Commentary

I used to believe that veganism was the answer—to climate change, to animal cruelty, to personal and planetary health. As a successful vegan chef in Los Angeles, I built restaurants, a reputation, and an entire lifestyle around the idea that avoiding animal products was the highest form of ethical living.

My commitment to the environment led me to start my own farm as a way to manage the food waste from my restaurants. I was the founder and executive chef of Sage Vegan Bistro, which eventually became Sage Regenerative Bistro. I wanted to close the loop—grow the food, feed the people, compost the scraps, and build healthy soil. But the deeper I got into that system, the more I began to see the cracks in the story I had believed so fully.

Living on the land and growing my own food broke me wide open. I started to realize that the version of “ethical eating” I had bought into—and helped promote—left out most of the truth. I saw what it actually took to grow avocados: how many thousands of ground squirrels had to be trapped and killed just to keep the trees alive. I learned where our “cruelty-free” organic fertilizers came from—blood meal, bone meal, feather meal—byproducts of the same consolidated industrial animal system we were supposedly boycotting.

There is no such thing as a bloodless meal. That truth didn’t come from a book or a documentary—it came from lived experience: from planting, harvesting, and protecting crops; from watching life and death unfold in real time, every day, in the soil. The idea that veganism was somehow separate from harm—that it stood outside of the cycle of death—started to unravel.

At the same time, I found myself drawn to the small farmers around me—the ones working with animals, not against them. I began visiting more of their farms, asking more questions, and slowly, inevitably, became one of them. I went from observing to participating.

And that’s when I saw it clearly: Real fertility doesn’t come from sterilized fields or lab-made inputs. It comes from animals. From integration. From manure and microbes and messy, living systems. The monocrop fields I once admired for their efficiency were, in truth, ecological wastelands—devoid of bugs, birds, diversity, or life. Nothing cycled. Everything was extracted.

But when you bring animals onto the land—when cows graze, chickens scratch, and pigs root—you build an ecosystem. Nutrients cycle naturally. Soil comes alive. There’s a rhythm to it, a divine order. Every part has a role. The death of one thing nourishes the life of another. And when you participate in that cycle, it humbles you. It teaches you. It changes you.

I didn’t leave veganism because I stopped caring about animals. I left because I started caring more—about the whole picture. About ecosystems. About what happens before the almond milk hits the shelf. About the water, the soil, the labor, the waste, and the long chain of consequences that “ethical” labels so often obscure.

I also began to understand that food is not just fuel or politics—it’s relationship. It’s intimacy with the land. And that relationship, like any real one, involves sacrifice, honesty, and responsibility.

Today, I live on the land full time with my husband and our children. The only restaurant I own now is The Barn, and it’s right here on the farm. We grow the food we serve. Sometimes, homeschool looks like collecting eggs or helping butter a pig. My children are far more connected to life and death than I was at their age. They understand it in a deeper, more grounded way—because they live it. My fear and rejection of death might have been at the root of why veganism was so appealing to me in the first place. But I’ve come to see that shielding ourselves from death doesn’t make us more ethical—it makes us less connected, less honest, and less human.

Regeneration isn’t just a farming practice. It’s a worldview. It means taking full responsibility—for our choices, for our impact, for our role in the cycle of life. It’s not about purity or perfection. It’s about participation. It’s about knowing your farmer, your food, and your soil. It’s about getting dirt under your nails and having hard conversations around the dinner table.

Most of all, it’s about humility—about stepping out of ideological dogma and into direct relationship with the natural world.

I know this path isn’t for everyone, but I believe more people are waking up. I see it every time someone visits our ranch and realizes what food really looks like. I see it in the eyes of children who dig up carrots and eat them on the spot. I see it in people who show up to milk a cow for the first time and walk away changed.

We’ve been sold a story that sterilized food systems and abstract ethics are more evolved, more compassionate, more modern. But I’ve come to believe the opposite. Real progress looks like re-inhabiting our role in the web of life—not trying to remove ourselves from it.

And here’s the good news: The way back is right beneath our feet—in the soil, in our communities, and in the relationships we build with the land and each other.

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