An excerpt from Debunked by Nature: How a Vegan-Chef-Turned-Regenerative-Farmer Discovered that Mother Nature Is Conservative, published by Acres U.S.A.
Reconnection does not happen all at once. It’s not a grand event or a singular moment of awakening where the sky splits open and everything becomes clear. It’s not a Hollywood montage with swelling music and a tidy resolution. It’s a slow return, a remembering, an unfolding—like the way a seed cracks open in the dark, reaching for light it can’t yet see.
In that return, we must be careful not to carry the misguided burden of “saving the planet.” That phrase has been drilled into us—on billboards, in documentaries, through the lips of politicians and influencers—until it feels like our job is to rescue something fragile, something teetering on the edge.
But the Earth isn’t fragile. It’s resilient, powerful, and constantly regenerating. It’s been spinning through floods, fires, and ice ages long before we showed up, and it’ll keep spinning long after we’re gone. The question isn’t whether the planet will survive—it will. The question is whether we, as individuals, families, and communities, will step into the roles we were meant to play within it.
We’re not all called to be regenerative farmers, though I’ll admit I sometimes wish everyone could feel the dirt under their nails the way I do now. We’re not all meant to leave our lives behind, abandon the cities, and go live off-grid in the wilderness with nothing but a tent and a prayer. That’s not the point. But we are all here, at this specific moment in time, for a reason. Modern life pulls us away from that reason—distracting us with the endless chase for money, status, fleeting recognition, the next promotion, the next shiny thing. It’s a treadmill we can’t step off, a noise so loud it drowns out the quiet voice inside. Yet, in those rare moments when we do step away—when the phone’s off, the screens are dark, and the world hushes—we sense it. A stirring. A knowing. Something calling us back to what’s real.
For some, that calling might be to tend the soil, to grow food, to provide nourishment for others. I felt that pull when I left Sage Vegan Bistro behind and sank my hands into the rocky earth of Fillmore. For others, it might be to nurture something else—a marriage through the hard seasons, a family through the chaos of raising kids, a community through the small, unglamorous acts of showing up. It could be as simple as growing herbs on a windowsill in a cramped apartment, watching those green shoots defy the concrete jungle outside.
These acts matter. They’re not trivial. They tether us back to what has always sustained human life: food, family, faith, and community. They’re threads in a tapestry we’ve let fray, but they’re still there, waiting to be picked up.
The Stirring I Couldn’t Ignore
I didn’t always hear that call. Back in LA, running my restaurant, I was too busy checking boxes—sustainable sourcing, organic ingredients, reusable straws—to notice the emptiness gnawing at me. I thought I was doing my part, feeding people kale salads and oat-milk lattes, preaching a gospel of compassion that felt righteous at the time. But there was a moment, standing in my driveway beside those pomegranate trees I’d planted, when my brother Ryland called, his voice buzzing with excitement about soil and regeneration. That was the beginning.
It wasn’t a thunderbolt. It was quieter than that—a whisper that grew louder the more I listened. When we finally bought that farm in Fillmore—twenty acres of rocky soil and unrealized dreams—it wasn’t a leap of faith so much as a step I couldn’t not take. The land was waiting, and so was I.
If you feel that stirring inside you—to plant a garden, to raise animals, to learn the rhythms of the land—don’t ignore it. Follow it. If something awakens in you at the thought of producing local food, reclaiming lost knowledge, becoming a provider in a world of consumers—listen to that voice. It’s not loud. It doesn’t shout over the noise of your inbox or the news cycle. It’s a quiet nudge, a pull toward something ancient and true.
The world needs more farmers, yes—people who’ll dig into the soil and coax life from it, who’ll resist the fragility of centralized systems that collapse when the trucks stop running. But even if your path doesn’t lead you to a farm, you’re still being called to tend to something. That’s the universal thread—we’re all stewards of something, whether we recognize it or not.
Tending the Literal and the Metaphorical
For me, that tending became literal—twenty acres of avocado trees, sheep grazing under the branches, compost piles humming with life. The first years were brutal—grief over the loss of my best friend Mimi, still running restaurants every single day, and taking on the new and not-easy job of farming. The hours never ended. The work never ended. I stood by Sespe Creek one afternoon, watching the water ripple past, and realized I was tending more than just soil. I was tending my family—my husband hauling rocks beside me, my children running through the orchard. I was tending a community—neighbors like Ernie King, who started as a skeptic but became family, sharing holidays and stories. I was tending myself—finding a faith I’d lost in the city, a trust in something bigger than my own plans. It wasn’t just about growing avocados; it was about growing a life.
But that tending doesn’t have to be a physical plot of land for everyone. It can be the sacred space of your own mind—cultivating thoughts that nourish instead of tear down. It can be a marriage, weathered by time but strengthened through the daily work of showing up. It can be a family, messy and loud, but held together by love and presence. It can be a community—neighbors you actually know, not just faces you pass on the street.
We weren’t made to be passive consumers, endlessly dependent on systems that don’t nourish us—grocery stores with food shipped from thousands of miles away, governments that dictate our choices, screens that keep us isolated. We were made to cultivate, to build, to care for, to create. That’s in our bones, even if we’ve forgotten it.
We’ve drifted so far from that purpose. Look around—our food comes in plastic wrappers, shipped from factories we’ll never see. Our families are fractured, stretched across states or screens, parents too busy to be present. Our communities are hollowed out, replaced by online echo chambers where we shout past each other. Our faith—whether in God, nature, or each other—has been swapped for fear, a nagging dread that we’re too late, too broken, too small to matter. We’ve let ourselves be convinced that reconnection is optional, that we can outsource our lives to corporations and governments and still thrive. We can’t.
I saw this disconnection up close during the COVID years. I watched my friends lose businesses and even their homes—and then I lost my businesses, one by one. I watched friends lose their hope—all because we’d built lives dependent on systems that could collapse overnight. Meanwhile, on the farm, we kept going. The soil didn’t care about mandates. The sheep still needed feeding. The trees still bore fruit. We weren’t invincible, but we were resilient. We had food we’d grown, neighbors we trusted, a rhythm that didn’t break. That’s what reconnection gives you: not immunity, but roots.
The cost of staying disconnected is higher than we admit. Our kids grow up on processed junk, their bodies and minds weaker for it—obesity, anxiety, autoimmune disorders climbing every year. Our marriages erode under the weight of distraction, our communities dissolve into anonymity. We’ve traded faith for control, thinking that technology—more apps, more gadgets, more rules—will save us. It won’t.
Control is an illusion; the flood that hit our farm, with eighteen inches of water raging through, taught me that. My husband and the men waded in, saving what they could, while I made stew for when they stumbled back, soaked and exhausted. Nature doesn’t bend to our will—it asks us to work with it.
Practical Steps Back
So, how do we reconnect? It’s not about grand gestures—it’s about small, deliberate steps.
Start with food. Grow something—anything—a tomato plant on your balcony, a patch of lettuce in your yard. If you can’t grow it, buy it from someone who does—a farmer at a market, not a faceless chain. Cook it yourself, not from a box. Taste the difference. Feel the tether to the land snap back into place. I started with those pomegranate trees in my driveway, a modest food forest, and it changed everything. In just a few years, I was able to start harvesting $500,000 worth of produce off of only twenty acres—not because I’m a genius, but because I listened to the soil.
Tend your family next. Be present—put the phone down, eat together, talk. Hold your children; hug them. Sleep close to them; raise them close like mammals—not apart in cribs or schedules dictated by experts who don’t know your child’s cry. It’s messy and loud, but it’s real. That closeness builds something unbreakable—a bond that processed food and screen time can’t touch.
Build community. Know your neighbors—not just their names, but their stories. When we moved to Fillmore, I braced for judgment—Trump signs and American flags lining Grand Avenue made me wonder what I’d walked into. But Ernie King, with his gruff advice and unexpected kindness, showed me I’d misjudged. Levi became a friend despite our politics, bonding over homeschooling and homesteading. The entire Stealy clan became like family; my neighbor Wendy and all the other women in my Azure Standard drop group, too. These weren’t my “tribe” on paper, but they became my people. Start small—share a meal, lend a tool, show up when it counts.
And turn to faith, not fear. For me, it’s God—felt most deeply with my hands in the soil, closer than any church pew. For you, it might be nature, the divine in the cycles of life, or trust in each other. Whatever it is, let it guide you. Fear paralyzes; faith moves. When I lost that first baby and faced marrying a man I barely knew, faith carried me through—not a hallucination, but a promise I made to something bigger. It’s why we stayed, why we built a family, why I’m still here.
The Farm As a Mirror
The farm taught me these steps, but it’s more than that—it’s a mirror. Every day, I see what reconnection looks like. The sheep graze, fertilizing the soil; the trees drop leaves that mulch the ground; the compost turns death into life. It’s not separate—it’s whole. One morning, I watched my daughter, seven years old, chase a black lamb across the field, laughing as it bleated back. She doesn’t know disconnection yet—she’s in it, part of it, alive to it. That’s what we’re aiming for: a life where we’re not spectators but participants.
But it’s hard. The farm’s relentless—365 days a year, no weekends, no breaks. Animals need feeding, crops need tending, floods don’t wait. I’ve stood in the rain, eight months pregnant, shouting directions as my husband wrestled a tractor to save our propane tank. I’ve cried over dead sheep, cursed dying trees, and wondered why I left the city. Reconnection isn’t comfortable—it’s calluses on your hands, sweat in your eyes, failure you can’t hide from. Yet it’s also abundance—avocados heavy on the branch, kids growing strong on raw milk, neighbors sharing a table. It’s worth it.
We don’t all need to farm, but we all need to steward. The divine—whether you call it God, nature, or something else—doesn’t ask us to have all the answers. It asks us to listen, to follow, to take the next step. When I started, I didn’t know soil organic matter from a hole in the ground—ours was less than 1 percent when we arrived. A few years later, with grazing and wood chips, some of it is 20 percent. I didn’t fix the planet; I tended my patch. That’s enough.
So I ask you: What’s calling you back? It might be a literal plot—carrots in a raised bed, chickens in your backyard. It might be your kids, your partner, your street. Whatever it is, step toward it. Build community—share a harvest, a story, a hand. Grow food—even a sprig of basil counts. Raise healthy families—messy, loud, real ones. Allow yourself to be led—not by fear or control, but by faith, by stewardship, by the quiet voice that knows.
The way forward isn’t through more consumption—another Tesla, another app—or more technology promising to outsmart nature. It’s through reconnection, through becoming the best possible cell in the body of this Earth.
We’re not here to save the world; we’re here to belong to it. Find your way back. The time is now.
Debunked by Nature is available at the Acres U.S.A. bookstore: bookstore.acresusa.com or at debunkedbynature.com. And come hear Mollie speak at the 50th Acres U.S.A. Eco-Ag Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, 1-4 December! conference.eco-ag.com.
