy and more beautiful and aesthetic and like these, you know, beautiful restaurants that hadn't really, vegan culture hadn't really seen up until that point. So then how did the move? You said regenerative farming sort of is, is this almost like a bitter pill, an exciting thing, but suddenly it starts changing how you're seeing things. So which one of you, you got into regenerative farming first? Yeah. So I went to New Zealand to speak about sacred commerce, our business model, and there was, I went somewhat with a little bit of eco-arrogance and sort of vegan supremacy and, you know, that we had this model that was going to save the world, and ended up sitting in a panel discussion of a guy by the name of Graham Sate,

who basically described the process of how we can regenerate soil by pulling carbon out of the atmosphere, putting it back in the ground, which restores the ability. for soil to hold water, brings nutrients back to the food that's growing from that soil, creates this trophic cascade of regeneration. And in that moment, there was a kind of what they described as like in a spiritual epiphany where it was like a thousand suns erupt in your third eye. And it was like, I'd always known that, you know, how do we make the world a better place? And love is somehow part of that.

But what's the mechanism that leads to? the life on planet Earth getting better. And that distinction of regeneration and the way that we manage our soil and our agricultural land, you know, went from a sustainability paradigm of doing less harm and sustaining life to what is the mechanism of healing, you know, the broken ground, our broken ecosystems, restoring life to land, restoring biodiversity, restoring health. And the ironic thing is that includes a whole, you know, that includes a matrix of life, which is all different kinds of insects, animals, plants, trees, and those living and dying in their life cycle that leads to a greater condition of regeneration. So it was a big awakening, but it was an inconvenient perspective

as a vegan sort of fundamentalist that really just wanted, and I saw you say this earlier on the show, that we ultimately have, you know, we have selective thinking of what we're willing to hear that we're willing to receive because it's just too confronting for our fundamental belief systems. And this was one of those moments where I kind of just

blew open my mind of this concept of regeneration, which was just a premise of a process of how life could get better on planet Earth. And I had never really considered or seen what would be a mechanism or process that would allow all the degradation that's been done on planet earth. How could that heal? And regeneration and the process of regenerative agriculture was sort of the beginning of the thread that led me to really understand, wow, there is a much bigger, more beautiful understanding that I'm just starting to discover and it's not necessarily veganism so so did he come running back with pot oh my god I've just discovered something yes and he shows him this TED talk and I'm totally inspired by the TED talk and I get obsessed with I'm not

I haven't taken it to the no veganism yet like my first thing is just food waste oh my goodness there's all this waste coming out of my restaurants and if I could have a farm then I'm going to be able to keep that food in the loop and I'm going to be able to grow more food and I start going up to every celebrity that comes into the restaurant and be like, well, you want to start a farm, we want to invest in a farm, we're going to be able to make compost and I'm trying to explain this. And you got like the Clippers coach laughing at me like, oh, it sounds like a cool idea, but we're having a meeting, you know, and I decide that I guess I'm the one I've been waiting

for, I have to get a farm. And so I spend all this time and researching and I'm having children, I've gotten married, and I get, I finally get my farm, and that's when my mind really breaks that there is no vegan food, when I'm actually growing food, and I'm killing the ground squirrels, as I talked about, and doing all of that. But I have this multi-million dollar business. I'm definitely not going to just crash it all down, so I put my restaurants on the market, and we get this big investment firm, and we're going to sell it for somewhere between $25 and $31 million, dollars, and I have a three-quarter time frame to get the deal done, and I'm meeting all my markers.

And last quarter of 2019, I'm like, hit all the markers. First quarter of 2020, I'm way over. Like, I don't have to do anything, and I'm getting $31 million. Any quarter, any second quarter of 2020, I'm getting 31 million. I'm, like, Googling, like, getting a private chef because I've been cooking every day for my life for 15 years. Wow. So awesome. And COVID.

mansions. I'm going to get a sailboat? And then COVID comes in and says no more indoor dining for two and a half years. And not only do I lose that $31 million deal, I really lose the ability. I pivot and I pivot and I try and I can't make it. My 350 employees and I can't make it through COVID in one store after another out of five stores. All of a sudden I'm down to two stores by the end of COVID.

But I'm the optimist. I still think we're going to go back to normal, right? And so I go, oh, I'm just going to buy a farm in Texas. They are still open. I'm going to open a restaurant in Austin. I'm going to open a restaurant in San Antonio. And then when we go back to normal, I'll be able to sell it for $60 million. It's going to be great.

And so I start that process. And somewhere through COVID, I had already, I bought the farm here, the land, but there was no way that the cash flow, I just realized I can't do it. So I'm kind of stalled. And then I start closing stores. And so I have to make some very hard decisions. And at some point, I decide I'm going to have to sell my farm in California and move to Texas because of finances. And I then do that last ditch effort to try to switch it to regenerative.

After COVID is over, we bring back the staff. But now life has changed and people don't go out to eat. So you try to take your concept, but let me just evolve it the way I've evolved. You want to represent your evolution through your restaurant. And I even thought maybe that I was. not in alignment with my own integrity and I've always been someone that you need I don't try to make money in ways that are not in alignment with my own integrity like I was not like trying to import masks during COVID while I wasn't wearing them like I've always felt like I had to do what God

wants me to do and so I thought that's why the restaurants aren't like thriving anymore so I tried to do that and meaning you're saying I don't I'm not really into this vegan ship anymore It's disingenuous to be running this restaurant as this cult vegan thing when I've actually evolved. I wanted to represent the truth of what I'm now believing experiencing. So on Earth Day, at 2024, I come out and I say, I don't think veganism is what's best for the planet. I think that regenerative agriculture is, and I bring in all of the supply chains. I get all these farmers on board, and I have to create the supply chains. It doesn't exist.

There isn't any regenerative. restaurants and I launch it and I think post-COVID, everybody's into tallow fries. This is going to crush it. We're going to grass-fed burgers and bison patty melts. It's going to be amazing. And the vegans just protested and protested and got me, you know, my Yelp to say permanently closed, Google to say permanently closed. So they even lie, they was lying.

They went on Yelp and said you were the restaurant closed. They got my 5,000, five-star reviews taken down, made me start over and then they could just put one-star review after one-star review, and where, you know, if you go to a location, you can say, change information, this location is closed. It's all crowdsourced. And so if they have a concerted effort, they can keep having you, say, permanently closed. And so ultimately, they won, but, like, what did they win? There's, like, a rotissory chicken place in one of my things, and a bakery, and another one's

vacant, and what did they win? They didn't win for the animals. They didn't win for the community. What was that about? I mean, was it, was it, I guess they felt. like you abandoned them. You also, I mean, there's, you know, you sort of recognize your giant celebrities for this, your royalty, and then the royalty changes its religion, I suppose. Is it sort of what happened? Yeah, it's like your pastor going to become Catholic or something. It's

like you feel abandoned or you feel lied to. And I tried very hard to engage and to explain and be very honest and upfront, but I mean, no, people were death threats and wishing that my children would die of cancer. I mean, just the most horrific things you could imagine telling me to watch my back. I'll put a bolt in your head like you're putting a bolt in a cow's head. And it's just doesn't sound like the peace-loving hippies that I thought, you know, you thought the- But there was also some coordinated money behind it. Yeah. Because the protests went on for extended periods of They had support, people bringing them water, brand new signage, all the stuff. And one day I was standing out there trying to engage with the protesters, and someone

came up to me. They didn't realize who I was. And they said, do you need any support? I have more signs. I have more water. And I was like, I'd love you guys to leave, but I'd also love to know who's paying you to be here today. Oh, no, no, no, we're all volunteers.

But it was too coordinated. And they always, they did Mother's Day, Father's Day, like very cool days that would be big money days for us like trying to shut us down like that wow well let's take a look at where your lives have gone since uh your you're your you're sort of vegan you know celebrity and then uh I think we have you eating your first burger let's take a look at let's take a look at this we've got Ryan's first burger let's take a look at this is it wow I've said with a lot of pride I've never had a bite of a hamburger in my whole life I have to get to die to that that that That perspective.

That frightful statement. What do you think? Oh, this is mayonnaise. This is a mustard for a long time. You think, right? He went for seconds. What do you think, Brian? Stop drinking.

I can see why people eat them. It's an amazing moment. But actually, it's a powerful thing. And I think, yeah, was there still, even in that moment, is something that eating a burger, is there part of you thinking about how many people I'm letting down or was there any division still in you at all? How did you get to the place where you could really transition out? We're going to let go of what we've represented up until this, our entire lives up until this moment. Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, that was a 10 year ago, you know, I was, I'm 45 now, that was when I was 35, that was, that was, and it's obviously been a progression of letting go, but.

So it was like, right there, you're not, like, there's still work to be done after that moment, is what you're saying. For sure, but, I mean, I think, you know, this is not a, I don't know, a become. thing to say, but on some level, I gave up my one fanaticism for another. So, like, I replaced my sort of vegan fervor with my regenerative agriculture fervor, which then allows me to sort of justify or be okay with, all right, this is now just what I do because I understand that there is no life without death, and I'm just being a little bit more honest about, you know, participating in that process. And I see the vision of regeneration as this very, very profound, important message. And I'm now using my life to ambassador or represent or

evangelize or communicate that message. And I'm trying to, you know, be an example of that. So, but, you know, I would say on some subtle level, I've known for a long time that there is health benefits to eating meat. Because I actually remember probably a decade and a half before I met a vegan guy who I asked him how he was doing. He said, I'm doing great. And I go, why? He goes, I just ate a piece of red meat after 20 years of veganism being a, you know, like a liquidarian and eating just green juice and stuff. And he goes, it just feels so good. And I remember my dissidents of not wanting to let that moment in, but there was something

about the truth and the conviction of what he was speaking with that was kind of like shattering my program, but I remember it so profoundly because it was so, it shucked the. So I think, you know, there was, you know, these moments of sort of putting chinks in the armor of my belief system, and then kind of having this awakening about regeneration, it just became so clear. And then, you know, having the, you know, the deep understanding of my father, you know, running a farm and him wanting to do it, you know, because he kind of went down the path that Molly did.

You say, like, how did they, did your parents react right away when you must have reached out and said, I've got a different perspective? How did your dad handle that at first? Dad went first. Oh, dad did first. Yeah, because he had the farm. And then they had the cows. So that's what was happening.

Cafe Gratitude fell under fire even before I fell on fire because they didn't have full understanding. My parents are like in their 70s now. But what Instagram was, they thought it was like a way that their grandkids could watch what was going on. So they put a picture of grandpa to my dad eating a burger for the first time in 45 years. Oh, wow. And then it became a CNN story. It became a Huffington Post story. it became like a big deal.

And even Sage, even though I was a separate entity, separate restaurants, our business got hit by like 15% right away from that. So we had already seen and we called it Burger Gate in our family. And I had vegans reaching out to me like, would you like me to help you distance yourself from your dad to save your business? And I was like, I'm not distancing myself from my dad because he ate a hamburger. So dad went first. We actually followed our, and my mother is still very.

You know, they're divorced, and my mother's still pretty dogmatic in her beliefs, but there's been some chinks in her armor recently as well. I'll never forget. I was a vegetarian as an actor, as an actor in New York. I was doing theater, you know. I remember one time I had a director. I was doing the European tour, Broadway touring company of hair. The musical perfect, like I'm a hippie. It all fit perfectly. But remember he sat me down, and he's like, you know, I never imagined George Berger. quite this skinny, you really may want to think about eating a hamburger or something. But it was years later, I was waiting tables at Fiorello's restaurant right across street from Lincoln Center in New York. And I'll never forget one day I'm delivering food, you know, and I put down this chicken matoni. It's like a whole roasted chicken, like in the clay pot, beautiful, you know, and I served it. And the person's like, this isn't what I ordered.

I wanted the chicken breast. I was like, oh, and I picked it up, and I just thought, for some reason I want to eat this thing so bad. But I'm a vegetarian. I'm like, oh, like I walk it back and I'm like, I'm sitting there. I was like, all right. And I just put it, you know, like, just going to throw it out, can't serve it. And I got home that night and I was laying in bed staring at my ceiling. And it really bothered me. What bothered me is that I didn't not eat the chicken because I thought it would be bad for me, that it was unhealthy. I wasn't doing this for some health reason. It was just because I was raised vegetarian. I had gotten very strict, you know, in my young adulthood, but the only reason I didn't eat that chicken is because I had

an identity as a vegetarian that I would be going against a title I'd given myself, which I was like, dude, that goes against everything you believe in. You don't live by titles and, you know, you live by like, because, you know, if you're natural the way, I mean, this sort of my trip, right? There's certain rules to kingship with life, which is also we're natural beings. We're living in a natural environment. When we become human beings, we set up, you know, select ourselves out on titles and things. That's where the world goes totally whack. So it was like, I was really, I didn't sleep that night.

The next day I'm waiting tables, swear to God, someone sends back the same dish. I'm a Tony Chicken. They're like, I don't think that's what I wanted. I don't know if I'm going to, maybe some kind of just, like, blew their order. I don't remember now that I think about it, but I walked back and I devoured that chicken. I mean, I suck the morrow out of little bones and I've never really gone back since. I, you know, sort of, and oh, there's a lot to the whole, as you said, that I look at now, you know, that the cycle of life, you know, and even have you been done work with Native Americans in sweat lodge and they're like, why would you be a vegetarian? the deer's life, these animals, life is here as its gift is to humanity.

Like, God's given us these things. We're living, you're robbing them of their cycle, which is to continue their life through you and your own existence. I was like, well, that's heavy. But I think we have another, you know, film to talk about on your ranch and where you've gone now. So let's take a look at that. Beautiful.

Sovereignty ranch came out of just wanting to be separate. an individual and sovereign. And so here I am in Bandera, Texas, starting this big foolish project, hoping that people want regenerative food, people want to connect to nature and come back to the farm. Everybody said you can't grow food in central Texas, and they're wrong.

When we got here, we had almost no grass growing on this field at all. It could not sustain any cows because the previous owners were just using it for attacks right off and they just had a few cows on the field and letting them selectively graze and so weeds grew up and grass died but now we have a lot of grass on multiple fields and we move the cows around every single day we're actually getting ready to move these guys they've been here for a while they've deposited a lot of their nutrients and their poop and their pee and and we keep adding carbon so you can see here these

are wood chips every day we're going to move the pigs down into new pens and they're going to open up the more cedar forest for us and this now that they've opened this all up and they got rid of the the underbrush when the cows are grazing this field we're going to take these fences down and the cows will have this shady area we'll put their water here more food will grow for the cows in this shady areas and then the cows will track all that good nutrients back out onto the field plants can't make minerals minerals can only come out of the soil but in a way that we're farming nowadays we're just

putting nutrients on top of the soil, not building microbiology in the soil. If you just are putting phosphorus, nitrogen on top, you can grow a big thing, but it's not having that micro-rizo relationship, that microbiology relationship where the plant is pulling carbon out of the atmosphere, feeding microbiology, and that microbiology is in the soil and making those minerals available to the plant. That perfect relationship that God invented is what gives minerals to our food. We're sitting here on Sovereignty Ranch in the barn restaurant, and this is our menu. It's American Farm to Table comfort cuisine made from scratch.

Lots of the vegetables are from the ranch, and whatever we buy from outside is organic or regenerative. We don't have any seed oils. We don't have any preservatives, no, corn syrup, nothing in the whole restaurant. So it's the cleanest food. you can probably get in central Texas. And it's definitely closest to the source that you can get. The meats are all from animals raised here on Sovereignty Ranch.

Nature's design is regenerative. Life and death continues to create the conditions for more life. Veganism, it's a righteous belief system. I don't want to cause any unnecessary harm. The problem is it's uninvestigated. Human civilization evolved eating meat. Animal proteins, animal foods have always been an essential part of a healthy diet.

And Wendell Berry has the most beautiful, poetic writing that says, every day we break the body and spill the blood of creation. If we do it knowingly, carefully, and reverently, it is a sacrament. If we do it with greed, gluttony, and carelessness, It is a desecration. We grow all these fresh herbs,

and we year round do our own farm tea. And so this is lemon grass. And so it's one of the main ingredients for our farm tea. And it grows really well here in Texas. When you buy your lemongrass in the store, you're actually only going to buy this part, because this part's not shelf stable. But this part can also just be replanted.

So I'm just taking the tops off, and then I'm going to make that into tea. And then I'm going to replant these ones so I have more plants. Something as simple as iced tea, I believe, can be special. The way we grow food, can balance the climate, can heal the soil, can bring nutrients back to our food, can let the water infiltrate and get back into our aquifers, can clean the water. This is the way to heal the world. I'm learning to love Central Texas.

And I'm learning to work with her soil and her complicated weather, and I feel hopeful. People are starved for a connection to nature, and they're also starved for something that's real. We feed people, we host people, we educate people, we inspire people, and really it's our ministry. I mean, that looks amazing. And if I want to visit or I want to know, what all does sovereignty ranch do? Do people come and check it out? Yeah, we have 40 beds of hospitality. Okay.

And so you can stay, you can bring a group, like if you want to do an offsite for your office, you can do weddings. Or we do bigger conferences. We do, we have our own conferences like Food is Medicine and Confluence, which Confluence started as an anti-vax thing. and then kind of has moved into a bigger confluence of ideas. It was called Sowing Sovereignty in California, and then we moved here. We changed the name to confluence.

So we have these big festivals that we do, but then you can do yoga retreats, you can do office retreats, and then also you can just come out with your family. We have bounce houses and corn pits and, you know, play areas for the kids. The restaurant is open Tuesday through Sunday, and we have, you know, tiny houses, or you can stay in a big house.

Like, there's kind of farmhouse styles, and there's glamping tents. So we have all different options. And then we also have a conference room for up to 300 people. And so we do all different kinds of classes and stuff, but you can just come out on any weekend and enjoy that you're in the central Texas area. What's the website if I want to like you? Sovereignty ranch.com. You can go to that. And our farm store is there.

You can buy me. You can get some bacon from those beautiful. pigs or whatever that you want. And we really pride ourselves on doing everything from scratch. So even if the ranch in our restaurant or the cream cheese dressing on the nachos or even the tortillas, we grow our own corn, make the tortillas, cut them up, make the tortilla chips for the nachos. Like we very, very much are from scratch from the farm restaurant.

You're still making people laugh for a minute at a time? Not exactly, but I do like to bring, yeah, the spirit of, you know, that gamemeister energy of just service, really serving people in ways that they didn't know they wanted to be served and, you know, bringing them into a moment of connection to the food, to the place, to joy, to love, to, yeah, this idea of hospitality serving people. people with this presence of love. There's a lot of work to be done here. You and I have taught, you know, when I was Director of Communications, Robert Kennedy, Jr., we spoke about the need to try and get more farming into regenerative farming. Right now, I mean, the percentage of farming in America, how much of it would be considered regenerative?

Well, there's probably about 1% organic and maybe between 5% to 7% in some classification of regenerative. I don't know, actually, if you saw this, but there was actually a significant announcement that came out yesterday at a USDA, sort of the first USDA MAHA initiative, where it's basically 700 million for farmers that want to participate and do regenerative agriculture, and it's supposedly streamlining the process and then making a simple way to measure if the practices are actually having regenerative outcomes, and if they are, then you can continue to get conservation dollars to participate and go in that direction.

So it's a, it's a real, it's an off-ramp for the conventional agricultural system to start coming into the regenerative direction. Yeah, I saw that. Big win, just that the secretary of agriculture is talking about the connection between nutrient density and soil health and how that impacts human health and the microbiome of the soil and the microbiome. of the soil and the microbiome of your gut and mental health. Like, just to have that language, you know, I'm not huge on government subsidies and all of that, but to have that language coming out is like every idea is kind of infecting the system.

And just like you're saying, you've been pushing and pushing on these ideas of vaccine choice. And now it's starting to be in the mainstream. That's also happening with regenerative agriculture, which is really, really exciting. to hear those words and to hear that language that, you know, I've been pounding on small stages and podcasts and whatever for years. It's just really amazing. And I think, you know, Rylan can take a lot of credit for 10, 12 years ago when he started Kiss the Ground. It was not a household idea. And it really is becoming pretty mainstream.

And the fact that regenerative agriculture has way surpassed organic agriculture, which started in the 70s, as far as the certified organic. It's a huge win for humanity, honestly, and our health. And there's so many things that we can point to in this world that are not working. And so I do think it's important when we have these wins that we celebrate and we acknowledge that this is going in the right direction. And I think that that was one of those moments yesterday. I agree. I mean, and I just, yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say that it's a unique, you know, connection.

point that that American wellness event that happened in Austin where we sat in the sweat lodge with Bobby yeah that was a that was a pivotal moment in my life which ultimately had me go down the road that I did which you know is and and really trying to work on this policy and you know education and advocacy you know within this current administration so I just wanted to say you know that was a big I don't know that I actually ever said that and you know that was a big moment in my life of transformation just so people know Bobby was at an event here in Austin just outside of Austin Texas you know we were he's still running for president at the time and a beautiful

all-day event and at the end of the day we all had a giant sweat lodge together with Bobby in there which was just I mean personally like a guy's running for president in the sweat lodge I think a lot of people are pitching themselves, like, what's happening here? But we keep pinching ourselves, right? These moments. So it annoys me when I see people writing, like, who cares? Hepatitis B was obviously such a stupid, such a low-hanging fruit. I'm like, this is a tectonic plate shift from anything we have ever seen.

That announcement yesterday, $700, $750 million, $700 million, which, sure, in the scope of all farming is not a giant chunk of money, but just the expression of language talking about, you know, the biome of the earth and nutrients. That's what I think was the win. That's the win. We are in a totally different places. I've said things like for us when the FDA approved lucavoren as a drug for autism, whether or not it works for a lot of people, what I've said, you don't understand what that means.

That was a departure from this genetic. If you have a drug that can cure something, it means it's curable, which means it probably has an environmental cause. You have no idea that wasn't tiny. That is a gigantic shit. These are huge giant shifts that are taking place and all, you know, under the guidance of a president that eats McDonald's. I just, you know. And it's crazy. Like, you played that clip earlier and you say, like, there's 80 vaccines in one cup.

And he always has about 75% of the information that he remembers. Yeah, this is enough. I'll take it. And then he adds it. He's trying, he cares. But I do think that for all the things that we can complain about, about the administration, the conversation around pharmaceuticals and the conversation about farming is happening. And, you know, food.

And food and the nutrient density of food and food is medicine. And these are things that even before the whole food being medicine, is something, even when we're in the vegan world, that we were really on. And so when you start to see that the whole conversation is, it's getting into the whole conversation, even if that's like, oh, $16 per an acre of regenerative, it's not that much, blah, blah, I saw those, you know, tweets and stuff, but yeah, it's not. And they just donated, they just allocated 12 billion for soybean farmers that aren't getting their soybeans bought from China.

So, of course, we can compare and despair. But there's no cheese down that tunnel, as my father would say. That's a huge win. The language and what's happening and that it's in the mainstream conversation is a win. And that's what I think we want to celebrate. Do you have any regrets looking back at the time? Like, did you feel like that was a mistake that we made? I mean, you know, you've been on a journey, veganism.

Was there damage done there? Or do you just feel like it's just an evolutionary process? Yeah, for me personally, yeah, I mean, I think it's all kind of part of the, yeah, the journey. I'm grateful for those years, and I mean, what we were doing was amazing. At the time, we were serving, you know, organic, plant-based vegan food to, you know, millions of meals over 20-plus years. And that was a net benefit in the ecosystem of the way people were consuming. that was some of the healthiest meals we were serving. Was it exactly, you know, the framework or way that I would dish it up at this moment?

No, but was it a beautiful thing? Yeah, I mean, I definitely went through some feelings of, you know, sadness in, you know, the shift of, you know, we closed a bunch of restaurants over, you know, over the last 20 years. And it was like, you know, the idea of did this business? not work and was this actually viable and was it going to change the world as my young enthusiasm you know wanted it to but really in the same you know in the same thinking of that regeneration is lots of living and dying that creates the this continuation of life you know

those businesses those living and dyings created the conditions for our evolution and for the evolution of food and culture and you know so yeah I don't I don't I don't have any regrets about that journey it feels like a beautiful journey that I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity to go on yeah and that it has you know kicked me out here do you try to wake up big vegan friend like does it matter to you or do you think that they're going to mean is it okay to be a vegan I don't I don't I don't try to wake up vegan friends specifically. I try to wake people up. I think it's like they, I'm not going to tell any lies anymore to save people's feelings. And so in general, I try to wake people up. I don't really

give people like a hard time about being vegan specifically, but I do share my views and why I shifted. And I always say that if it's what feels best for your body and you feel good and you're healthy and your blood work is good and all of that, I have no judgment about that. If you think you're doing it because you're saving the planet unless animals are dying, I would invite you to investigate some of these constructs that we've been taught around veganism. Yeah. I remember years ago when I was in high school, there was a kid, I forget where he was from. He was, you know, with us abroad and it might have been, I don't know, you.

Ukraine something. But remember him saying, you people all eat your food out of cellophane. You have no idea. You never go out and kill a chicken or a cow. Like meat to you comes wrapped in a piece of plastic. You are totally disconnected. Remember he just had a meltdown. Smart kid, though, actually, in a social studies class and something. Just talking about it. He finally had it. Like none of you were connected to how you eat where it comes from what's going on. It almost seems as though, I mean, I think vegan and vegetarian, you think your oneness with life and all this, but you're really just getting a bunch of packaged food. And I think to your point, when you finally look at how has this all been created, like,

it's just as bad as the meat wrapped in cellophane that you didn't kill. I do think you have to come to terms with that. And probably if you can't hunt, like, oh, I would never hunt, but you eat meat. I mean, that seems hypocritical. But to actually know how your food is made, I think, is important, right? I think people ask me all the time, because I don't eat very much meat, and I'm still primarily vegetarian ate a lot of raw dairy. But I'm the one responsible on the farm to decide what cows are going to slaughter, to make the cut sheets, to deal with the USDA slaughterhouse. And so people go, like, I don't understand how you can do that after being a vegan chef.

And I really just have a new and deepened understanding. And most people's understanding of their relationship with animals is, like, their dog, their parrot, their fish. their cat, my understanding and my relationship to animals is an entire ecosystem, including my community, accuting my children, and all the animals on the farm. So I have to make decisions that are for the whole, not just for this tiny little thing. So I'm happy to make those decisions. I'm happy to see what needs to happen next. But we as a society are just completely disconnected from nature on every single level.

It's not just our food, but we used to be in nature and we would be reflecting nature. That's what we're going to be mirroring whatever we're in. And now we're reflecting social media and we're reflecting all of this division and we've gotten very, very righteous and self-righteous and we're reflecting something that is not of God's design in so many different ways. And so I do think that just reconnecting with nature, I think we do some way, we do some workshops where people can come out and kill an animal and then we'll make it into like goat curry or you know barbacoa or whatever like that and then they get to eat it we've done this several times

and it's very moving for people there's people that have never had that experience and i do think it's important for people to connect with their food at that level and we had a group and there was two vegetarians in the group and one vegan and what was interesting is some people that were vegan left like, I'm going to eat meat. I feel differently. And other people that had been eating meat said, you know, I actually don't think I should be eating meat from how that experience was for me. And this is like in a very kind and no, no, it was just one bad second kind of way. And I'm eating meat that's not having one bad second necessarily. And so they left with a different perspective. But I do think it's important that we have there. There's something primal about

killing an animal and eating it, cooking with fire, like all the things. that kind of used to make us human that we've abandoned that I think is important for us to reconnect with as the truth-seeking community that we claim that we are yeah I mean so you know are you going to change the world now yeah I mean I'm still a pretty bland optimist in that that this this conversation of human beings and their relationships and their relationships relationship to what is sort of the original instructions of what we're doing here on planet Earth, that we've forgotten that our original instructions are to care for life, or care for the garden, care for...

Ten to the garden, before anything else in Genesis care, tend to the garden. Yes, and so I do think that this idea of remembrance of stewardship, regeneration, you know, I've oftentimes said, ask me why I'm optimistic. And people say, why are you optimistic? I say, well, because love and regeneration are perennial. At the, at the deepest part of the human spirit, where we come back to is love. And if we look at the design of nature, no matter what timeline, it is a process of continual healing, self-balancing, self-regenerating. So ultimately, you know, the spiritual nature of humans is that there is a place that we come from that is love and, you know, the process of nature is regeneration. And so I do think that that is this part of this awakening that I hope that I get to see, you know, happening on planet Earth that is changing and that, you know, there is a good news of remembrance that this regeneration is possible and that we get to play an active role in our healing. Well, I love that. I, you know, I've said before, I mean,

And it started out by saying, I was raised by parents and I've said it that said, you're going to change the world. Like my parents, on our daily mantra of growing up, you know, pulled us out of school when I started listening what my friends had to say over my own instincts, my own decisions. And my parents just kept saying, you can change the world. You can do anything you can dream of. And look, does that mean we do it alone? Does it mean that certainly arrogance doesn't help there in any way? But we do need people that believe so that people can, and we do need leaders that people can follow, and we do need new ideas and great ideas. So I love the fact that you keep approaching each venture that you're on with the passion that, you know, this can change the world.

And it can. And we do. We are changing the world right now. We are making huge strides and a lot of work to do. But it's such an exciting moment to be alive. before we get you know before we finish it up you've got your book here mollie debunked by nature yeah i love that title how a vegan chef turned regenerative farmer discovered that mother nature is conservative and i don't mean conservative like roch trump vans what i mean is that it's always

conserving itself like he said it's always healing itself and it never lies it is always going to put truth at the center of everything. And there was so many things that I realized were a lie once I really got my hands in the soil and started to watch and see and started to reflect nature rather than what I had been being fed from university, from TV, from my friends. I think, you know, and probably you had the same thing. My dad always just said, you know, life is an experiment. He always said, we're Dharma yogis. We're not hiding in caves. You know, But my father would always say experiment with your life. Experiment with your life.

Go out, try it, see what you learn. But then ask yourself the important questions. How does this make me feel? You know, and I think that that's a huge part, especially, you know, I'm not going to decide what someone's diet is going to be in this 50,000 out there. It's so confusing. You know, I'm still trying to figure out how to get rid of this eight pounds. I can't quite drop, you know what I mean?

I'm like, you know, a carnivore, I don't know. But the point is, how does it make you feel? You know, are you feeling good? then stick with it. And if you're waking up happy, then good on you. But you guys are making a difference in the world. I love the moments I have with cafe gratitude. I can't wait to get out to your farm and have lunch there. But debunk by nature is the book, the website, Sovereignty. Here we go. Sovereignty Ranch.com. There we are, Sovereigntyranch.com. Go check it out, everybody. I mean, this is, we really need to see what's happening here and bring it to places near us.

And the more we support that type of farming, the more of those farms, this 700 million is going to go to some farmers, are going to try it out. I'm sure part of it is let's show success there. So the government says there's a way to do this. I mean, it's the transfer over, right? Can we get farmers to see you can do this? I know you've worked with Joel Salton. I believe, yeah, he wrote your forward in your book. That's, I want to take every vegan to Joel Salton's farm and just, and probably.

your farm, I haven't seen it, but they was just like, oh my God, it's like fern gully here. You can see the difference when the animals and the people are all working in concert together. So thank you for joining us today. Super interesting. Thank you for being human beings that were open enough to step off your pedestal in a moment and say, you know what? I think we might be going in a different direction. That couldn't have been easy.

It takes real human beings to do that. So it's good to know you. Thank you for all the work that you're doing. all the difference that you're making in the world. Thank you. Absolutely. Good. You're done.