The owner of a regenerative farm in California’s picturesque Santa Clara River Valley has sold the enterprise and moved to Texas. She says the state’s excessive business regulations strangled her business to the point where she could not afford to pay her employees.
The couple also owned a brewery where they made beer from their crops and used brewer’s spent grain to feed their cows.
The farm became a “community hub” where people could come and get their food.
The farming business grew year after year, and the first quarter of 2020 was the best quarter ever in their 11 years of business.
“So, we were on a trajectory to expand to other states, do this on a larger scale, and really bring this kind of service to more communities,” she recalled.
However, after reopening from the COVID-19 pandemic, the couple had to close two of their four restaurants because they could not make payroll.
She feels that California’s pandemic lockdowns contributed to the situation by impacting young people’s work-related behavior.
“The people that are coming into food service graduated high school during the no-school-for-two-years period,” Ms. Engelhart explained. “There were no expectations of teenagers for two full years, practically, and then they went out into the workforce.”
Moreover, people who had been in the workforce a few years before the pandemic spent two or three years at home on benefits, she continued.
As a result, she feels, the number of employees needed to do the same job has changed in comparison with the pre-pandemic period.
‘Rules About Every Single Thing’
In California, there are numerous laws regulating farms and farmland, Ms. Engelhart said. Among other things, they regulate who can live on the land with the owner, and the building of accessory dwellings on the farmland.“Then there is how tall your compost pile can be,” she continued. “There are rules about almost every single thing.” Among those agricultural regulations are laws that prohibit selling avocados that have fallen on the ground, and a ban on selling farmer’s market produce that has not come from the seller’s farm.
“If I’m selling parsley at the farmers market, they can come here and measure it to make sure it’s the same parsley I grow; that I’m not buying parsley from somewhere else.”
Authorities can come to inspect a farm if they suspect that the owner is selling something not grown on that farm, Ms. Engelhart said.
She described how she was fined $150 for using olive branches and eucalyptus as greenery in bouquets she was selling at a farmers’ market. The crime? She had not registered the eucalyptus as something she grew on her farm.
“I have an entrepreneurial spirit,” Ms. Engelhart said. “And I have ideas that I want to put into action.” Hence, she started a produce subscription service—a CSA.
CSA (Community-supported Agriculture) is a farming model in which a consumer buys a share of a farm, thus providing some financial security to the farmer in exchange for regular boxes of seasonal fresh produce.
To put the initiative into action, she needed a walk-in cooler, so she built one, anticipating that getting a permit for the cooler would take years. “Then finally, I actually put in a walk-in cooler, because we’re going to be selling produce to the community. It’s going to be awesome. Then I’m in trouble with the county because my walk-in cooler is not permitted, and on and on and on.”
Ms. Engelhart complained that a license is required for “almost everything” she does to conduct business in California. She agrees that a liquor license and a health permit are necessary, and a brewery may need “a little bit more licensing.“ That ”little bit more” for a brewery totaled 16 licenses, however.
She sometimes hired a personal assistant, but it often felt like their job was “just compliance and licensing.”
Lack of Trust
“Government is supposed to be small,” according to the Constitution, she mused. However, today “it is so overreaching and overarching, and it never makes any sense.”She believes that excessive regulations are enacted because people don’t trust each other.
“We got here because we don’t trust each other, we don’t trust God, and we don’t trust our gut. We just don’t trust ourselves. We have invited the government to be in every transaction.”
“I could say ... ‘Do you want to invest $20,000 in my business?’ Then you'll go pay a lawyer $5,000 to look at the contract that is investing your $20,000, to make sure that I’m not going to do something wrong to you. It’s a level of needing all these layers, because we don’t trust each other and we don’t trust anything.”
“I had a lesson around my family and choosing to marry my husband,” Ms. Engelhart said. As a couple, she said, they trusted that there was a plan from God.
“ I’ve tried to live my life trusting my gut and trusting that even if I feel sad, or I feel scared, or I feel alone—it doesn’t mean it’s not the best thing to do.”
“Right now, the best thing to do for my family is to move to Texas. I’m taking a big risk at 45 years old and I’m starting over.”
A couple of years ago, Mollie Engelhart was about to retire from her business to simply raise her children and be a mom.
“That’s not gonna happen; I’m definitely gonna be working for the next however many years,” she said. “It’s a reframe, and I can trust that whatever’s on this next journey is going to be powerful for me, for my husband, for my family.”
“I’m trying to have radical trust in myself, in my community, and in God.”
Despite her love for what she created with her regenerative farm, with her community and neighbors, “the pieces no longer fit together here,” Ms. Engelhart said. So she and her husband made plans to sell their farm and move out of state.
“I’m a vegan restaurant owner, an organic farmer—a true environmentalist [who] cares about the soil, the water, and the air. I employ 350 people. I feel like I should be exactly what California wants … But I literally can’t make payroll,” she said.
“I was able to get much more land in Texas and so I will be able to practice more of these regenerative principles on a larger scale. I'll be able to feed more people free of excessive regulation.”
The regulations existing in Texas are mainly around septic tanks and water wells, she noted.
Regenerative Farming: ‘Leaving More in the Soil Than We’re Taking Out’
Regenerative agriculture is a holistic land management practice that focuses on restoring soil health through farming and grazing practices.
“It’s not an extractive economy,” Ms. Engelhart said. “It’s where we’re leaving more in the soil than we’re taking out,” thus creating an ecosystem.
“We haven’t paid for any fertilizers in three and a half–almost four—years, because I spent some years just really building great soil and getting that soil microbial food web together.”
Regenerative agriculture can also effectively sequester CO2 (carbon dioxide) and methane, two greenhouse gases that are said to contribute to climate change.
“The plant takes the carbon [dioxide]out of the atmosphere, turns it into carbohydrates on its roots, and feeds it to microbiology in the soil. Then the microbiology in the soil turns it into waste, which is food for plants. Then plants use that in order to make a tomato, a cucumber, a strawberry, or coffee," she explained. “It’s cycling carbon.”
Methane is produced when food waste thrown in landfills putrifies, Ms. Engelhart said, “but when you compost it in the soil, then it becomes carbon sequestered. It never putrifies and becomes methane.”
“We’ve tried to out-science nature and we forgot that we belong here. We have to steward what is here.”
