Aaron Perry
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At once both avant garde and redolent of days of yore, the James Ranch Grill provides a unique on-farm dining experience in a comfortable, elegant, “cowboy jazz” setting. Here cuisine isn’t about fancy frills or gastrochemistry gymnastics. It’s about real food – real food sourced directly from the fields we see sloping down the valley from where we sit at our picnic table beneath a grove of trees, enjoying one of the best burgers I’ve ever tasted.
As featured in the documentary To Which We Belong, James Ranch Grill is an exemplary on-farm dining destination located just outside Durango, Colorado, and is an excellent example of the regenerative agriculture and holistic management movements gaining momentum world-wide. Driven both by community demand (see National Restaurant Association and Toast articles below), and by intrepid food systems entrepreneurs, these movements are at the nexus of health and wellness, community and culture, and environmental stewardship and climate change mitigation. In other words, regenerative agriculture businesses like James Ranch Grill provide multi-faceted solutions to the polycrisis, and are at the heart of the restoration and stewardship systems change patterns ushering in the Ecocene. Like a “dormant seed bank” awaiting appropriate conditions in the soil, our local and regional food-based cultural heritages – from all around the world – have been awaiting a resurgence, one now emergent and growing, and being led by people like Cynthia and her family.
“Our soil is our future,” Cynthia tells us, and “we have a choice, we have a voice… the awakening is happening!”
There’s something very palpable here. Yes, we’re talking about burgers and fries; but we’re simultaneously not at all talking about burgers and fries as commonly thought of – at least not the paltry versions we’re all too used to in “Anywhere, USA.” For so many of us, food is far removed from field and farm, from friend and farmer, that it’s the strangest daily abstraction in our modern world: most of our food is at once tangible (and calorie laden), but so disconnected, and so symbolic of our overall estrangement from nature. It’s as if there’s something we’ve all forgotten in our busy modern lives – something that nonetheless persists in our cellular memories: food is the fabric of nourishment and connection – connection to land, to water, to soil, to animals, to seasons, to each other, and to our very humanness.
I’m struck that one of the most essential aspects to human health and wellness, not to mention our stewardship and sustainability of the Earth, is actually quite simple. It’s fundamental. It’s literal and it’s real. And James Ranch Grill serves it up for all to enjoy day after day.
Here the artistry is artisan. The aesthetic is essential. The flair is foundational.
After enjoying the deliciously nutrient dense meal and equally substantive conversation, I find myself reflecting upon our modern systems: how economic and business curricula tell us over and over the many advantages gained (for capital and capitalism) through economies of scale. But until recently, and especially with the advent of the holistic management and regenerative agricultural movements, we haven’t yet asked ourselves as a society: “at what cost?” What are the countervailing deficits – the very real costs we pay each day in diminished connection, nutrition, and whole-person nourishment – that we incur as a result of said scale economies? Seen in this light, does the idea of “diminishing returns” take on a whole new meaning?
Cynthia James Stewart is asking – and answering – these questions. With her husband Robert, she founded James Ranch Grill, one of several interconnected yet independent enterprises owned and operated by her several siblings and their partners and families – a beautiful extension of the legacy established by their parents, Kay and David James.
About Cynthia James Stewart
After 28 years, Cynthia James Stewart, the last of the five James children to return home, decided it was time to rejoin her family in Durango. She, her husband Robert and daughter, Sonya, moved home to the ranch in 2009. Cynthia had been living in big cities including New York, Houston, and San Francisco since she left Durango after high school and with her degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology and Robert’s career in the mortgage industry, they weren’t sure what business they were going to start in order to live on the Ranch.
Within their first year in Durango, they learned how the James family members were implementing regenerative and sustainable practices in the production of their products. They were impressed with not only how extremely hard it was to farm and ranch this way, but the outcome of their products were delicious. Cynthia wanted to share this goodness with everyone and decided the best way to do so was open a restaurant (even though she had never worked in one). Robert went along for the ride!
In the summer of 2011, they opened a food cart on the property called the Harvest Grill and Greens at James Ranch and in September of 2019 moved into a bricks and mortar building and renamed the restaurant the James Ranch Grill. Their concept is to only source ingredients that are nontoxic and chemical free being produced locally by farmers and ranchers that are caring for the soil resulting in nutrient-dense and flavorful food. They feel so fortunate to be able to serve such delicious food to their guests knowing that the secret is simply fresh, regenerative, local ingredients produced with love and dedication.
Resources & Related Episodes
James Ranch Grill (33846 Hwy 550, Durango, CO, 81301)
To Which We Belong (documentary)
Toast – “The Most Sustainable Restaurants in the United States, 2025”
Toast – “Restaurant Sustainability: Strategies for a Greener Industry in 2025”
Ep 162 – Dr. Elaine Ingham, Founder, Soil Food Web School
Ep 158 – Gabe Brown, Author, Soil to Dirt
Ep 151 – Nicolette Hahn Niman, Author, Defending Beef
Ep 114 – Elizabeth Whitlow, Exec. Dir., Regenerative Organic Alliance
Ep 91 – Finian Makepeace, Kiss the Ground
Ep 10 – Lauren Tucker, Exec. Dir. (past), Kiss the Ground
Ep 3 – Brook Le Van, Sustainable Settings Biodynamic Ranch
Transcript
Welcome to the Y On Earth community podcast.
I’m your host, Aaron William Perry.
And today, we’re just outside Durango, Colorado, with the founder of James Branch Grill, Cynthia
James Stewart.
Cynthia, it’s so wonderful to be visiting with you here.
I’m so glad you got to join us in my little space here in my restaurant.
It’s an amazing, regenerative restaurant, and you’re nourishing an entire community
with this operation here that we’re going to have the opportunity to talk about extensively.
Well, I, yeah, decided to share this story.
It’s been a journey.
Yeah, a real journey, huh?
Well, and we, so my sweetheart, Kress is off camera here, and we had such a delightful dinner here last night that you hosted with amazing delicious food.
So we got to, like, get that right out front for everybody.
They ought to come and try it for themselves.
Absolutely.
We would love to nourish you, each and every one of you.
It’s my mission.
It’s our goal.
That’s why we do what we do.
So come on over and have the most healthy burger you’ve ever had.
And the most delicious burger you’ve ever had, too.
And fries.
That’s right regenerative organics are provided.
After 28 years, Cynthia James Stewart, the last of the five James children to return home, decided it was time to rejoin her family in Durango. She, her husband, Robert, and daughter, Sonia, moved home to the ranch in 2009.
Sonia had been living in big cities, including New York, Houston, and San Francisco, since she left Durango after high school and with her degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology and Robert’s career in the mortgage industry, they weren’t sure what business they were going to start in order to live on the ranch.
Within their first year in Durango, they learned how the James family members were implementing regenerative and sustainable practices in the production of their food products.
They were impressed with not only how extremely hard it was to farm and ranch this way, but
the outcome of their products were delicious.
Cynthia wanted to share this goodness with everyone and decided the best way to do so
was opening a restaurant, even though she had never worked in one.
Robert went along for the ride, and we met him last night.
He’s wonderful.
In the summer of 2011, they opened a food cart on the property called the Harvest Grill
in Greens at James Ranch.
And in September of 2019, just in time for COVID, we’ll talk about that, they moved into a brick and mortar building, and renamed the restaurant the James Ranch Grill.
Their concept is to only source ingredients that are non-toxic and chemical free, being produced locally by farmers and ranchers that are caring for the soil, resulting in nutrient dense and flavorful food.
We’re going to talk a lot about that.
They feel so fortunate to be able to serve such delicious food to their guests knowing that the secret is simply fresh, regenerative, local ingredients produced with love and dedication.
And look, I’ve been in the food and restaurant world for years, decades, and can very quickly almost immediately get a sense for the nature of the heart and soul behind the food being
served and the place in which people gather to eat.
And I’ll tell you what, this is one of the most deeply authentic and profoundly nourishing restaurants I’ve ever been to.
Wow, that’s saying a lot.
I’m sure you’ve been to a lot of restaurants.
It’s true I have.
A whole lot.
Oh, good.
Well, that’s the outcome.
We want people, and they don’t really know why it tastes so good, but they leave energized
without a gut bomb.
When you go out for a burger and fries normally, you leave with a gut bomb and your body’s
like, oh, I’m so tired, whereas your body knows exactly what to do with those ingredients because they’re what nature’s intending for us to eat.
Grass fed only beef, that’s what cows are supposed to eat, only grass, and local regenerative ingredients, tomatoes that come from farmers that are growing it in soil that has nutrients instead of just this mass produced orange tomato that comes off of a truck that’s sprayed
with whatever that’s called that makes it red and gives you that sense, and then it
just doesn’t even taste like a tomato.
I mean, people don’t even know what a tomato tastes like.
So to be able to offer that to our community and supporting the farmers and the ranchers that are just really putting so much effort into it, and I just want to say a shout out first of all for anyone that grows food and produces and raises animals for consumption because it is so hard, and it’s a choice.
Like they’re doing that as a choice for their living.
Like they choose to go through all that, and they choose to have those hours, and they choose that to feed us, and it’s just such an honorable and so overlooked profession.
And as a restaurant owner, and I’ll get into this in my story when I started the food cart, again, never working in a restaurant before.
I just did it, and I just did what felt right, and I made that commitment.
I’m like, I am only going to give the community and serve the community what I would serve my family.
And so in doing that, I had to build relationships because my oldest sister, Jen, and if it’s okay, I’ll segue into that.
That’d be great.
Yeah.
Thank you.
My mom and dad, I mean, picture this, a 21 and a 22-year-old just got married, just got out of college, grew up in Redlands, California, or Pasadena, California, went to Redlands
University.
No idea what they were doing.
My dad was in line to be the heir of a multi-million dollar manufacturing company that my grandfather started, and he was the only son.
And my dad had it in his soul.
Maybe too many John Wayne movies, I’m not sure.
He wanted to be a cowboy.
He just wanted to be in the land, and he wanted to get his, he didn’t want to raise his kids in the materiality of California, and he said no to his dad’s empire, and he just said, and he convinced my beautiful mom that she was going to do it with him, and they headed east and found this ranch, and just got cattle, and just started it, 21 and 22-year-old, right?
I mean, can you even picture kids today doing that?
But the passion and the intention was to be in nature and to do this, you know, to be the cowboy, and people that make that choice to be the cowboy are people that have a really beautiful, incredible intention, and so he got his herd of cattle.
I won’t go into how all that happened, but we’re still here today, so it’s a happy ending, and then he had a herd of kids, so I’m one of five children, and you know, the more hands the better to run the ranch, and we all had our farm experience, ranch experience.
I won’t go into those details, but I will tell you, as a child, it felt like we were tortured, right?
Because other kids got to go, you know, watch television all day, and you know, all these
other perks, and we would come home, we had a half an hour of television a day.
That was it.
Well, we had a snack, and then out you go, right?
You had animals to take care for.
If you didn’t wake up in time to feed your animals, you didn’t get breakfast either.
I mean, that was just how it was, right?
So when we were 18, we were out of here, all of us, gone, never coming back, you know.
None of us had any interest in agriculture, so we all did our own thing, and then we got married, and then all of a sudden, those memories of torture turned into, wow, we kind of got a good work ethic from that, and wow, we were responsible because of that, and all these, so as you got older, we got wiser, and we saw the benefit of being on this beautiful
property and having animals and everything that that entailed.
So one by one, we started to come back, and there was a caveat.
My parents were thrilled.
My dad was about ready to turn all this land into a golf course because he was tired, and
he couldn’t do it anymore, and as soon as we heard that, we’re like, no!
And then, but we all, so slowly we all came back, but the caveat was that if you come home,
you can use the land, you can use the resources, but family does not work for family because
they knew they raised five chiefs and no Indians, and they knew it wouldn’t be peaceful.
So, you know, they had their cattle business, but none of us could work for them.
We had to come up with our own thing.
Very entrepreneurial.
Very entrepreneurial, and that’s my dad.
So we all had to just change the chapter in our lives.
My oldest sister Jen she and her husband she was a interior designer and
he is a
CEO of
big huge hotels and stuff and so
You know, what were they gonna do? So she decided she wanted to be an organic farmer
So she started the farm and then my next oldest sister Julie and her husband. She has her degree in art
She’s incredibly talented. So naturally she got, you know, 350 laying hens because why not?
And so they started the egg business side and took over the tree business that my mom had started and then
I’m the middle child
So I’m gonna skip me for a second because I was the last to come home and then my brother
Dan who has his degree in fishery who was living in Seattle
Convinced his beautiful wife to come home and make cheese Wow and have a dairy farm because he loves cheese
And so they sold their house in Seattle and they traveled the world and learned how to make a raw milk
Artisan cheese from grass, but only cows and that’s a beautiful story. Hopefully someday you can tell everybody
Yep, and then my youngest brother Justin, you know, he’s the youngest of five
So he was completely spoiled and that’s just how it is with, you know, the youngest because your mom’s tired
And so she’s like, okay, we’ll do whatever you want
But anyway, he didn’t really he he he didn’t really have a lot to do with the farm stuff as much as we did
Probably because my mom had a big garden when she had lots of hands and by the time he was here
so he went off into the Navy and
he came back and and
He he’s here today. He’s the only one that doesn’t have a enterprise on the ranch, but he’s in Durango
so we’re all back, right and
and
So now I am the last to return I left Durango went to New York City
Was in the fashion industry for a while and traveled big cities and did all of that
and
Then it was just time to come home to raise our daughter
And because everybody else was home and my husband’s parents lived in Purgosa
Oh, wow, and so it was like, okay, we have to go back
And and I just didn’t know what we were gonna do and it was so
Amazed I was just amazed kind of going back to that story of how I was like wow
You choose the work this hard
Wow, like and the food was incredible like my sister’s carrots from her garden
You just eat it and it snaps juice in your face, you know because the soil is so good and and my parents beef was amazing
It tasted like beef and my brother’s cheese was award-winning and my sister’s eggs had that golden yoke from being on the pasture
You know and eating grass and grasshoppers and and I was just and I love food first and foremost
And I’m just like we should open a restaurant. Mm-hmm, you know, we should have that and my husband was like, okay
so that’s where that started and I
Just through that time frame after making that commitment to the food wagon
At that time when we had the food wagon and just working with local people. That’s when I learned how hard it was
Because I’d get those phone calls
And the farmers would be like hey, I don’t have your salamics a dear God into my in my garden last night and ate everything
That’s there. That’s a livelihood, right or mother nature, right mother nature is a tough partner, right?
because you don’t know her moves and
Drought and you know throughout years, so then they would get grasshoppers
That would eat their crops and I mean the hails storms would just come down and plummet
You know just pulverize their lettuce and their tomatoes and and I was just walking through this with all these people
And I was like wow I
Just have to honor them with this restaurant and just let you know this restaurant honors those people
Because there’s they deserve that
Especially the small farmers. They’re not using shortcuts. They’re not using fertilizers
They’re not using pesticides and herbicides that make it easier
They’re doing it with nature. Yep, and it’s hard and I just think being a restaurant owner
That is our privilege in our right if we can have that you know have food be
Made for us to be able to share is just such an honor
And so that’s how I look at this restaurant is just the way to honor those people because they weren’t
So hard to do what they do and they don’t they have they have a choice not to mm-hmm
And aren’t we lucky that they do right? All right. Yeah, so there I go. How beautiful. Wow. How amazing I
Wanted to ask
Can you take us back when your parents came here?
When was that and how did the evolution of the cattle ranching get into the holistic management the regenerative
Methodologies that you and your your family are all employing today
So that was 1961 is when my my dad thought part of the land he continued to increase his the land
and
It was not at that time
His I mean it just wasn’t fashionable right back then right
He he fed them a little bit of grain
But he was more into the breeding side of it than he was into the production side of it for like selling the cattle for meat
Yeah
And so like I said, he was so young that he didn’t really know what he wanted
But also what was great about that is he didn’t have indoctrination of a dog
No, that he had to follow that would lead him into just doing it the old-fashioned way
So he was very receptive to learning new things
And it was my brother-in-law John Ott’s introduction to holistic management through the savory Institute amazing
Yes, that
He he said they’ve come with me and we’re gonna go learn about this this holistic management
process and and it was I don’t even know the year honestly
But it was obviously my sister was married, so
it was probably
Maybe 30 years ago of that time that that they went to they met Ellen savory
Went to a holistic management conference learned about rotational grazing
But not only that learned about holistic management, which is making decisions based on the whole instead of
My dad having to make all the decisions
Because that that person that’s the patriarch for you know
That’s the old history way that you have to know what to do and he loved the way that it was a decision-making process
With the people that were involved and and and the fact and how that was going to affect
This person and that person in the hole
So that’s what they did they came back from this and they created it created a holistic goal with my family members that were here and
and
Then you know started the rotational grazing process and then that’s when my dad realized he’s like I’m not a cowboy anymore
I’m a grass farmer. Yep, because he had to learn how to grow enough good grass and work with nature and to know grass
So that he could feed his cattle only grass instead of supplementing. Yeah, and so yeah
So he’s he’s proud today to be a grass farmer actually
And he’s still a cowboy, but he’s still a city guy, too. He’s like all together. He’s a renaissance. He’s a renaissance
He is totally yeah, that’s so wonderful
Well in the the soil piece and the holistic management piece, you know, not only are you and your family
Producing this incredible food for the community and
Stewarding this land in such a beautiful way. You’re also a hub an educational hub
That is helping more and more folks
Awaken to the possibilities of holistic management and regenerative
Stewardship and I want to give a shout out to Mandy McGill who introduced us and with whom you’ve collaborated for some time now and who
Took on a project with you to put up some beautiful educational signage around the restaurant and the and the farm here the ranch
Yeah, there’s such a
Beautiful way in which not only are you feeding folks?
Bellies and bodies, but you’re really you’re feeding minds and and hearts as well when people come here for a burger. Yeah
Good. I’m glad you feel that that’s the goal. Yeah
Yeah, Mandy Mandy is has been an integral part of our ability to
To communicate what we do here
It’s kind of like when you’re in a profession you’re in it
Yeah, and you don’t realize what you’re doing you just do it. Yeah, and you don’t see that the
Like if I talked to you and how what you do and you were to tell me everything that’s involved in that like wow
You know, how do you do that? And so when you’re in it?
You don’t really get that other people are interested in and so it was important that we got the message out because
One of the things when I came back
I really clearly remember in one of our family meetings because we have quarterly meetings as a family
We go through this total
Delegated meeting process so that there’s it’s it’s
Unpersonal and it’s it’s listens to everybody and so it’s it’s a true way to
to have a family business and still love each other
and taking personality out of it.
And so it was in that meeting that I remembered
clearly in our holistic goal was to bring people
to their food source and so that they could learn about it
instead of, because my family members were going
to two different farmers markets, one in Durango,
one in Telluride, it’s a lot of work.
It’s a whole day wasted both times.
Like you are not in production because you’re hauling
all your stuff, you go into the farmer’s market,
you there all day, then you’re hauling all back again
and you’re tired and then Telluride’s a two hour drive up,
two hour drive back.
And so their goal was to stop that, to create a market
and at the time the grill wasn’t even,
it was just a thought in my head,
but a market that people would come here
and then see and experience their food source.
And so these panels that Mandy created,
that we have kind of like a national park
and our little self-guided tour help people come here
and learn what we’re doing and why it’s important.
And that they’re, by eating with us,
they’re voting with their dollar, that this is important
and we’re supporting what you’re doing.
And so I love the fact that you noticed how important
that was because educating is waking.
It’s just waking people up, they don’t know.
I mean, because all we know is the industrial vision
of what the food production is.
And so it’s really a privilege to do that.
Yeah, it’s so wonderful and I wanna encourage everybody
to make their way to Durango and come
to the James Ranch Grill.
You will have a memory for life
and an experience that won’t be soon forgotten.
And of course I wanna point out folks
can find more information about what you and everyone
in the family are doing here at James Ranch.net.
And last night I chatted with Mandy about
figuring a way to get the educational panels out digitally.
So we’re gonna try to figure out if there’s a way to link
or somehow share that with folks that way, of course,
if that sounds good to you.
So that they can see this incredible artwork
and this way of visual storytelling
that truly informs folks to very complex topics.
We’re talking like soil ecology is complex, very complex.
Yeah, totally.
And it does such a beautiful way of getting folks attuned
to what’s going on on our planet
and with our soil upon which of course we all depend
and without which of course we wouldn’t be here.
And that piece, that depth of connection
comes through you, your being and what you’re doing here
in such a powerful way.
And I’d love to ask you,
how would you share with our audience your perspective
on what’s happening in industrial food,
which virtually all of us encounter regularly
one way or another.
And how that is so markedly different
from what’s happening here.
And what that means for us nourishing our bodies,
our minds, our neuro-biochemical realities,
while also stewarding the soil, the water, the wildlife,
the environment in which we’re situated right now.
That was a long question.
Yeah, that was a long one.
So I’ve spent the majority of my, oops, sorry,
life in the cities.
Yeah.
So I am not the family members
that are doing the hard work.
I’m the one that gets to eat it and share it.
But in this process of making a decision
to only source from local farmers
and regenerative thinking people,
a lot of that comes from the fact
that it’s my responsibility as a restaurant, I feel,
as a restaurant owner,
because if we don’t support our local farmers
that are caring for the soil and stewarding the soil,
because I didn’t know anything about soil before.
But what I do know now, and I can simplify it
because I’m pretty simple in this way,
is that the soil, if it’s not healthy,
it doesn’t absorb water and it doesn’t absorb carbon
and it doesn’t create nutrients.
The microorganisms are dead.
So there’s a difference.
This is what I got to learn.
There’s dirt and then there’s soil.
And so I learned the importance of soil.
And the people that are growing
and have ruminant animals that are grazing on that land,
that have animal impact on that land,
they are creating soil.
And people that are farmers
that are manipulating the dirt with fertilizers
because there’s no, it doesn’t retain water,
so they have huge sprinkler systems
and just using all this water that’s unnecessary
because if you have healthy soil, it retains it.
But there’s surface, so they’re overusing water,
they’re putting them fertilizers
because they don’t have soil, they have dirt.
But then they have to do that to make things grow, right?
But then people are eating empty food.
There’s no nutrients in it
because there’s no soil, there’s just dirt.
And so that’s kind of what I see as a restaurant owner.
I can’t imagine feeding my people, my guests,
empty food.
I can’t imagine feeding them
because you can go to a Michelin star restaurant
that gets all their food from Cisco,
no blame, no shame there,
just that’s the system right now, right?
And they dress it up, right?
Those chefs, their job is to take the same ingredients
that the restaurant two doors down is getting
and make it specialer, more special with techniques
and fancy flavors and stuff like that that they create.
So when I opened the food wagon,
I never even started cooking until I met my husband at 35.
Like I don’t have a chef degree, I don’t have any of that.
So I’m just like salt and pepper
because if it’s got flavor,
you don’t have to do all that, right?
Don’t have to dress it up?
I don’t have to dress it up, right?
I came up with a few sauces and,
but other than that, it’s just like,
if you have really good nutrient dense food,
it comes with flavor.
You don’t have to make it have flavor.
And so that’s what’s fun about,
you’re dealing with industrial as opposed to local,
your food, it’s just,
you can see the nutrient density almost.
You smell it when you cut into that tomato,
you smell tomato, you know?
And it’s just, I mean, I can just go off on,
I don’t wanna go off on the industrial because it’s a system that was put in place
with intentions that I think in the beginning were pure.
And now we’re realizing that if we continue to have that system, we’re not gonna have soil.
And when you don’t have soil, you don’t have anything else.
You don’t have insects.
You don’t have birds.
You don’t have, you know, we have to have all those things to live as humans.
And so to me, it’s deep.
It’s deeper than just let’s go get a burger.
It’s about doing the right thing as a restaurant
to support the people that are supporting the soil
and that are caring for the soil.
And because the soil’s our future.
I mean, I don’t remember who was,
I think it was Hetty Roosevelt.
And if Mandy was here, she’d quote this
right off the top of her head.
But talking about the country that has the healthiest soil
is the richest country.
Right.
I don’t remember.
And I believe that it might’ve been FDR riffing on that.
Also says a nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.
Well, there you go.
Thank God for people who haven’t been reading.
Yeah, I think that might, I might be mistaken.
I’ll have to go back and check.
That’s the one.
That’s the one.
That’s totally the one.
Yeah, say it again.
Yeah, a nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.
That’s probably a quote in the book I wrote
called Y on Earth.
I think it’s in there.
And it might also be in our Soil Steward Japan book.
Okay.
Yeah.
Pretty sure.
It should be.
It should be.
If not, we’ll have to go back and edit.
Okay.
Well, and I gotta give a shout out to a dear friend
and mentor, Brooke Levan, Brooke and his wife Rose
at Sustainable Settings in Carbondale, Colorado.
Not too, too far from here in the scheme of things.
And of course, for years, they also are ranching
and farming in the…
A regenerative holistic way for them also practicing biodynamics is part of their journey.
And they, the market, the big market for them is Aspen.
And there are chefs in Aspen who have awakened to the connection between flavor and nutrient
density.
And there are chefs in Aspen who will only source from sustainable settings because of
the culinary experience that their guests have as a result.
And Brooke and Rose, of course, are also educating so many folks and just have to give them a
shout out.
And I’ll mention, I’ll take this opportunity just to mention a few other episodes that we’ve
done that are with folks working on very similar issues that I think will help some
of our audience, you know, connect some dots and maybe take deeper dives in certain directions
if they’d like.
And this includes Gabe Brown, one of the regenerative ranching experts from the Upper Midwest who
wrote Dirt to Soil and, of course, does a lot of policy work in D.C. and elsewhere advocating
for better practices.
Nicolette Hahn-Nyman from the Nyman Beef Company who wrote Defending Beef.
We had her on.
We had Elizabeth Whitlow on with the Regenerative Organic Alliance and, of course, our friends
Ueli Hötte and Jean-Michel Florian in Switzerland at the Gutianum, the headquarters for biodynamic
practices worldwide.
And, you know, Jeff Moyer at the Rodale Institute.
We had him on when he was CEO.
And, of course, our friends Lauren Tucker and Finnean make peace from Kiss the Ground.
And there’s a really interesting tie in there.
And I want to be sure to ask you about the film that you’re featured in so that we get
our audience alerted to that and have to mention that with Brooke Levan from Sustainable Settings,
that’s one of the very first episodes we ever did.
And it was such a wonderful way that kind of unfolded without even intending to necessarily
launch a podcast series.
So shout out to lots of good folks working on these issues.
And I love the notion that, you know, one of the patterns we can all participate in is
something you’ve been speaking to which is asking our restaurants in our communities
where they’re sourcing their food.
And, of course, what that might lead us toward is having a whole lot more James’ ranches
all over the place, right?
And communities all over.
This is what we need.
This is what a resilient, abundant and prosperous future looks like.
Exactly.
Right?
Yeah.
Tell us a bit more about the consumer demand lever in all of this and why you think it’s
so important for folks to ask those questions when they’re out at restaurants.
Well, I kind of felt like I’ve been a pioneer for a while with having that hardcore commitment
to local.
When I first started the food wagon and was introduced to different restaurant owners,
my dad, you know, made sure, like, do your homework and do your research and talked to
other restaurant owners.
And when I told him that what my concept was going to be there, like, you’ll never make
it.
Because restaurants have a very small margin and farmers have a very small margin.
And so you’re not going to be able to make it.
And I’m stubborn and I said, oh, yeah.
And I did it and I have done it and we’ve been around for almost 15 years.
And I say that not because it’s easy.
It’s a lot harder to do it my way.
It is.
But it’s sure as hell not as hard as farming.
It’s harder.
It’s harder than just having one list that you go down and you check up everything that
you need and you submit it and you’re done with your ordering.
I have 25 different vendors I order from every single week.
It takes me two hours to order.
But it’s the right thing to do and it’s possible.
And I really just want to share that and I have some little cards here that I put together
because I want people to realize that it’s up to the individual that is your health.
So when you go out and you spend money, your hard earned money at a restaurant for that
wonderful service and food, it is your right to ask, where do they source their food?
Because if it’s just industrial, typical coming from large distributors, it’s, for
the lack of being overly dramatic, it’s toxic.
It has chemicals in it.
It’s nutrient lacking.
It’s not filling you up.
It’s filling you up but it’s not nourishing you.
And there’s no reason why they can’t.
Like there’s no reason.
It’s just not the norm yet.
But I will share this.
This came out of the National Restaurant Association show that was in 2023.
The CEO, Michelle Corsno, cited that by 2030 sustainability will go mainstream, including
packaging, no more styrofoam, all those things that hurt our planet.
And she also stated that restaurants are now presented with an opportunity to not only please
their guests but contribute to preserving our planet.
So that was in 2023.
2024, the National Restaurant Association found that the restaurant goers, especially
millennials and Gen Z, indicated that they want more healthy, conscious, sustainable
sourcing when dining out.
And then, so it’s not new anymore.
I think that we’re all realizing that we’re connected and we want more.
But I don’t know.
I think sometimes as a consumer, you don’t feel like you have a choice, but we do.
We have a choice by asking, is there anything on your menu that sourced locally?
That’s the question, right?
Is where do you source your beef?
Where do you source your chicken?
And we’ve all heard about the movies that are like Food Inc. and these movies that create
conscious awareness about how food is produced.
But then we kind of leave the theater and we’re like, now what?
Right?
Like, where do we go?
What do we do?
I don’t want to eat that, but do I have a choice?
And I feel like, yeah, you do.
It’s time to ask.
You know, in 2024 or 2025, Toast is our POS system and they did a study with 850 people
in the restaurants that they have their systems and it was a blind test, just a random customer.
And they came out with some incredible results.
They asked, the first thing is the word that people are using now is sustainability, which
is fine.
Sustainability is a good start.
It’s a little bit deeper than organic because organic has become a greenwashed word.
It’s been abused.
The big companies are now organic, but they’re industrial organic, so it’s not as clean as
local and all those other good things.
So sustainable is better.
Sustainability is the ultimate word that you want to hear.
That is someone that is, they’re regeneratively organic certified, which you talked about
with the Alliance.
They are using animal impact.
They are actually using the practices that create soil and that’s nutrient dense.
And so that’s your ultimate goal, but let’s just use the word sustainability since that’s
what’s out there right now.
How they’re describing it is a sustainable restaurant strived to make conscious choices
that prioritize long-term environmental and social well-being.
Okay?
Can we ask that of our restaurants?
Can we?
Like just taking that, I’m going to say it one more time, a sustainable restaurant strived
to make conscious choices that prioritize long-term environmental and social well-being.
So let’s ask that of our restaurants, right?
I mean, we can do that.
We don’t have to say you have to have everything on your menu like I do.
I’m extreme.
I know that.
But start extreme, like start little, start something, you know, create a relationship
with a local farmer and just commit to that farmer.
I mean, I pay my farmers if they have a lost crop.
I’m in it with them.
I help them because that’s not their fault and they’re committed to grow for me.
You know, so let’s do that and let’s ask our local, your favorite restaurant, like
to say what’s local, what’s sustainable, what’s regenerative.
So the statistics were 73% of those 850 people that once they were made aware of what a sustainable
restaurant looks like, 73% of those respondents considered restaurants, they considered how
the restaurants approach sustainability as an important factor when they decide where
to eat.
73%.
That’s considerable.
That’s tremendous.
Right?
I mean, that’s showing that we’re turning the Titanic.
People are interested.
We just don’t have the time to take, we have to do it now, like we’re running out of time.
We really need to start doing these questions now.
And it’s so hopeful that already three out of four of us are there.
That’s incredible.
And what I also was encouraged is that 72% of those respondents were willing to pay more.
People are valuing their health finally and their well-being.
They’re realizing that, you know, pay my farmer now or pay my doctor later.
It’s really encouraging to me that we’re at a stage where we’re waking up and I’m so
excited to be a restaurant that other restaurant owners can say, she did it.
I can do this.
And you know what?
I have to be transparent.
I don’t make the margins as other restaurants do.
I don’t.
But I sleep well at night and I know that I’m nourishing people and I know that that experience
that you were talking about when they come to our restaurant, they don’t leave here with
eating a meal.
They leave here fulfilled, mind, body, soul.
And if we can all strive for just a tiny bit of that, I mean, I’m so blessed to be on this
gorgeous ranch and to have the space to do that.
It’s not everybody’s option, but just giving them a tiny bit of that with educating them
that, yeah, we have this relationship with a farmer and you’re eating salad greens that
were picked this morning.
And that just makes that person leave that restaurant really happy.
Absolutely.
So.
Well, and I was struck last night when we joined you for dinner right out here behind us.
A bunch of tables on the lawn and there were so many other families there enjoying not
only the food, but this sense of community.
It was palpable.
All right.
This is good.
And I feel like this is something in our DNA.
This is something that we’re actually wired to experience and it’s real.
It’s palpable.
It’s beautiful.
I can’t wait for us to come back.
Yeah.
I love that you felt that because kind of what we were saying earlier about the dormant
seed.
I feel like we all have a dormant seed inside of us and my friend Mandy, who we’ve referred
to as Aira, really, we kind of, she brought this to my attention, so I don’t want to take
full credit, but I do want to emphasize that as a human species, we are going to awaken
to the fact that we are absolutely connected to nature and the health of nature absolutely
affects the health of humanity.
And so we have to start doing things differently and we’re hopefully that dormant seed inside
of us that’s kind of gotten buried with industrialism and materialism and all the other things
that take priority and precedence in our life.
That seed’s going to, we’re coming into the age of the conditions of the world that’s
going to awaken that seed and we’re just a, I’m just like a little place on the planet
that’s allowing people to experience that.
Absolutely.
And I would love for our audience to hear a little more about this dormant seed reality
because this is really interesting in an ecological sense as it applies to the human
analogy.
So could you just tell us a little bit about how the dormant seeds work in nature and just
how amazing that is?
Well, I’m not an expert on it.
I just know that they find, like there’s places you can go on Google and find it, but there’s
like plants that just come out of nowhere.
They’ve never seen it before, but it’s been in the soil and it required the perfect conditions
of water or location or whatever the nature’s makeup is for that little seed to perform
and to grow.
It happened at that time in history and it just, it has to be that perfect condition
for that dormant seed to be able to release its DNA, you know, nature’s program for that
little tiny seed was all the right, you know, all the, what do you call it, all the eyes
were dotted and all the right conditions were checked off and so they come out and there’s
been multiple times when this has happened or they haven’t seen it for hundreds of years
and all of a sudden a whole field shows up one day.
They’re like, wow, where’d that come from?
Well, and I love how it invites us to consider each of us is on some level a dormant seed
or has inside of us a dormant seed or maybe many dormant seeds and there’s a, I’m hearing
an invitation in this to wake up and to grow and blossom and share, you know, what we’re
here to share.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think it’s, it’s, um…
It’s waking up to a connection to our source, and that we’ve always felt disconnected, and
Zach Bush speaks on this way better than I ever can, but Dr. Zach Bush, but that we’re
realizing that we’re part of a really amazing, I don’t know what you want to call it, but
energy or?
I like fabric.
Fabric of the world or?
Yes, cosmo-genetic fabric.
Yeah, I like that too, and we’re a part of that, and we’re not separate, and I feel like
we have that, wow, I have a role to play here, I am not just an observer, I need to
be a doer, and it’s a calling that everybody will hear differently at different times and
different places, but that awakening is happening, and it’s exciting, it’s so necessary, and
it’s so, there’s so much potential with that, and I feel like the dormant seed, once people
do feel that, you’re going to feel more confident to ask your local restaurant, you know, you’re
going to be like, wait a minute, this is, I need to do this, not just for me, but this
is for like the whole, the bigger picture, and I think that’s important that people feel
that confidence, and when they feel that seed awakening inside of them, which I hope maybe
this podcast will help people feel that, like it’s there, and we have it, and it’s just
buried, but you know what, all that other stuff is just dirt, and what our seed is planted
in soil, right?
Here, here, I love that, I say, Aho, amen, aus Kazeitschnitzel, all kinds of things coming
to mind, how beautiful, how wonderful.
Well I just, I want to be sure to mention to folks, James Ranch.net, come to Durango,
when you’re in Durango, come to 33846, highway 550, James Ranch Grill, open six days a week,
these days?
Right now, yeah, peak hours.
And experiences for yourself, and I want to, while I’m at it, mention a few other wonderful
companies and organizations that we’re also collaborating with, who help make our podcast
series possible, and this includes Climate First Bank, which is now nationwide in the
United States, we’re very excited about that, Bluestone Life Insurance, with really beautiful
custom life insurance products for your family that are also investing in socially and environmentally
responsible vehicles, Earth Coast Productions, without whom we would not have a podcast series,
the Brad and Lindsay Lidge Family Foundation, of course, Patagonia’s Home Planet Fund,
our friends at Edaphic Solutions, the Josephine Porter Institute, and of course Chelsea Green
Publishing, and with several of those incredible organizations, we put together a special regenerative
gardening, simple gardening, wisdom video course that you can check out at the website, yondearth.org,
if you’d like, along with our books and many other resources that we’ve got available for
you there.
And speaking of videos and video resources, I wanted to be sure to ask about the video
to which we belong, the documentary that you’re in, it’s available, we think, on Apple TV,
and we’ll see if we can find a link and include that in the show notes to help folks get to that,
and we’ll have the show notes links for some of these other podcast episodes that we mentioned as
well, and of course, I have to give a shout out to our friend Dr. Elaine Ingham, who essentially
pioneered the formal holistic soil science field for all of us and has now had over 10,000 other
scientists cite her work. She’s incredible. Soil Food Web is her work there. And yay, so I think
we’ve mentioned all of the friends and colleagues that we wanted to mention here, and I did want to
say Toast is POS, which means Point of Sale, which thousands, hundreds of thousands of restaurants
are using all around the country and probably internationally, I’m not sure. And so for them to
do these sorts of surveys and to query the general public the way they have is actually super
meaningful and I would say very exciting and hopeful that the numbers are what they are at this
point. Absolutely. It just validates, to me, it validates that this is a path we’re on and where
we need to go. And I’m not alone anymore. Right. We’re not alone. Not alone. And we’re all on this
big planet ship together. And yeah, it’s nice. It’s nice that they did that. Well, I love the way
you’re also thinking about empowering each of us with this call to action for us to be inquiring
with our restaurant tour friends, where they’re sourcing their food. And I wanted to invite you
to riff on that any further if you’d like. And I want to be sure also to ask you about farm runners
and distributors because this is near and dear to my heart. But with respect to this call to
action, this invitation, as you were saying that we each have a choice, it popped up for me and I
wrote it down. We also each have a voice in all of this, right? And I think in some ways the
invitation is to exercise the choice and the voice. Just asking questions. We don’t have to be
confrontational or just inquire. It’s actually kind of fun. I’ve done it a bunch. Yeah. And it’s
just if we don’t ask, and they don’t know that we care. And I think that’s what it is. It’s just
like letting him know that you care about what you put in your body. And I think that’s that’s
our choice. And that is our voice. Because if we don’t voice it, nobody else is. Yeah. I mean,
I can’t say nobody. There’s a beautiful group of restaurants that are doing what I do. And I
don’t know to the degree that I do, because I’m not out there. But I do know that there’s plenty
of like you’re referring to the chef in Aspen, you know, a lot of chefs are waking to the flavor
Dan Barber, you know, from Blue Hill, he’s the pioneer, really, of introducing all this to the
culinary world. And we’re so blessed in Durango, we have an organization called Real Organics
started by Lindley from Adobe House Farms, Lindley Dixon. And, you know, they’ve been working with
Dan Barber, but it’s just there’s, there’s
I think it’s just taking that interest in that control of your own life, like I have a choice,
I do have a voice, and I don’t know, I love how you pointed out, it doesn’t have to be like,
well what do you source locally, you know, it doesn’t have to be snarky or accusatory,
it’s curious, and curiosity to can you, have you, and then let’s let that lead into our food
runners, our farm runners, you know, so to get those goods from all these farmers, me personally,
I have them deliver, I go to the farmers market and pick it up from the farmers market, if that’s
where they are once a week, or we have what are farm runners, organizations like Taproot,
that are based in the San Luis Valley, so if I can’t get it locally, these trucks bring it down,
and they, so they’re picking up from all these farmers, and then they bring it to the, to the
restaurants, and retail stations, like my sister gets some from them as well, from the market,
and so our, our fries, our french fries now, so for years we were using fingerling potatoes,
and that was unique and fun, and it was a byproduct, because I found out that the seed,
the potato seed growers in the valley, in the San Luis Valley, would throw like thousands of pounds
of the bigger ones that were beyond the seed size, to the pigs, and so I’m like, well that’s a waste,
so I’ll just cut those up and make a french fry out of it, so we did that for five years, and it
became like, we were, they were now, then they changed to just growing for us, because we were
getting more, we were growing, and so we were, I think of my last year, with the fingerling
potatoes, we, we bought nine tons of potatoes, and so they ended up just growing potatoes that,
you know what I mean, so it wasn’t a byproduct anymore, so that, I mean it was still a byproduct,
but not the same, like what we were intending to do, but in that process, I found out that I
couldn’t switch to a non-seed oil, because my fingerling potatoes, the skins that were left on
them, would dye my oil, and so I’d have to change my oil every day, that’s $189 a day for oil,
and yeah, so I was on the hunt for a solution to that, plus they were hand cut, like one potato at
a time, huge labor, so anyway business-wise, but I wanted to offer quality, I’m not gonna go to,
I mean not to main bash, but I’m not gonna go to a major distributor and get, you know,
pesticide potatoes that are formulated GMO just for fries, which is what most restaurants do,
so I was able to connect with Sarah Jones from Jones Organic Farm, and they are in the
San Luis Valley, and they are growing this little potato called the yellow jelly, and we don’t hand
cut it this way, we just hand crank it, so it’s still, you know, we’re still taking on the labor
side, but they are regeneratively organic certified, that soil is soil, and that potato,
you’re eating a french fry, but it is healthy, and it’s got nutrient density in it, and it’s in a
cleaner, better oil, if you’re gonna have to fry something, make sure it’s a good oil, right,
no canole oil, no yucky stuff, and so I don’t know why I got on this tangent, but just to
talk about the farm runners and the distribution that works, so I don’t have to go up there,
I can, they bring it down to me, so every week I get my delivery of potatoes, and so I’m able to
have something regional, that’s not local, local, but it’s regional, it’s three hours away, and so
without those farm runners, I would have to be doing that, you know, and it’s not sustainable from
me and my restaurant, and then along with that they’re bringing other stuff down from other food
growers up there that can grow things during different seasons, so we can stay seasonal,
but it’s not necessarily right here, and so we’re still supporting the food economy that’s
within our local area, and they’re just crucial, they’re crucial to making this actually work for
more restaurants to succeed, the challenge is that they are a middleman, and so they need to get
paid, and so you pay them just like you pay the other food distributors, and actually what’s
interesting I’ve learned because I’ve been on the sites to other large food distributors, I’m paying
sometimes less money for my local farmers items than would go through a major food distributor
that’s selling it organic, so industrial organic is more expensive than my local farmer, and through
my farm runner like taproot, so it’s possible, right? So we just have to, again, if there’s a demand,
then all these other systems are going to come to play, and they will work, if we as the consumer
with our choice and voice ask enough, the reason to be on the road will be that much more lucrative
for those farm runners so they can survive, excuse me, and then we’re supporting the farmers
in a bigger way. How beautiful, well here for the farmers, the restaurateurs, and the regional and
local distributors, a big shout out, of course. This is the Y on Earth community podcast, and I’m
your host, Aaron William Perry, and just want to remind you today we’re visiting with Cynthia James
Stewart here at the James Ranch Grill in Durango, Colorado, and it is such a joy being here, we’ve
had a beautiful raining morning, the sun’s coming out, the birds are singing, the train whistles
blowing off in the distance, it’s like a setting for a novel or something, and you know, we’re going
to, in just a few minutes, we’re going to have our behind the scenes chat, which we’ll share with our
Ambassador Network, and if you’re interested in learning more about the growing global network
of ambassadors we’re collaborating with through the Y on Earth community, just go to whyonarth.org
and you’ll find a page with information about getting involved with the Ambassador Network, and
we have lots of additional resources available exclusively for our Ambassador, so there’s a great
additional way to enrich your own personal path of stewardship, sustainability, regeneration,
health, and well-being. And before we sign off and transition to our little behind the scenes chat,
I want to be sure to, first of all, thank you, Cynthia, for taking the time to visit with us
today and share your story and your inspiration and your calls to action with us, and of course,
thanks for the hospitality and the wonderful dinner we had last night, and I want to invite you,
if there’s anything else you’d like to say to our audience, any closing thoughts before we sign off,
please, the floor is yours. I’ll probably think about it after you turn the camera off, but
I think I’ve shared it. I think it’s more just
just understanding the big picture, you know, that we’re all connected, and that our decisions that
we make on a daily basis affect everyone. It’s a ripple effect on every level, and so just being
mindful of all the decisions we make, you know, buying things that have useless packaging, like,
do I really need to buy that? You know, my daughter likes those little chia packages, you know,
it has a little plastic twist-off thing, and I’m like, no, because that’s not going to buy
a degrade, and that’s going to be left for, like, beyond your children’s children, like, no.
You know, just little things like that, that we can all have that choice, and just being mindful,
because we are all connected, and this planet is, it will live beyond us, if we don’t make
different choices. Well, thank you so much for visiting with us today, Cynthia. It’s been a real
joy. Thank you for coming down and joining me. I really appreciate it. It’s our pleasure, absolutely.
Thank you. Thank you. The Y on Earth Community Stewardship and Sustainability podcast series
is hosted by Erin William Perry, author, thought leader, and executive consultant.
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Thank you.
So great to have this chat with Cynthia at her beautiful family ranch in Durango, Colorado! ~A