Mollie Engelhart

27:53And I keep delivering them to Woody Harrelson. He's giving me feedback at his house in LA. And then we decide we're going to start a packaged company. This is before Coconut Bliss or any of these like nut-blasted ice creams existed. Nowadays, like packaging is different. But back then you needed, I needed like$100 ,000 to do the first run to buy the packaging and everything. And I just, that was like all I had. And I just couldn't imagine what if this doesn't work? It's not even a shelf stable product. What if the freezers go out? So we leave it, we put it to the side and we keep going on with life, trying to discover other things.

28:30And then I guess what we decide at some point is we should open an ice cream shop so we can avoid this$100 ,000. I thought, I could open an ice cream shop for$15 ,000. I was wrong, but I thought that. And so I opened a vegan ice cream shop on Cahuenga in North Hollywood. And people love it. But I realized very quickly that there is no possible way to make a living off of vegan ice cream. It's a very narrow market. There's vegetarians who still eat ice cream, there's vegans, and then there's certain sects of Judaism that don't eat dairy and meat at the same time. So I have like acidic juice and vegans is my whole market.

29:13And like, it's not enough of a market. And these two Palestinian guys walk into my ice cream shop one night and they tell me they're opening a vegan restaurant in Echo Park. And they don't know anything about vegan food, but they have this great chef, they're going to do it. And they want me to just do the coffee and the ice cream like kiosk at the front of the restaurant and have it ultimately be a separate business. But people could either pay me directly for if they're just coming in to get a smoothie, or they'll pay me at the end of the month for whatever gets paid on the checks in the restaurant.

29:44And so I wasn't the original owner of Sage, I just had this kiosk at the front of the restaurant. But I was the only vegan involved. And so these guys, I'm grateful for them coming into my life. Like everything I have is because of that interaction. But as far as like integrity and business with me, they did not have a lot. And integrity with the ingredients, even being vegan, they were getting these vegan croissants, which are$2.50 each. And then they were like, we should just get the croissants at Costco because like, who knows the difference? And I'm like, you guys are going to send someone to the hospital.

30:16Like you can't do this. and they didn't take very excellently to a woman telling them what to do. And my idea was like, I should buy it and be their partner because then they're going to respect what I have to say. I didn't quite realize that it was a little different than that. And that was not going to change anything. So I bought into their business and they told me I could buy the whole business for$100 ,000. So I said, great, I'm going to give you$70 ,000 now. And then, And I mean, I didn't say my next harvest, I'm going to give you$40 ,000 more. And they basically, when I gave them the next set of cash, they just changed their mind and said, we're going to stay partners with you or not.

30:55And I was like, wait, no, that was not the deal. You would have all my cash. So I had to get a lawyer. We had to do a contract. And I ended up buying them out. I needed to borrow$130 ,000 from a relative. And I was naive and kind. did I like co-sign the car for them because their credit was bad and all these things that happened. But my husband and all my children and Sage Vegan Bistro was a fruit of that relationship. So sometimes even when a relationship feels painful or disrespectful or not ideal, there's something so beautiful on the other side. And you just have to trust that God has a plan and you can't see all the moving parts.

31:40And then right after that, the chef acted out and was yelling and throwing things. And my current husband, who was not my husband at the time, was a very young up and coming sous chef. And he quit one day because the guy threw a box of soy milk at his head. And I called him and said, if I fire chef, will you come back? And he said, well, what are we going to do? And I said, I'll be the chef. I'm excellent I've grown up in the vegan world like I can do this and it's going to be easier for you to come out of the kitchen and it's going to be a totally different menu and so we did that we let him go and we redid the whole menu and me and him became friends he was much younger than me and he would go to the farmer's market with me he was trying to learn English he realized pretty soon he had to learn some English it was going to work out and so that That was the origin story of Sage.

32:35And so it wasn't like I set out to start a restaurant or even to open a restaurant the same week that my dad was opening a restaurant in Los Angeles like that. It wasn't at all what I set out to do. And then over time, how did Sage build? What happened with that first Sage? So when I was first still partners with Robert and Tony, they got invited to open a juice bar in this plaza in Culver City. and I went to the meeting with them and they were like, oh, we don't want to do that. And I was like, we should definitely do this. And they were like, well, we don't want to do it. I said, well, let's do it with Sage.

33:11And they said, no, no, no, no. This was when we were in the partnership phase. And they said, no. And I said, yes. And so I kept pushing for that, which was part of the divide between us. And so I was super naive. I signed a terrible lease agreement and everything. But again, Culver City was my crown jewel, my most successful restaurant. It crushed it for 10 full years. It was an awesome endeavor. And I was right that it was a good idea to do it. And so I opened Sage and I bought out them and I had no money and I just signed the lease agreement. It was like, I'm going to raise the money. I'd never raised money before.

33:47But I called everybody I knew. I enrolled them in what I was building, this vegan beer garden. Vegan restaurants have largely been small. Hold the walls. This is going to be a big, beautiful patio and 24 taps of local beer. And I got Woody Harrelson, Jason Mraz to invest. And then once I got them, people, it's funny, people are like, oh, they did it. I'll do it. And so I raised all the money and I'd never built a restaurant. It was just a box. I just got an empty box in a brand new plaza. And I built the whole restaurant. So a lot of learning. And then I went from after I opened Culver City, I ended up marrying my husband.

34:26And then we opened Pasadena and then eventually Agora Hills. So that is kind of the history of how Sage unfolded. And it was this awesome phenomenon for a lot of years in LA. And I'm so grateful for all of the support and how it all unfolded.

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36:16Tell me the story of Cafe Gratitude. So Cafe Gratitude was my father's restaurant. My family was in the garment industry and my mother, she loved linen. She designed linen clothing for middle-aged women. She had a company called Flax. It was very popular in boutiques and Bloomingdale's and all of these things. And my parents were married 23 years. They moved to San Francisco. And in full disclosure, they were escaping an affair that my mother was having. And so that doesn't work. You can't geographically escape. So my father in his mid 40s found himself, the business that he had put his life into was his wife's clothing company and his kids were grown.

37:04I was 23 and my brother was 21. And all of a sudden he had this totally opened up life. And my dad got super into Landmark Forum and did a bunch of Landmark. And he said, that's cool, but not everybody's going to go to a seminar and do the work. How can the work exist out in the world? So I think that Cafe Gratitude started out of an SELP project that he made the game that Cafe Gratitude was based on this game that encouraged people when they're coming together to have conversations rooted in something more profound than the weather or, you know, what they ate for breakfast or what we can kind of go into the mundane.

37:53And so he designed the game and then he had this idea, Well, what if the game could be a cafe? And then they opened the first Harrison Street Cafe Gratitude in San Francisco and continued to open many restaurants in San Francisco during that time. And it kind of grew faster than the economics of the restaurant could support. And people were so excited about it and it was so cool. But then I think they overexpanded in the San Francisco area all the way up to San Rafael and all of that. And then at that time, some people from L.A. were up there dealing with some family stuff, kind of at the same time they were considering consolidating.

38:41And they decided to partner with my parents, my father and my stepmother, who brought Café Gratitude into the world, to bring it to L.A. What made Cafe Gratitude, Cafe Gratitude? All of it was about affirmations that your thoughts, speech, belief, actions, and attitudes are constantly expressing as your life. And so if that is true, and my father asserts it's true, and I was raised in that conversation, so I guess that I also have found it to be true as well. And so every time you ordered food, it was, I am nourished. I am abundance. I am whole. And the idea would be that people that wouldn't necessarily go and do affirmations in the mirror or have that kind of spiritual work be part of their life would have the opportunity to just have a small piece of it in their every day of having a lunch.

39:36And then there was other things. They had the gratitude bowl, which you could pay whatever you wanted. So let's say you felt very abundant, you could pay$100 for it. And a guy that was homeless could come in and pay 50 cents for it. And so this was also a kind of sharing economy in a way that people that were feeling abundance could share abundance with people that weren't remembering their abundance, and therefore that could trickle into the world of people remembering that the giving and the receiving are actually the same action. What was the dietary style of the restaurant? It was raw vegan at first.

40:12It was very strict raw vegan, and then they added cooked foods at some point to the menu, but it always was vegan and it still is vegan. I think they've closed a lot of them, but there's still several in Los Angeles. And there's also Gracias Madre, which is also my father's creation, kind of an honoring of the Latino community that farmed on his farm and lived in the mission area where the first Cafe Gratitude was. And so Gracias Madre, thank you mother is a Mexican version and it's more in a gratitude prayer with catholic imagery of the mother and all of that do you remember going to the restaurant when you were younger well I was not that I was like 23 and I got braces and the dentist that I was using was up in San Francisco so I would fly up there every 60 days to get my braces managed and so I I spent a lot of time up in the restaurant and saw it grow and was really proud of what my father was doing.

41:18And so I remember it being such a phenomenon and a totally different phenomenon in San Francisco than it was when it came to L.A. It was this completely, like everybody that would be in the mission in San Francisco and you could go in and there could be, you know, celebrities and homeless people and bikers and people with all types of piercings in their face. There was not a type of person that went to Cafe Gratitude. It was this kind of cultural phenomenon. And when it came to L.A., it was very much as the who's who to be seen. It was a very different vibe than the original Cafe Gratitude that was in the mission.

42:01The divorce with my parents in a lot of ways brought me much closer to my father. I don't think my father was like emotionally vulnerable with me when I was younger. And he was a good father and all of that. But I became this very close friend to my father in the losing my mother and in the processing that and the calling me and talking about it, that we created a bond that I would say is to this day, my father calls me several times a week and he's definitely my best friend and business confidant and everything. So I think that that was the beginning, you know, his divorce from my mother and then remarrying my stepmother and this business and my braces, like all of this fostered this amazing relationship that I have with my father today at 47 years old.

42:56When I think of my father being with my mother for his whole life, that would have been fine too, but my mother was definitely the star of the show and his whole life was in service of her design business, her, everything that she did. And I think that he got to create on his own and his own creativity. And I was deeply proud of him for that and deeply proud of him for creating a new marriage that was better than the first. And not that the first was bad. In 23 years, they raised us. They were extraordinary parents. So I do remember it. And with a lot of pride for his rebirth after, because some people could have just been like, I'm 47 years old, I'm divorced.

43:41And, you know, I gave my whole life to my ex-wife's business. And, you know, I got this several million dollars in the divorce settlement and I'm just going to be done. But that was not what my father did. He went out on the skinny branches and created business. And then that was not even the last business he created, you know. I can remember going to Cafe Gratitude in San Francisco. I was a vegan at the time. and I remember, let's say the beetroot salad, for example, was called I Am Beautiful. And I remember saying, I'll have the beetroot salad. And the waiter said, I am, I am, and waited for me to say I am beautiful.

44:21And I said, well, I'll have the beetroot salad. And he was very insistent on me saying I am beautiful if I wanted to get the food. And I just remember thinking this is unlike any restaurant experience I've ever had before. And then when he delivered it, he said, you are beautiful. Yes. Do you remember how customers at Cafe Gratitude felt ordering from the menu the first time they came? Do you remember anything about that? Very uncomfortable. Very, very, very uncomfortable. And, you know, they definitely toned it down some for Los Angeles. the Los Angeles version of the restaurants were definitely toned down from the San Francisco version.

45:02But also, I mean, so much, there's so many beautiful stories of people coming and having a connecting conversation, especially when in San Francisco, they used to have the cards from the board game on the table. And so you could ask these deep and profound questions to the people you're having dinner with, which created connection. And, you know, you just come to a table to deliver some food and you'd see that people are, you know, teary eyed and having a connection. And the more that we can create that kind of connection in the world, the better. And so I think that it was a brave thing to do in a world where the market wants to make everybody comfortable.

45:42We pray to the God of comfort in so many ways and convenience in our culture. I think it was brave to have a restaurant that says like, we're going to actually do something It's going to make people a little uncomfortable, but we believe that that is making a difference. And so let's go. And people would say stuff like, I'm from New York and this is ridiculous. And I'd laugh and I'd say, well, everybody that started Cafe Graduate is also from New York. So your identity from New York doesn't need to hate affirmations. But yeah, it was an interesting thing. And it was interesting to have a competitive business with my parents because you would hear, were, you know, I would get to hear the upset or people would come to me to tell me and they would get the upset like, oh, I'm never going to Sage again.

46:25This happened or I'm never going to gratitude again. So it was interesting to be so close in proximity with them having the five restaurants and me having five restaurants in LA. It was an interesting dynamic. And people would always come in and say, do you get along with your father? I was like, yeah. Are you guys competitive? Yeah. I mean, my dad for years called me every morning and said, what were the numbers, baby? And I'd be like, do you want me to just send you the sales report? And he's like, no, what would the fun of that be? And so then I didn't look at the sales report yet. And I'd look on my phone and I'd say, oh, Calver City did this.

47:00And he'd say Venice did this. And I'd say Echo Park did this. He'd say Larchmont did this. Pasadena did this. And Beverly Hills did this. And so we would go over the numbers. And, you know, they were way ahead of me in the beginning because they had way more resources than me. and I was like selling eights of weed to get my first restaurant off the ground and they had big investors. And then I kind of at a certain point surpassed what they were doing pre-pandemic. I was just like, it was crazy what I was doing and we were selling the restaurants for a ton of money and then we got closed for two and a half years and the bureaucracy stole 15 years of my life, but I'm not gonna be a victim.

47:37I'm gonna trust that it's all in my benefit. Whatever's happening is in my benefit. Do you know when your parents became vegan? My father was always a pescatarian as far as I can remember my whole childhood. My mother read a book in college about factory farming, and it was appalling. And she made a decision that she wasn't going to eat meat ever again. So when she was pregnant with me, she was not eating meat. And I think my father kind of went along with her view of life. But because my father grew up half in Plattsburgh, New York, and half in Maine in the summertime, I think that he had an affinity for fish.

48:21And so he always kept fish in his diet, but ultimately not in the house. We were vegan at home. And then one time my mom was making cookies for us. And she ran to the corner store in the country where we lived and at Pips and bought some margarine. And then she got distracted and she had left the margarine with the pilot light getting soft in the oven overnight and it turned to a plastic sheet. And she was just like, this is crazy. We're never eating this again. So we were vegan except for butter for my whole childhood. Like they did introduce some dairy, I would say around my turning 12 or 13, but I was vegetarian my whole life.

49:02And my mother is still vegetarian to this day. Growing up in New York, having parents who were essentially vegetarian, was that a strange upbringing for the culture that you were in? So I grew up in Ithaca, New York, so it's super hippie, liberal. So it was strange, but not so strange. My mom is an identical twin, and my mom and my dad married brothers. So I had four parents. When your mom is a twin, you have two moms. And so my mom's twin sister worked at the food, natural food co-op. So I guess I didn't feel like it was that weird because the community that was around us, it was pretty accepted.

49:47I went to Waldorf school. There was always a vegetarian option for the lunch stuff at Waldorf school. What was the weirdest was the no sugar. And to be truthful, I haven't been able to raise my kids with no sugar because I didn't like going to birthday parties and having to bring like some weird carob cake thing that, and everybody else is eating McDonald's cake or whatever. And so I'd say that the weirder thing was the no sugar than the no meat, to be honest.

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51:56What was the motivation for your move to Texas? So I bought this place in the beginning of 22. And in full disclosure, I believed life would go back to normal. The restaurants would start making money again. And I should buy a place in Texas. And Texas is open. So I should open some restaurants in Texas. And so I thought, I'm going to find someplace close to between Austin and San Antonio and open restaurants. And veganism is still at its infancy in Texas. It's still a new thing. It still has legs. And it's truthfully, veganism is dying in LA and people are going to keto and all these other things.

52:42And I personally inside was not vegan anymore. I was not that inspired about it. But I thought I might as well expand the empire so that I can sell it for more when life goes back to normal and we're doing$7 to$9 million a store. I obviously did not know that life would never go back to normal, that LA would never be the same, that we retrained humanity to eat at home. We retrained humanity to date on the internet, date by swiping left, swiping right. And by not letting people go out to eat for two and a half years, it made it totally acceptable to Netflix and chill. And so a huge percentage of dating people stopped going out to eat in the traditional way.

53:26And then many family members didn't go back to work. So we used to have early family dinner and then late date dinner. Well, both early family dinner and late date dinner and lunch, business lunch, were all gutted even when the pandemic was over. because the culture had changed. And so because of that, it never went back to normal. And the restaurant industry is not the same. It's not the same at Gracias Madre. It's not the same at Cafe Gratitude. It's not the same at my restaurant. My brother, Kerry, started a restaurant called Highly Likely. And he's found a niche of like artists and people that don't really conform to these kinds of things.

54:07And that's been his audience. And he's largely done well. But of all of our family restaurants from Gratitude, Sage, Gracias Madre, and Highly Likely, which are the family of restaurants that my siblings and parents own, Highly Likely is the only one that has expanded at this time and the only one that is having quarter over quarter growth. And it's, you know, to a very young audience. Is that a vegan restaurant as well? It's not. But lots of non-vegan restaurants are also struggling. I talked to people that have restaurants for 30 years that are burning through their retirement right now and don't know what to do and can't pull the plug because they've had these employees for all this time.

54:46And it's really a sad situation in the restaurant industry in Los Angeles. And so ultimately, I bought this place thinking that I would open restaurants in Austin and San Antonio. And then I just started to see how bad the sales were and how much we were bleeding during the pandemic. And I thought, well, I can't use any money to do that. I have stores that were making cash flowing so much money, losing a billion plus dollars a year. I have 350 employees. I'm firing people, laying people off. So I ended up having this farm that I bought in order to service the restaurants I was going to open because the farm had to come first in this model of farm and table.

55:32So I own this farm in Texas and I own this farm in California. And this county comes out to my property in California because I let this homeless family stay in an RV on my property during COVID and remote school. They didn't have internet. Their kids, there's six kids living in an RV. I get the wife a job. I get the husband a job and I let them live on my property. And a neighbor reports me for letting someone live on an RV in my property, which then opens up this whole can of worms. And they come onto my property and they say, they want everything brought up to code. Like this farm started in 1884.

56:10And so millions of dollars, they just, a stroke of a bureaucrat's pen. And the farm is actually doing great. It's starting to grow during the pandemic. And I thought like, this is awesome. People are really interested in farm to table. But once you could go back in Whole Foods and you didn't have to wear a mask and everything, you would be amazed how quick people didn't care about farm to table at all. I was doing 500 boxes during the pandemic of delivering direct to people's houses. So, you know, I actually bought more land during the pandemic. I thought farming is good. People are reinvigorated about this idea of regenerative farming and all of this.

56:51And I start to run out of money. And I realized I can't keep it all afloat. I got to sell California farm. And I have to sell California farm because I don't feel like there's possibility to make money here. And so I make the hard decisions. I have to sell my farms. I start selling, they sell one farm another. And my farm, which has all the violations, I'm like, dear Lord, please send me a buyer that's going to pay cash and they're going to keep my employees and they're going to keep it all in regenerative agriculture. I forgot to ask it not to be a huge pharmaceutical heir, but somebody bought my farm.

57:32They kept my employees to this day and they still have my employees. They kept it regenerative. And yes, they are an heir to a huge pharmaceutical company that made vaccines during the pandemic. So it's a weird turn of events. And I decided to move to Texas to this land because I thought there was more possibility with less regulations. And I needed a big chunk of money. I had no money. The restaurants were losing money. I didn't know what to do. And I just prayed on my knees, God, please, I'm sorry to ask, but I need you to drop a pile of money on me. And I was crying. I was looking at my kids.

58:07I'm looking at them in the been. I know there's equity in my farm. I know I have this place in Texas. I just don't know how to get there. And in the middle of the night, my phone, beep, and it's Kanye West. And he's, I had asked him if he wanted to invest in this project that we're doing here, because we're, we were raising money. We're still raising money to finish this hospitality project here. But he wrote, I'm not investing in anything that's not me right now. And I said, okay, I understand that. I respect that. And then he wrote, so just send me an invoice for consulting. And I was like, for consulting what?

58:41He's like, I'm going to get a farm and you can consult or you can consult on my Wyoming ranch. And I said, for how much? And he said, the higher amount. And so I went back to see what my text said. And my text said, the minimum of investment is 25 ,000. The maximum is 300 ,000 because liquor license, I don't want anybody to own more than 10 % because it gets complicated when you need to reduce stuff with the liquor license. So I wrote 300 ,000. He said, yeah. And he gave me the guy's information to submit the invoice. And I submitted the invoice. And honestly, I was still not 100 % positive that he was going to send me this money.

59:19I have a relationship with him that was not, I mean, it's long. We met when I did HBO Deaf Poetry. We filmed the same day, but it's not close. And we had just seen each other recently when I had sent that text message, But we hadn't seen each other or talked in 10 or 15 years before that. So I didn't know for sure, but I thought, you know, the Lord works in mysterious ways. And so two weeks go by and I hadn't received any money. And I was like, well, I guess it's not going to happen. And my friend said, well, why don't you just text the guy that you sent the invoice to or email him and say, hey, I've never done business with Kanye.

59:58how long does it take for his check runs to go through? And so I did that. And the guy called me right back and said, I'm so sorry, we missed your invoice. I'm going to wire it to you on Friday. I have other wires that are going out on Friday. And I sent Kanye a couple of ideas and plans. And I never heard back from him. And his phone number changed. And I've never heard from him again. I don't think it's personal, but he's busy and doing his life. And so he gave me this most beautiful gift of giving me the ability to move all that equipment, all my animals, my cows, my pigs, my horses, my greenhouses, my tractors, and pick up that farm in California and drop it here in Texas.

1:00:43And I'm forever grateful for that and forever grateful to Divine Intelligence and to Kanye for participating in that way. Have you always been a person of faith? I've always been a spiritual person. My parents raised me in that your thoughts, speech, beliefs, actions, and attitudes are always the divine expressing, and you have to be mindful of that. And I feel like the closer I get to nature, the closer I feel to God. And the more I realize that our ego and our desire for domination has us missing the most precious parts of life. So I would say that my faith has grown stronger through the years.

1:01:35but I think I've always prayed, I've always been mindful of how God expresses through us and in us. What have you learned about nature since having a regenerative farm? She never lies. And that's like the whole concept of my book is that I just started to, the veganism was the first crack, like there is no veganism. you know, the lion eats the gazelle, but when the lion dies, the grass eats the lion. The microbes feed the fat to the grass, that there is no veganism. That our purpose, and this is going to sound crazy to most people in my world, and people have been very upset for me for saying it recently, but all mammals, every single one of them prioritize clean water, clean food, and reproduction, and some prioritize shelter.

1:02:31We are very good at shelter and comfort, but we have largely abandoned our water, we have abandoned our food, and we have abandoned reproduction. And think about for me to be here, how many ancestors had to fight, toil in the sun, work so hard to feed their children, to feed themselves, and to live in much harder conditions than anything I will ever experience in my lifetime. And I almost didn't pass that gift on because I was so busy being busy, so concerned about how can I make sure that I am successful, that I get written about, that there's a picture of me in a chef's coat with my arms crossed on whatever magazine, that I almost missed the opportunity to be a mother.

1:03:25And I'm just so grateful that I didn't miss that opportunity. And I would say that having children and the way that I ended up having children and the way God spoke to me and directed me in that has brought my faith to another level for sure. Do you think if it wasn't for COVID, none of this would have happened? I don't know about none of it. My coming to being pro-life happened in a mushroom journey far before COVID. When I was 30-ish, 30-something, I was still married to my first husband, I think. And I went to a gathering at my dad's farm where he had a Aguilita, a grandmother from Mexico. There's 13 indigenous grandmothers that preside over indigenous medicine, and they're kind of the caretakers for indigenous medicine.

1:04:18They meet a couple of times a year and try to save these traditions in a world that maybe doesn't respect them or honor them anymore. So they were doing a mushroom tea gathering at my father's farm. I was invited up. I went and very quickly after drinking the tea, my uncle was walking across the field and he's like a little hunched over and his body went from being hunched over like an elderly man to a fetus that it do a young boy into a young man and then it do an old man and it kept doing that across the field and then all of a sudden I see this whole blanket of threads like beautiful light threads of light that were wove the entire blanket together and it was all of life and how it was all intertwined and interconnected perfectly.

1:05:09And then the blanket swept up into the air and under the blanket, there was all these vacuums sucking souls threads out of the blanket and pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling and making the blanket not be the same as it was because all these lives were being pulled out of it. And it got really dark and really bad. And I was crying. I didn't know. I said, like, what do you want? What do you want from me? Like just blood and guts and fetuses and everything. And I had had two abortions in my early twenties and I never thought about them again, treated it like a root canal. And the voice said, do you believe in divine intelligence?

1:05:50And I said, yes. And the voice said that it wasn't your choice to make. I can see more than you can see. Your view is limited. And then the voice said, the mother and the father and the child is the Holy Trinity, the foundation. You must keep that intact. And I was like, I'm not even in touch with this person I had the baby with. Like, I don't know what you want from me. And I got frustrated after a while because it was dark and it seemed like a long time that this was going on. I was like, I don't know what you want. And then it got all light and white and like arms of love of like a parent that knows that you've done something wrong, but like total forgiveness, total understanding, total value for seeing you.

1:06:36And the voice said, promise to never do it again and never use your words to encourage anybody to do it. And I literally in my head said, I can do that, but I'm not going to be pro-life. Like literally like I'm not, I was so liberal, so, so liberal that I said that. I didn't tell anybody about this vision or hallucination. And I went about my life and I opened more restaurants and endorsed my husband and I put it out of my mind. I didn't even tell anybody about it until my father had an experience on ayahuasca where he called me to tell me that he, the voice had told him to reverse his vasectomy and that what he had done was wrong with my mother, having abortions with my mother and that he He had to promise to never use his words.

1:07:23Same words came through the ayahuasca that came through the mushrooms. So the first person I told about it was when my dad told me that. I told him. And then years go by. I'm opening Culver City. I'm divorcing my ex-husband. And my ex-husband had a very hard time with his brother being in prison. His best friend died of a drug interaction. And he was drunk in the restaurant one night and ended up spitting in my face. And I want to say he's a very good man. And it was a bad moment for him in his life. And I went to the kitchen crying. And a young cook that I was friends with brought me a margarita.

1:08:01I never drink. He said, drink this. The Huffington Post is outside waiting to interview me about what is it like to be business partners with Woody Harrelson and Jason Mraz? And how's this new restaurant going? And I'm crying behind the pizza oven. And the cook goes and gets me another margarita. And I drink it. I pull myself together and go do the interview. My husband's roommates come and get him and I make it through the night. And that cook then says, well, I'm going to come and drive you home because I've never seen you drink before. So I don't think that you should drink and drive. One thing leads to another in a very vulnerable moment.

1:08:40I sleep with him. I then the next morning immediately regret it. Tell him I'm so sorry. I apologize. Please go back to your girlfriend at the host stand and never think of me again. And two weeks later, I'm pregnant and I know what I need to do. I literally know that I need to marry this person who doesn't speak English, who's undocumented, who's 13 years younger than me, who has nothing in common with me, nothing. And I promise God, mother, father, child, Holy Trinity, keep it intact. And it's so hard because I have investors and I have, there's like employees and all this stuff. And I feel shame and embarrassment.

1:09:24And I don't even know what to do. But I go to the restaurant, I tell him. And it's interesting is that his father, his father was one of 27 children that was spawned like up and down the coast of Huatulco, Oaxaca, like that. And so his father always said to him, you could never leave your child. If you get someone pregnant, you could never leave them. So God working in my favor years and years before this was ever a thing, he had been indoctrinated every meal, every family meeting, every interaction. You never leave your child. So he agreed that we needed to get married. And we got married two weeks later on Thanksgiving Day.

1:10:06And our vows were something like, this may seem crazy to you guys, but we think it's what's best for our family. and we ask that the community doesn't diminish this and supports it. And if either one of us comes to you saying it's a hard time, please support us. And we had the community say, I do. And then we said we commit to be the best parents that we could be and get to know each other and build this family the best we can. Like, I don't know what you're going to say about this kind of marriage. And we got married and it was super awkward. And he got drunk with like all the cooks on one side of the yard and I was sitting on the other side of the yard with my dad and my stepmom on a bench thinking, what have I done?

1:10:48What is going on here? And awkward December, awkward Christmas. You know, there's this before like Instagram and Twitter where you could just like go into your own world and scroll. So we're trying to find things that we can watch on TV together. We're watching animal shows because basically you can follow along with the animal shows. And then we lose the baby in January. So I got pregnant in October, married in November, Christmas, and we lose the baby. And I think, Lord, I have been completely obedient. I don't understand. This level of radical faith and obedience should be rewarded in my small human mind.

1:11:35And most of my friends are basically telling me, like celebrating, like, you can get out of this, Molly. you just it's less than six months you just get it annulled it doesn't exist just be done and we go to this Indian family huge Indian family comes to Sage in Culver City they rent out the whole restaurant for the evening and they do this big vegetarian buffet and they ask the cooks and the chefs to come out and to be acknowledged and out of politeness I'm standing at the front where the couple that's doing their 50th wedding anniversary that are the matriarch and patriarch of the hundred and something people in the room.

1:12:14I say politely, tell me the secret to 50 years of marriage. And she said, well, we were an arranged marriage. So we've always been building for tomorrow. We're always putting our family, our community and our business at the center of our marriage. And we built our love inside of that. Okay, God. So we decided that that baby arranged our marriage. And this is what we were meant to do. We stayed married. And 13 years later, we still are married. We have four children. It's exquisite life. And during COVID, a young man, high school student showed up at my farm, Osmar. That was an unaccompanied minor that came to a renewed night with his family during the Trump administration.

1:13:05He borrowed money and he took an Uber to my farm to volunteer during COVID. And he had seen me on YouTube and he felt like he belonged with our family. He felt like he belonged, that there was some connection between me and him. And we ended up taking custody of him and he lived with us pretty much almost immediately. And I believe that that's the soul that I aborted was brought back to me 20 years later as a gift for my obedience. That's wild. Incredible story. But I suspect that if I had sold my businesses and got a huge chunk of money and been able to just do what we wanted to do, there's a part of what my husband brings to the marriage and what masculinity brings to the marriage that I never would have fully appreciated.

1:14:00And I would have felt like it was something that I did that made us our money and that I would have not thought it out loud. It would have been on the underneath and it would have impacted our ability to be in balance. And I suspect that it would have been harder for us to stay married. And I think that whatever we're building here now, we're building it together from the ground up and we are equal partners. And it wasn't like he came into something that I had already built. And I get to value the masculinity that he brings in a way that the feminist in me didn't value. And so I don't know what would have happened if COVID didn't happen.

1:14:51I can't say, but I try to believe and understand that there is something that's of value for my children, for my husband, for my marriage that came out of not getting that windfall. And I've lost everything before, the music industry, the pot industry, and I've always built it back bigger and better. And so I have faith that what I'm doing here on the ranch, people are interested about it. People want to come to natural spaces, want to eat regenerative food, want to stay in a space that is on organic cotton sheets with no Wi-Fi and experience hearing the crickets at nighttime. I believe that people want that.

1:15:34And I believe that I'm bringing value to the community, even if it's not monetized exactly how I wanted it to yet. Tell me what it feels like to eat food that you've grown yourself versus something that you buy in a store. It's like so much pride. And also, and this is crazy because why is this, but way less willingness to waste it. And I don't know why this is, but now I'm very much less willing to waste store-bought food. But I remember growing food for the first and second time as an adult and just all of a sudden realizing the value of every tomato, the effort that went into every piece of creation of food.

1:16:17And so there's just no other level of pride. And there's a spark of recognition of participating in this world in the way we were meant to do it that feels right. And I feel the same way when I look out on cows on pasture or sheep on pasture. There's something, there's that crunching sound of the grass and them eating and sitting, laying in the sun and chewing their cud. There's a joy in my body that says that is what's meant to be happening. and that joy and pride and I just feel it in all of me. And it's the same for a tomato or a butternut squash or a zucchini. And I'm so motivated to, okay, I'm going to make zucchini croquettes.

1:17:06I'm going to make zucchini bread. I'm going to, like, we have all this zucchini. Let's, how can I use it? I have pumpkin hot sauce. Like, we're almost out of the pumpkin hot sauce from last year and people are like, are you making pumpkin hot sauce again this year? Yes, we have tons of pumpkins. I'll be happy to make pumpkin hot sauce. I'm just inspired as a chef to do more than just throw the pumpkin after Halloween. We have a high-risk festival. There's all these pumpkins that we grew. The old Molly, before I grew the pumpkins, just let them rot or then throw them in the compost. And that's fine.

1:17:38There's no waste in the compost. But there's something beautiful about we had this huge pumpkin last year. And I made 12 cases of hot sauce and 17 quarts of pumpkin soup out of just this one. And I made pumpkin queso, which I highly recommend when pumpkin season comes. But it's interesting because, you know, we've been struggling in some ways financially since we moved here and getting this project to come off the ground. And I was stressed out earlier in the year and I was all this money stuff, thinking about different things. and I went into the restaurant and I was canning food that we grew.

1:18:16And then I was thinking, I'm just wasting my time canning food, avoiding what I need to do. And then I had this thought, how crazy, a hundred years ago, like there was nothing for me to do but can the food that we grew. And now I'm canning this food, but then I'm thinking I need to make money some way over here to pay the bank. And that's how the money slave system works is it gets you in this cog in a wheel where you just have to keep doing something that's literally not necessarily even benefiting your life. Like saving food for my family, that's what I need to be doing. But somehow I was making myself wrong for that because I wasn't making money, you know what I mean?

1:18:52And so I think that eating food that you grew has you have so many realizations. I couldn't even tell you all of them. Hundreds of realizations come from the awakeness of eating food that you grew. Tell me about the nutrient density of foods. So plants don't know how to make minerals. I don't know if you noticed, they don't make minerals. They only take minerals from the soil. And there is no soil on the planet that doesn't have enough nutrients or minerals to grow food. There's only soil that's dead to dead, not enough beings alive in that soil to make the nutrients, the minerals available to the plants.

1:19:41And so when you have soil that is alive, it has so much more nutrients, so much more minerals. So when we think about food, often we're just thinking about the macros. But when we're eating food that was grown in healthy soil with this teeming life, a teaspoon of soil that's healthy has more beings in it than all of the human beings on the planet. There's so much life in this soil. And the design is so perfect. So the sun and the air and the water are up here, and then the plant is drawing all that down, taking the carbon out of the atmosphere, and they're feeding carbohydrates to that microbiology.

1:20:25That microbiology eats the carbohydrates or eats decomposing matter and excretes food for the plants, which has all of the minerals that are in the soil becoming bioavailable for the plants. This is a perfect design. We often think about high-tech being a solar panel and low-tech being your garden. But your garden is so much more high-tech than a solar panel. There's no waste. There's no garbage. There's no enslaved children on the supply chain. Like, it is high-tech. And what it is making is high-tech, high-nutrients, high-god, high-vibration food for you to eat. There's literally light inside the food.

1:21:07There's a guy, Eric Cunner, who grows vegetables. He made a film called Pharmacy of Light. And he's basically showing that the healthier the food, there's more light in the food. We're all made of sunlight. And so the food that comes from a healthier system has more vitality in every kind of way. And then even food that comes from a healthier system loses nutrient density over time. It's dying. And so as it is dying, it's losing, it's letting that stuff go. So the faster we can eat the food from the farm, the better. And the more local we can eat the food, the better. And then the healthier the soil, the more nutrient density.

1:21:46And there's citrus farmers right now showing multiple times more vitamin C in their citrus than there is in the citrus of their neighbor growing the exact same genetics across the street. It's all about the microbiology making the nutrients available to the plant. And we largely treat our soil like a hydropodic grow, where we're just putting nutrients on it and thinking that the plant can then just take up those nutrients. But that is missing the whole symbiosis of the soil and the microbiology and breaking down those minerals to go into the plants. And then we're all totally deficient of nutrients.

1:22:30And so then we eat too much because our body is still craving something it's not getting. Tell me about the difference between living in California and living in Texas. People are not as interested in healthy food here would be my first thing that I noticed. And that I actually just didn't think grownups drank soda. I lived in LA. I mean, maybe occasionally have a Mexican Coke or whatever, but I didn't see a lot of grownups drinking soda all the time. So I was surprised at like the grownup consumption of big gulps and like 44 ounce sodas. But I've also been moved by people's faith. I owned restaurants in LA for 15 years.

1:23:14Maybe one person ever asked me to pray with them. I would say most days my restaurant is open. Someone is asking to pray with me, telling me they're praying for me, telling me that God told them that this is a food ministry, that this is bigger. Hold on. They got a download from God. He wants me to hold on. I'm in the right place. You keep doing what you're doing. I heard that people coming up to me and just grabbing my hands and saying, pray with me. I never had that in Los Angeles. People really lead with their faith here, which is nice and different. Also, we do baby showers on the ranch. And I never thought about this as an idea, but in Los Angeles, if someone's daughter gets pregnant at 18 years old, it's an emergency.

1:23:59It's a disaster. It's something to solve for. And here it's a blessing. And I'm seeing these young mothers being extraordinary mothers, buying organic flour and making sourdough bread. And I have a friend, she's pregnant with their fifth kid and she's 23. She makes all their food from scratch. She orders everything from Azure Standard. She has a garden. Her and her husband built their own house on their parents' property. I have another person that just did their baby shower here. She just had her first baby at 19 years old. They're living in an apartment above the barn on their parents' property.

1:24:34So much support. She had a home birth. She's doing all organic. These are conscious, awake young ladies having babies and it's being celebrated by the community. And I never saw that in the 20 something years I lived in LA. It was something to hide or be ashamed of or try to talk your daughter out of when she got pregnant that young. And I was shocked by this when the first person that was like 18 year old was like, oh, my daughter's pregnant. I was like, oh, and they're to have the baby shower here. I was like, wow, I don't remember the last time in Los Angeles, I did a baby shower for an 18 year old.

1:25:15And people might tell me I'm wrong. And they totally celebrated their daughters. But I would say as a whole, it was not celebrated. I had friends that had their kids get pregnant at that time. And it was either terminated or something to be ashamed of or managed for. And that is not what it's like here at all. And so that was very, very different. What are some of the things you've noticed health-wise since going from vegan to eating some animal foods now? I'm thinner. I lost 40 pounds. I did a raw milk fast for 46 days for Lent. And I did only raw milk and raw yogurt. I had this download that as I was getting into my mid late 40s, I was having like this middle section that wasn't going away.

1:26:09And I was trying to help a friend that was having trouble after getting vaccinated. And I was learning about the bifida bacteria being wiped out in everybody that got the COVID jabs. and then I started learning about bifida bacteria and how amazing it was and who had the most of it it's breastfeeding babies and I had this thought maybe I've killed off a lot of my bifida and I want to reset my gut like a baby and a baby eats only milk for this extended period of time and then integrates small amounts of food and dirt and the floor and everything else to reset their microbiome. And so I tried to recreate that for myself.

1:26:48And I lost a significant amount of weight. I reset my microbiology. I lost that whole center section of my gut. And I feel first thing in the morning when I would just wake up, I would feel a little stiffness in my feet and my hands. And by the time I got up and went pee and breastfed the baby, it would go away. But I didn't notice And now I'm not having that stiffness unless I did something where I overextended myself physically the day before. I'm not really having any stiffness and a lot of my brain fog has lifted. And so I attribute that to not just integrating that stuff, but also resetting my microbiology, having my hands in the soil all the time.

1:27:32Because breast milk, which is 90-something percent the same DNA as cow's milk, sets the foundation. It's the planned community for the microbiology to move into. And so by resetting and doing only milk for that long, I reset that space for the colonies to grow into, hopefully, or expand that we're already in there. And so I've seen really extraordinary results with that. And I love bone broth. I can feel when I drink the bone broth, I can feel a subconscious, yes, more of that, more of that, please. And so I get that my body's asking for it. But I think there's something in nourishing this body that's given so much to make four children this late in life and breastfeed four children this late in life.

1:28:19Tell me about the model for your farm. We have 206 acres and we live here in community with my brother and his wife. my brother-in-law, well, he actually just moved to Austin, but the brother-in-law that was in prison, he always joked that I divorced his brother, but I didn't divorce him. When he got out of prison, he had to live with me because of the agreements or whatever. And then he literally just stayed. I just kept him. But he just got married, so he just moved to Austin. So he was living here. And then we have my husband's brother and cousin that stay 10 months out of the year helping on the farm with a visa from Mexico.

1:28:58And then we have some other people that live on the farm. And so there's the community, there's about 22 of us that live here. And that's a group mix of family and workers and work trade people that want to be here and learn. And then we have 40 beds of hospitality. So let's say you were like, I want to have a retreat of artists in central Texas and I want us to eat only regenerative food and I'm going to invite my friends, you could come here and we have different spaces. So we have an outdoor stage on the field that has like a 4 ,000 square foot shade structure. And then we have a yurt, which is just for like 50 people.

1:29:36And then we have a conference room for 250 to 300 people with a stage. And so we do small music festivals. We do yoga retreats. There's something called influencer retreats where a brand brings all their influencers together to make content. We do men's work, coming of age work, church retreats, baby showers, family reunions, weddings, all of that. So we have 40 beds and we have these different venues. And then we have an organic restaurant that's on the farm that only serves protein from the ranch. So if you come and you get a patty belt today at the restaurant, it's from a cow that we knew we raised, we didn't vaccinate and is on this land the whole time.

1:30:17And I believe that there's a coherency in food that's grown on the land that you are on. And so I believe that there's a ripple effect. If you come here and you eat a burger from here, you have a feeling when you leave that is a remembering of that divine cycle that God has a design. And so that's what we're doing. And we do farm tours. We have pigs, goats, sheep, and cows, dairy and beef. I heard that you call your burger the what's possible burger. Is that right? Yes, sir. What's possible when man and bovine and grass and microbiology all work together? What's possible is regeneration. And what's in the what's possible burger?

1:31:04It's a patty belt. So it's sourdough bread. That's 20 % brown wheat. So we get the wheat berries and we grind it. And so you're having all the nutrients and then 80 % organic white because people are still not 100 % on the 100 % wheat yet. And then we have that bread, and then we make it sourdough long-fermented over a day and a half. And then it has a long-fermented kimchi, red onions, and organic grass-fed cheddar, and the burger, and organic mustard. And that is what's on the What's Possible burger. Tell me more about local food versus food that travels to you. What do you think the benefits of local food are?

1:31:43So I think that there's a large growing body of evidence that water has memory. There's Veda Austin. There's other scientists that are proving that water has memory. And so food is largely water when it's growing. And we are largely water. And so I believe that our food is being informed by our environment, that the water is remembering what is in the environment and then is informing that food. And that food is then informing your mitochondria and your epigenetics. And so this food that is coherent with your environment, I believe is turning on the cells that fight cancer and turning off the cells that make cancer or diabetes or any of those things.

1:32:36And then on another note, and I don't know, you know, some people are science believers and some people are biblical believers and some people are spiritual. But in the Bible, God picked up some soil and he blew it and then he made Adam and he blew into Adam's nose and made man. And in science, it shows us that the microbiology in a healthy gut and the microbiology in healthy soil are 73 % the same DNA. So whether you're staunchly believing in science or you're staunchly believing in the Bible. Either way, I think it's clear that we are meant to live with the soil and of the soil. So on another level, eating of your local environment that has not been sterilized and packaged and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, is replenishing that microbiology that's in your gut.

1:33:29And if you think about our language, how many ways do we say to trust your gut, your guttural instinct, trust with your gut, go with your gut. What if that microbiology, the foundation of all of life, soil, that is a little piece of creation in you, informing you, and that the more distant we get from that microbiology and the more we get this industrial microbiome that's in our guts, we can't trust our guts. And then we can't trust ourselves. And then we can't trust each other. And then we invite the government to be in every single interaction. What if that reconnecting with healthy soil is so much bigger than just our microbiology and our mental health and all of the things that we know are so important, but what if it's actually reconnecting with the creator, with that voice inside of us?

1:34:17And so I want to invite people wherever you are to get your hands in soil, because I think that that disconnect is having us disconnected from the voice that is always giving us our inspiration, our creativity, and guiding us in life. And I believe that that is invaluable and necessary. So to me, it's not just a battle of chemical farming. It's a spiritual battle. And I believe that soil is at the foundation of that spiritual battle. And even if you're saying, no, I don't believe that it's a scientific battle, then it's a scientific battle worth fighting because the science shows that putting your hands in healthy soil is more effective than any SSRI.

1:35:04And what percentage of adults are on SSRIs in this culture? So many. And so the science shows us that reconnecting with the soil is important. And I believe that Genesis also asks that of us. And before the Ten Commandments, before anything else, God said to tend to the garden. That is what was asked of us, very first thing that was ever spoken into existence, supposedly. He also spoke over the water, arguing my earlier point that water has memory, that the water was there and it was black, and he spoke over it and he divided the water above and below the firmament and all that. But he spoke into the water, water has memory.

1:35:43And so if water does have memory, or even some believe God consciousness, then what are the ramifications of us constantly poisoning God's consciousness. And so to me, it's twofold. We have to stop poisoning ourselves, the soil, and the water in order to win the spiritual battle that's at hand. Can you explain how regenerative farming and industrial farming differ? Yes. So we have regenerative farming, we have organic farming, and then we have industrial farming and organic farming is largely industrial farming and largely degenerative where we just don't use these certain things like it's like we've said these chemicals are okay to use and these chemicals are not okay to use regenerative farming is an active practice of working with nature to create healthy soil understanding that healthy soil is the foundation of all of life and And so there's five principles of regenerative agriculture.

1:36:45The first one is context. So farming within the context of where you are, I should not try to grow papayas in Texas. That's not the best crop for here because winters and all of that. The next is armor or cover crops, keeping the ground covered with either a cover crop or mulch or some kind of armor on the ground so that the mother is modest. She does not want to be exposed, but ultimately so that the microbiology can stay alive and have protection. biodiversity, so a diversity of different kinds of plants, not just having fields of one kind of thing, also diversity of crops so that you're not fully dependent on one income stream.

1:37:26And then less chemicals or no chemicals, and then no till or less till. And then the last and most important one to me is the animal integration where you're using animals to do their herd impact on the ground to recreate what the bison or the antelopes are doing under pressure from predators. They get moved and they stay in these tight pods so that nobody can get them. And therefore they pee and they poop and they saliva in tight areas. And then that is how the grasslands have been grown for millions and millions of years. So we recreate that with what's called holistic plant grazing, mob grazing.

1:38:04And we move our cattle every single day. We move our sheep every single day. We were moving our goats every day, but they are escape artists and we are having a break on retraining them on a hard fence because we can't get them to stay in the electric fence. Do you follow Joel Salatin's work? I do. So Joel wrote the forward to my book and I just met him in real life for the first time. And we were at the Heritage Foundation in DC a couple of weeks ago as they are trying to make Soil Health be at the foundation of the conservative party. I largely don't trust government at all. But if a think tank as big as them wants to bring Soil Health into the middle of the conversation, I will be there at the front row trying to make that happen.

1:38:49So we were both there as part of the team that was consulting on what is important in this area. I think he's awesome. And I actually didn't want him to write the forward to my book because we're on the same publisher and I thought he might just feel obligated. Oh, it's her first book. They're asking me, let me do it. So I said no. And then they just sent it to him to read. And he reached out and asked me if he could write the foreword. And so I then was like, of course you can. I wanted, you know, I want whoever does it to want to do it. It's so weird. This is my first book, but people are like, oh, you can't expect people to write a blurb for you.

1:39:26You just have to send them the blurb and ask them to put their name on it. And I was like, I don't want a blurb from anybody that didn't read the book. That's crazy. And my book is kind of controversial. So everybody that wrote a blurb for my book actually read the book and I didn't write any blurbs for anybody. And someone was like, oh, you probably have to just write the foreword for someone too. And I was like, I think I'll find someone who's inspired enough about what I wrote that they want to participate. So that was awesome. And he's just so extraordinary. I write for Epoch Times, which is like a newspaper that, I don't know, I think they think themselves centrist.

1:40:06I think they're probably right leading. But I write in the opinion section and just had an article come out called Free the Enslaved Food System, which was about Joel Salatin and his talk at the Heritage Foundation and how he believes it doesn't cost the government anything to roll back all the regulations and free the entrepreneur. And that if you want to buy milk from your neighbor, or you want to buy Shakurdy from your neighbor or whatever, you should have the right to do that. And if someone else doesn't feel safe, they can go to Walmart or HEB. Those things are not going away, the big grocery stores.

1:40:44But why is it that we need the government in every interaction around our food? If farmers are not free to feed the people, something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong in our society. And the book is called Debunked by Nature? Yes. Tell me about the book. I'd started out with like Nature Never Lies, and then we just switched it to that. But I just kept having all these thoughts through COVID about how many little lies I feel like were kind of forced to tell every day or were asked to tell every day. And it was getting so much louder during COVID. And I remember there was this whole thing, Latinx, where we were supposed to call all Latin people Latinx because it was non-binary.

1:41:32And my husband looked at me and said, we're not doing that. And I was like, we have to. That's like what's happening. And he said, absolutely not. That's white supremacy. We're not changing my entire language. Every word is gendered. Whatever word you're saying, it's gendered. It's not like in English where you say he or she before. it's like if I am full in Spanish, full for a female is Jenna and full for a male is Geno. Every word is gendered. He said, you can't just put X at the end of Latino and make it the language non-gendered. It doesn't make any sense. And I was explaining this to someone in the restaurant, a girlfriend of mine who is teaching at LAUSD.

1:42:15And she was like, oh, I don't know. I don't think you can say that. And I was like, well, but my husband is Mexican and he feels disrespected by it. So I I don't think we should be saying it. Have you talked to the parents of the children that you're using this term with? They're largely Catholic from Mexico, Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras. So I believe that they would not be interested in that terminology. And I had employees quit, put on Twitter that I was transphobic. And I was like, I'm just expressing the views of my husband. But this was just like one little like lie that we were asked to tell through COVID.

1:42:52and that six feet insistencing is going to make a difference, that wearing a mask when you're standing up, when you're sitting down, you don't have to. We can't eat at the bar, but you can eat at a table. Like, they just didn't make any sense. And there was all these lies we were supposed to pretend were true. And then if you didn't pretend they were true, which I didn't because I grew up in a largely unmedicated household, which largely was a liberal thing just as far as I remember growing up, I was unvaccinated, unmedicated. I never went to the hospital my whole life until I got an allergic reaction to lice.

1:43:25I got lice at summer camp, and I was allergic to the chemicals that they put on my head to kill the lice. And I ended up going to the hospital and having to be intubated. And the doctor was like, you're actually not allergic. It's poison. It's meant to kill something. And so you are more sensitive to the poison. There's no such thing as being allergic to poison. And so when everybody started saying you have to wear a mask, healthy people have to wear a mask, I was like, this is a lie. Everything seemed like a lie. And then I'm spending more time in nature because we don't have to go to the restaurant as much because it's not as busy.

1:43:59And these lies are just seeming louder and louder as I'm comparing them to life on the farm. And I'm blessed that I had my father and my mother and that they were on the same page because I knew people that were totally isolated from their family. And so I didn't feel isolated. A few people moved off the farm because they didn't feel like I was taking it seriously. But ultimately, we lived our life totally normal at the farm. And the world was all really confusing. I started writing down ideas. And that's how the book started. And then I ended up getting a couple people coming out to me when I came out and made my restaurants regenerative, asked if I wanted to write a book.

1:44:41And I said, yes, but it's not the book I think that you are thinking of. And so I sent like an outline of seven chapters to the two people that had given me an offer. And Chelsea Green basically said, oh, well, we wouldn't want you to write about transgenderism, abortion, a bunch of the things that were in the book. And Acres, which is largely a farming, this is the first non-farming book they've ever put out, said, we're open to let you write the book however you want to write the book. And so I went with them, which is less money and less support. But I knew that the book I wanted to write was not just an environmentalism book.

1:45:23And so I wrote this book and I took 17 concepts from our society. And not all of them are political. Some of them are, you know, breastfeeding or co-sleeping. And I essentially just asserted what nature does with other mammals and how far we've drifted from that. And basically said that nature is telling the truth. And if we want to be truth seekers, which many of us claimed to want to be during COVID, then we should take these constructs, these ideas, and look at them in the construct of the savanna or the farm or the woods and ask ourselves, does this happen in nature? It sounds like you're describing all 60s hippie ideals, every one of them.

1:46:09Yes or no? Tell me. I mean, yes and no. I think the rise of feminism and like abandoning the true value in the male and female also arose in the 60s. And I think that the sexual revolution might have diminished the sanctity of life in some ways. And I largely grew up in a household. I mean, I had an aunt tell me like, you better have sex with as many guys as you can when you look as hot as you do right now, because believe me, after you have babies, you're not going to feel as hot. Like weird things that I would never say to my daughter now. And so I think that all the ideas of the 60s were beautiful.

1:46:50And then just like veganism was probably beautiful, just like diversity, equity, inclusion was probably beautiful, but they've all been twisted into ideas that cause separation, division, and a forgetting of our divine purpose. And so many beautiful things came out of the 60s and then were twisted and used for division. And I think that that's also true for the civil rights movement. I think that's true for many different movements. And I think that we live in a world right now where we act like gender is non-binary and race is fixed. And I would argue that both of those are lies, like that gender or sex at birth is fixed.

1:47:38And I would argue that race is largely a construct. The way we relate to gender in our current society, race is not real. You can't say what Mexican Americans believe. You can't say what black Americans believe. Like there's no connection between the amount of melanin in your skin and your heritage of your ancestors and what you believe today, because it's largely cultural. And my husband's a Mexican-American. And I use this example in the book, my friend Junior, he grew up in South LA or East LA and grew up in a very different world than my husband did in a tiny indigenous village in Oaxaca. They are both Mexican-Americans.

1:48:21They see the world very differently. There is no race that makes them a group. And so I think that this idea is largely used to divide us. Because if we remember that we, the people, all of us, there's more of us than any of them, that we can actually drive the car in the direction we want. We have the collective power of the purse. We have the collective power of our mind and our speech and our thoughts and our actions and our attitudes. But if we're arguing with each other about when life begins, about microaggressions, about DEI policies, you know what we're not doing? We're not collectively coming together and saying we're all being poisoned and our reproductive abilities are being taken away from us.

1:49:07We want to argue whether you can kill your baby or not when I think we should all be arguing for the rights of our future generations to be able to have a baby. And so I think that many of these ideas that maybe started with pure and good intentions have been twisted into something that has us forget our connection to God, to nature, to family, and to what's really important. And so that's the foundation of the book, is a request for us to move back into that world. And just to be clear, would you say that over the years of your life and your family's life, you would be maybe in the 1 % most extreme liberal people on the planet?

1:49:52Probably could have looked up in Wikipedia, like, what is a liberal woman in Los Angeles and a vegan chef, hybrid, married to an undocumented man? And I was that person. And I mean, I went to the alternative community school in Ithaca, New York. Ithaca was the first town to outlaw gas stoves. I mean, there's no logic there. We're just going to burn coal and then use electricity because that's somehow more efficient. I think it's not. But anyways, that's Ithaca. So I grew up in the liberal of the liberal. I went to the liberal of the liberal school. Literally, we had a graffiti room. So if you needed to express your feelings via graffiti, there was a space for that.

1:50:34There was an all-school meeting every day so people could raise their hand and express whatever is going on for them. And I mean, the People's History of Howard Zinn was our history book, and I grew up in a very liberal household. Even though my dad voted for his businesses, he voted Republican mostly. Tell me about government subsidies for farmers. What about it works? What about it doesn't work? Government subsidies for farmers, again, something that started with really good intentions and now has people stuck in a system where they're growing food that they know is never going to come to fruition.

1:51:15There's areas of Mississippi that's flooding and flooding over every year and they still have to put plants in the ground and then apply for crop insurance because it's the only way to survive. there's all of these subsidies for corn and soy and there's very little motivation to have subsidies for farming that would shift the way our food system is built but i do believe right now we're in a special moment in america of a coalition if the left can just remember that food healthy food is important to them and i know it is because i've been in the healthy food space my whole life and And I'm clear that it's important to the left, but it seems like right now they're acting like it's not important to them.

1:52:00But if we could have this coalition of both sides saying this is important, this could be a moment where we could be the soft landing for farmers to make the transition. And if Molly was queen for a day, Molly was a bureaucrat with a pen for a day, the first thing I would do, which is very, very, very controversial, I would make SNAP benefits only apply to whole foods and foods that had less than eight ingredients. Now, people will say, that's crazy. There's food deserts. And I would also say that every state should adopt. There's about 10 states that have the double dollars at the farmer's market.

1:52:37So when you spend your SNAP benefits at the farmer's market, you get two for one dollars. So now what I believe would happen if we made this change in the SNAP program, the subsidies for soda companies, which are 20 percent of$119 billion, 20 percent of that. If we did this, food deserts would start to disappear. Farmer's markets will pop up in all these neighborhoods and the local bodega or the corner store in the tiny town is going to start to have more single ingredient foods, more nutrient dense foods, because these small town convenience stores largely depend on SNAP benefits. These corner stores in the hood largely depend on these SNAP benefits.

1:53:21So the system would shift if we made this check. And I believe it should go back to farmers. There should be an incentive to spend it direct to farmers. So I am not 100 % anti-subsidies. I think we need more carrot and less stick. And I think that we need to have policies that are more rounded, like not just solving for one single problem. On the points where if Molly had the pen for a day, who are the people who have the pen now who could make those changes? Do you know? I mean, I think that Trump could do an executive order and change what's available in SNAP, but the SNAP is in the farm bill.

1:54:03So ultimately, the farm bill needs to be shifted. And they didn't even pass a farm bill this last time it got put off into the future. So Congress, I mean, they're just so inept. They are supposed to be the purse. They never hold the purse strings. Right now in committee in both Congress and in the Senate, there is a bill called the Prime Act. It was brought from Massey, and I believe that Ron Paul has introduced it in the Senate. And it's in committee in both houses, not stagnant, not moving. This would allow farmers to process on farm or at local what's called an inspected facility or a custom facility where it's inspected by the health department of the state.

1:54:50but it's not USDA inspected. And so because of that, we have a lot of times where we can't, you know, there isn't a facility nearby. We are lucky that we do have one. But so there's always these locally inspected facilities that people are bringing their deer to their steer, their 4-H thing. We want to make it. And what Massey is trying to do is that if you have it harvested there, then you could sell it within your state. And so you could sell it to your neighbors. And so it would incentivize farmers to be able to do custom slaughter and then sell it to their neighbors. And then also the federal rules around chickens are 20 ,000.

1:55:30You can harvest, I think, 20 ,000 chickens a year on your property without having to go through the federal chains. But then the states have reduced that to zero or Texas is 500. So if we could roll back the states to let people process chickens and meat rabbits locally. So the problem is the pen is in a lot of different places. It's on the state level. It's at the federal level. It's in the Congress. But I do think that Trump could likely do a executive order that would shift SNAP. And then the states can look at what these other states are doing. Iowa just passed a waiver. So you will not be able to buy, I think Iowa's is the best one or the bravest one, I would say.

1:56:14So you won't be able to buy anything that has sales tax on it in Iowa with food stamps or SNAP or EBT. So that takes out candy, soda, power drinks or energy drinks, donuts, chips, anything that they deem as junk food that is not essential has a tax on it in Iowa. And they've said anything that's taxed is not in the program. And so I would say, if I was Molly Queen of the bureaucrats for a day, I would go further. But I would say Iowa is going to be the test ground and that other states could follow that. And then California, Massachusetts, New York, Colorado are doing the double dollars at the farmer's market.

1:56:59And so I think states could implement that. And what that happened in Los Angeles is all of a sudden there's South Central has a farmer's market. All of a sudden, the Eastside has a bunch of farmer's markets. And my restaurant was in Echo Park and largely a Latino neighborhood. And you will see people lining up to change in their EBT for farmer's bucks so they could get double the produce at the farmer's market. So that program, I think, supports farmers and supports the health of the community. And then I wouldn't be remiss to not mention what's happening in Oklahoma. Aaron Martin has passed the Food is Medicine Act.

1:57:34And so it's the first state to say that you can use your insurance. Your doctor can write you a prescription. If you have a metabolic condition or a terminal condition, your doctor can write you a prescription for local and organic food, and your insurance will pay for it. And the insurance companies are actually totally on board because Aaron Martin did a test in advance of it with a couple of insurance companies, and the outcomes were unbelievable. Tell me about your brother's work. My brother is the founder of an organization called Kiss the Ground. He made a film called Kiss the Ground that came out on Netflix and now is on Amazon Prime.

1:58:17And the sequel is now out called Common Ground. And there's a third one coming out called Groundswell that is looking at the global regenerative movement, not just the American regenerative movement. And he started this nonprofit that started in his garage in Venice that became a large nonprofit. And as nonprofits do, they get brittle. And he left recently because he took a leave from the nonprofit to support RFK, which was approved by the board. and when RFK joined Trump, there was essentially people that are in the very liberal mindset just couldn't be okay with that. And so he has a really great relationship with them.

1:59:07He still works with them, but his politics have shifted to somewhere that they are not. And I think that, again, totally well-meaning. I got asked to leave the board for the same reason for my views. Well, I got asked to sign a paper that would say I would never talk about vaccines, abortion, transgender, or anything else that would be politically divisive. And I said, I've been on like hundreds of podcasts. There's no way I can put that back in the can. And so I was asked to step down as well. And I think that they're just protecting themselves. You know what I mean? It's just, it's again, something gets big and there's something to protect.

1:59:45And so I think they're doing extraordinary work in the world and they are spreading the message of soil. And he gave his all to it and his enthusiasm and he brought it from nothing into something extraordinary. And now he's created 501C4, which is a lobbying organization called American Regeneration that is specifically working towards soil health being at the center of both political parties, that there's going to be swings back and forth. And how do we have Soil Health be at the center of the conversation moving forward? And so he's working with Rick Clark, who's an extraordinary regenerative farmer, has 7 ,000 acres in regenerative organic, and Kelly Ryerson, who's been a people lobbyist, essentially just lobbying on the behalf of the people to get her name was like glycophate girl on her social media.

2:00:38She's just been lobbying against chemical companies on the behalf of the people as an individual for a long time now. So the three of them started American Regeneration, and they're working alongside of Kiss the Ground. My brother's still promoting the films, and he's launching the educational cut right now of Common Ground, and he's taking that across the country. And if anybody has any educational institutions that they want to bring Common Ground into, he has multiple cuts of the film to try to get the message out as much as possible. What's the best way to find out about local farmers? If you want to get food from local farmers and support local farmers, how do you do that?

2:01:19There's so many maps that different people have online and Regenerate America, the Regenascence, and multiple other ones. My friend, AJ Richards, has started a company called From the Farm, and his byline is Shake the Hand That Feeds You. And he is trying to make a pathway for farmers. So I'm great at making social media, doing things and getting on podcasts and doing all this stuff, but not every farmer has that in them to sell their meat boxes. So he's creating this amazing platform where he's helping you get the boxes and helping you get the dry ice and the cooler, helping you set up your store, taking the photos.

2:01:59And then he's doing advertising like on Angel Studios and different places are advertising from the farm. And then we, as the farmers are getting lower prices on our shipping, because it's like we're all one group from the farm. And so there's a benefit in the buying the boxes and the services and all that stuff that needs to send meat. And so AJ is doing this great work of trying to move the needle. And so from the farm is a great place to look it up and see what's around you and what's near you. and I think if you also just go to your local farmer's market and I think have conversations with people, like if they're doing the right thing, they're going to be super inspired to tell you about it.

2:02:44And people always say, what else could I do, Molly, besides supporting local farms to support the movement? And I assert there's nothing more important that you could do. At the rate that we are losing farms, I want you to see it as an imperative to be the best cell and the body that is this earth. You have to support local farmers. We are in an agrarian collapse. And if the consumer, the individual doesn't wake up from their lulled comfort, they're going to find themselves eating some kind of slop, looking into some kind of weird AI goggles and be completely disconnected. it. It is imperative that the farm survives.

2:03:28You, the consumer, have the power of the purse.

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