Patrick Samuels is the founder of Sunnyside Egg Co., a Kentucky-based regenerative egg operation built on mobile coops and Amish/Mennonite farming partnerships. A former US Army Special Forces officer with no agricultural background, Patrick stumbled into farming through pandemic-era homesteading, worked inside one of the largest pasture-raised egg brands, and launched Sunnyside in December 2024 to scale what he calls the only truly regenerative egg operation in the country.

5 Key Topics

1. The pasture-raised label scam
2. Mobile coops as the real standard
3. Scaling regen without selling out
4. The corn/soy-free feed debate
5. Transparency over certification

Timestamps

[00:00] Intro & egg price controversy

[01:30] Patrick's military-to-farming path

[04:00] Inside a "pasture-raised" barn

[07:00] Why certifiers are grifters

[11:00] The Vital Farms breakdown

[18:00] Retail vs. decentralisation debate

[27:00] Corn & soy-free feed complexity

[37:00] Regenerative certification loopholes

[44:00] Sunnyside's growth timeline

[01:01:00] On-farm operations & rotation

Links

Website

Instagram

Brad Wiley's family has farmed the same land since 1790. In this episode on our Farmer Stories series, he share shis wonder at the invisible web beneath his fields - and what it means to carry 200 years of family memory on a single piece of ground.

Farmer Stories pulls the best conversations from The Regenaissance archive - real voices from American farmers on the systems, economics, and communities shaping food and land in the US.

Timestamps

• 00:00 — The biological web that makes Tesla look simple
• 01:00 — Locust trees feeding cover crops across an entire field
• 03:30 — Cover crops and grazing replace the lime truck
• 05:30 — The moment Brad walked away from $30k in cash rent
• 07:30 — The manure spreader sinks into dead soybean soil
• 11:00 — 200 years of family memory on one piece of ground
• 22:30 — Life is designed to be a struggle

Connect with Brad:
Otter Creek Farm

Follow the tour on YouTube

Joel Hollingsworth runs Smoke River Ranch in northeast Oklahoma. This conversation from our Farmer Stories Series talks about why Joel believes we need to keep manufcaturing in America & why Oklahoma's culture of self-governance is a cultural model the country can build around.

Farmer Stories pulls the best conversations from The Regenaissance archive - real voices from American farmers on the systems, economics, and communities shaping food and land in the US.

Timestamps

• 0:00 — Why build in America, not abroad
• 1:30 — The federalist structure and America's creation story
• 4:00 — Oklahoma's culture of self-governance
• 6:30 — Regen ag as a churn factory
• 7:30 — Triffin dilemma and hollowing out of domestic production
• 9:00 — How crop insurance locks out new farmers
• 11:00 — Foreign cattle and the 30% currency gap
• 12:30 — Land as money, not farmland
• 14:00 — Farm credit weaponized (Dustin Kittle story)
• 15:30 — Average rancher age 58.5
• 17:00 — What rural collapse looks like
• 18:30 — Sovereign debt and centralizing risk

Links:

Full podcast episode:
- YouTube
- Spotify
- Apple

Connect with Joel:
- Smoke River Ranch Website
- X