MMP Ep 334: Katie Collins of Force of Nature on Regenerative Meat and a healthier future for all.

MMP Ep 334: Katie Collins of Force of Nature on Regenerative Meat and a healthier future for all.

Laura Bruner: ​[00:00:00]

Laura Bruner: Hey friends! Can't wait till Wednesdays to get your Modern Mamas fix? Join us on Patreon. You can choose your tier and when you subscribe you'll get bonus content, early access to Retreat, first peeks at new swag, plus shoutouts and even real time monthly virtual hangs with us. Visit

Katie Collins: patreon. com forward slash Modern Mamas podcast to check it out and support the podcast.

Katie Collins: It truly means the world to us. We are so grateful for you and for this community.

Laura Bruner: Hi

Katie Collins: friends! Welcome to the Modern Mamas podcast. We are two modern

Laura Bruner: mamas here

Katie Collins: to inspire, empowerment, self love, deep physical and spiritual nourishment, holistic health, open minds, and joy,

Laura Bruner: no matter your journey or perspective. I'm Laura of Radical Roots. I'm a certified CrossFit trainer, certified nutrition consultant, and mama to [00:01:00] Evie Wilder and

Katie Collins: Indie

Laura Bruner: Bow.

Laura Bruner: I love outdoor adventure, good food, especially sourdough. And

Katie Collins: mindful movement. And I'm Jess of Hold the Space Wellness. I am a Level 1 CrossFit trainer, a licensed and certified athletic trainer with a Masters in Kinesiology, and Mama Tiberian Camille. I love food, trying new things, creating art, and being a perpetual learner.

Katie Collins: Please note that while we're here to provide advice and insights, we aren't medical practitioners, and always recommend that you check with a trusted provider before implementing any changes. Thanks for joining us. We're so happy you're here.

Laura Bruner: Hi friends, Lori here. I am so excited for you to tune into this episode that I recorded with Katie Collins of Force of Nature Meat.

Laura Bruner: She is a mama and an advocate and ambassador for regenerative meats. And this conversation is a good one. And I'm also super excited to share with you that we now have a discount code for you to save big on delicious, regenerative,

Katie Collins: nourishing, high

Laura Bruner: quality. Did I mention delicious meats? [00:02:00] Head to forceofnature.

Laura Bruner: com and use code modernmamas at checkout, and you can save on meat that once again is super delicious. I love their ancestral blends that add in organ meats to ground meats in a way that you can't taste a thing. Their venison breakfast sausage is next level. Their steaks are divine, but let the meat speak for itself.

Laura Bruner: Go check it out and use code modernmamas at checkout. All right, enjoy the meat and enjoy this episode. Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Modern Mamas podcast. I am here today with Katie Collins of Force of Nature Meats, and we'll introduce her formally, but I just have to start off by saying I'm so grateful that you're on the podcast and also that you've been such a huge part of creating Force of Nature because every single thing that we have eaten from Force of Nature in our kitchen has been just over and above delicious.

Laura Bruner: Something as simple as just ground beef is, you know, is next level. You can taste the care that goes into it. So thank you for that. Oh, thank you. In fact, right now we have the, I want to say it's bison or [00:03:00] venison breakfast sausage defrosting in the fridge and I have a whole recipe that I'm going to put together and we're not going to do it as breakfast, I'm actually, I've got like pasta and I have fennel and I'm doing this whole pasta dish that I swear I dreamed up and I'm very excited to share, so thank you for that.

Laura Bruner: I just love all of the variety. It's so great. So without further ado, Katie Collins is a co founder of Force of Nature, a regeneratively sourced meat company with a mission to reclaim the legacy of meat. Prior to Force of Nature, Katie co founded EPIC Provisions, which many of you have heard about, I was, I've been an affiliate with them, awesome stuff, the groundbreaking company that blazed a trail by introducing the world to the very first 100 percent grass fed meat, fruit, and nut bar.

Laura Bruner: EPIC's pioneering work led to its acquisition by General Mills in 2016, marking a significant milestone in the movement for healthier, regenerative food systems. In 2017, Katie and her husband, Taylor, took their passion for regenerative practices a step further, establishing Rome Ranch, a magnificent, multi species regenerative ranch nestled in the heart of Fredericksburg, [00:04:00]Texas.

Laura Bruner: Here, they lovingly raise bison, turkeys, ducks, geese, and honeybees, fostering a holistic environment that artfully replicates the intricate relationships found in nature. Over time, Rome Ranch has blossomed into one of the state's largest grass fed bison operations, also serving as an educational hub where land managers and consumers alike learn the invaluable principles of regenerative agriculture.

Laura Bruner: In 2019, Katie, alongside her husband and their friend Robbie Sansom, founded Force of Nature. The core of their collective efforts is the establishment of sustainable supply chains for grass fed and regeneratively managed livestock, propelling the regenerative agriculture movement to greater heights.

Laura Bruner: Katie's journey is steeped in a passion for wellness and holistic living, enriched by her background as a competitive athlete. Today, as a devoted mom, she stands firmly rooted in a profound why, underpinning force of, underpinning force of nature's mission. Her family's adventures encompass an array of explorations from arrowhead and shed [00:05:00] hunting to the allure of hiking, trail running, and biking.

Laura Bruner: What a bio. So many things. It's so fun to think back to the beginnings of Epic and being like, this is so cool. This is so new. And now you, any grocery store you go to, you can, you can find Epic for us, which is just the coolest. And you guys have done made such leaps and bounds for this movement. So thank you for that.

Laura Bruner: And thanks for coming on today.

Katie Collins: Yeah. I'm honored to be here. Thanks for having me.

Laura Bruner: That's a treat. So before we dive into all the things, including your story, I would, I love to kind of kick off with an icebreaker. And as we record today, it is November 1st and I'm a little tired from Halloween festivities.

Laura Bruner: We were just up later than usual. Not much sugar was consumed, but it was a very, just a later night, a little wild. And so it's November 1st. And I am curious to know, as we move into fall, further into fall, and into the holiday season, what is your favorite thing about this time of year?

Katie Collins: Mm. Everything is my favorite about the fall.

Katie Collins: I think everybody loves the fall. Um, especially here in Texas, you know, like we, but he's brutal summers [00:06:00] and this, this year was no exception. We, we've been in a drought, a really bad drought for about two years. And, you know, usually we get about 28 inches of rain a year on average, but we've had 20 inches of rain over the last two years total.

Katie Collins: And so it's just been, it's been hot and dry and dusty. Yeah. And as we were moving into fall, we've had some of our first rains of the season of the entire year of the last two years that have actually been meaningful rains, which has been so refreshing. It really like reinvigorates your soul and you can start seeing new green growth.

Katie Collins: I mean, when you just look at like dead yellow grass for two years, seeing green, it's like something. In your body just sort of ignites, you know, that things are coming alive again, and that just fills me with such joy, but really, my honestly, my favorite thing about fall is all the migratory bird species that come through our property this, this morning we were sitting out in the yard and there were [00:07:00] probably a thousand eastern meadow larks that were flying over our heads and it was just such a beautiful sign that, you know, things are returning and, and that there's like new life and new growth happening right now.

Katie Collins: Because every season has a pattern of life and growth, regardless if the other things are dormant. So it's just finding those, those things that remain alive and bring energy into your ecosystem that I really find joy in. I love that so

Laura Bruner: much. It's such a unique take on fall. And then, you know, I'm coming, I'm living in the Pacific Northwest and there's literally green everywhere

Katie Collins: all year.

Katie Collins: Oh, I love that. You're so lucky.

Laura Bruner: I'm so lucky. It's, you know, we're the evergreen state where I'm in, up in Washington, up like on the Olympic Peninsula. So right where the Olympic National Forest is, which is like, you know, it just, yeah, it's rainforest pretty much. So it's so cool. But also I'm, I have a really good friend in Dripping Springs.

Laura Bruner: And she's like, Oh, you know, right now we're getting like a high of 78 to 82 and I'm like, Oh, [00:08:00] that's nice. I feel like all of Texas is just pure magic. Yeah, I love it. And I love how you're able to pull out like the beauty in the different seasons and Really noticing the nuance there is just a very poetic way to explain it.

Laura Bruner: So thank you for that. Um,

Katie Collins: so

Laura Bruner: lovely. Well, eventually I want to get out and visit there. I have a lot of friends in Texas. My cohost, Jess, as you may know, lived in San Antonio. Texas is a wonderful, wonderful place. So count me in. Come any

Katie Collins: time. Okay. Noted. I'm still dead of summer when it's 107. Don't do

Laura Bruner: this.

Laura Bruner: I can, I can assure you that that one happened. I, I've been there in February and November and both have been just so lovely. Yeah, but kind of those shoulder seasons I think are where it's at. Okay, I would love to hear more about how you came into this work. So your story, we got a little bit of that in your bio, but from your own perspective, your story and what brought you

Katie Collins: to this path?

Katie Collins: Man, it's kind of a long, I'll give you the abbreviated version, but you know, getting to [00:09:00] where I am today really began in my early twenties. When I started having some mysterious health issues arise that were preventing me from training and competing like I wanted to my husband and I, well, he wasn't my husband at the time, but Taylor, my boyfriend at the time, I guess we were competing in a lot of endurance racing type stuff.

Katie Collins: So like iron man's and endurance mountain biking and road racing, endurance running. And there came this point where I started having debilitating stomach issues, you know, right around like two o'clock every day, my stomach would just like crush me. And I knew like two o'clock is my deadline. I have to get all my workouts in.

Katie Collins: I have to get all my schoolwork done because at two o'clock I'm like stuck in the house because my stomach hurts so bad that I'm like leaning over. In addition to that, I was having really bad inflammation, like inflammation took hold of basically every part of my body, but the most debilitating part [00:10:00] was it went really heavy in one of my knees, and so my knee got super swollen and huge, and it was challenging to bend it, and so, I mean, at the time, the most important thing to me was riding my bike, and, you know, so you, if you can't bend your knee at a 90 degree angle, then You can't really ride your bike.

Katie Collins: And so it was really the knee that like took me down a path of trying to figure out what was going on. And I went to every doctor I could come up with in Austin and man, the experts. told me all the wrong things. One guy put me on rheumatoid arthritis medication and he said I had to take it the rest of my life.

Katie Collins: Uh, one guy told me that I needed a total knee replacement, which was hard to hear. You know, 22 or whenever I was, I think I was 2022 ish. And then one guy was like, we have to just go in and do some exploratory knee surgery. And see if we can find something, because I literally have no idea what's going on.

Katie Collins: And it wasn't until I met a holistic health [00:11:00] practitioner, and he was the first person to ask me, like literally the first doctor, to say, tell me about your diet. And at the time, I had thought my diet was amazing. I was following, I was following the conventional endurance athlete diet of high carbohydrate, low fat.

Katie Collins: Taylor and I were, had been exposed to a lot of feedlot operations, just from a lot of the traveling that we had done, and we had never seen any animal agriculture done in a proper way, and so it really made us steer clear of consuming animal proteins, and so we were vegetarian for a really long time, simply because we were like, well, if that's the system, I don't want to be a part of that system.

Katie Collins: So we were vegetarian, we were vegan, we were raw vegan. So when he asked me what we, what I was eating, I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm the cleanest eater in the world. I, I eat raw foods and da da da. And he just kind of looked at me and was like, [00:12:00] We need to have a conversation about that. You need to start cooking your vegetables and consuming grass fed animal protein.

Katie Collins: And literally the next day I was like, I'll do whatever it takes. I'm going to go from hardcore raw vegan to whatever you tell me to consume. And so at the time there wasn't a word for it, but I guess modern day terminology would be, he put me on a paleo diet. He told me I needed to start cooking my vegetables, removing legumes.

Katie Collins: No grains, and ensuring that all the animal protein I was eating was really high quality. And finding that really high quality meat meant that I had to go to the farmer's market. Because they didn't sell it at any grocery stores at the time. Of course, now you can walk into pretty conventional stores and find grass fed animal protein.

Katie Collins: And so that sort of changed my perspective on the, our food system and the foods that we were consuming and I'll, I'll leave the story of grad [00:13:00] school out of it, but this was all happening in conjunction with me going to grad school for counseling psychology and I hated my program. I was trying to train 30 hours a week, go to grad school and, and start a, a vegan energy bar company with Taylor.

Katie Collins: And it felt like I was just running myself to the ground. And, and I had all these inflammation issues and I was trying to figure out what was going on with my body. You know, looking back now, I'm like, Oh, that was a lot of stress and a lot, no, no sleep and really bad food choices. Like, it seems so simple to solve now, retrospectively looking back at it.

Katie Collins: But so, so it was in this process of figuring out, like, what do I want to do and becoming really obsessed with food and the quality of food. Taylor and I decided to start Epic because we were doing all this endurance. These, all these endurance sports, we would be on our bikes for five, six hours a day.

Katie Collins: And we needed [00:14:00] conveniently packaged, high quality foods. And so the only thing that I could really at the time feel good about was Laura bars. And then we would, we would cook up jerk. We would either bring jerky or we would cook up bacon, put it in Ziploc bags and put it in her back pockets and consume that while we were on bike rides.

Katie Collins: And Taylor's like, Hey, let's make a, let's make a meat bar. I mean, we are, we have all these Laura bars. Why don't we just have meat and a package? And so we're sure why not? We don't know anything about food. Let's do it. So we started Epic and it was really through Epic that we started meeting really incredible ranchers and farmers and spending so much time on different pieces of land and seeing different styles of managing land and agriculture.

Katie Collins: And it was through those interactions and those experiences where we really like had these visceral reactions to being in these [00:15:00] spaces that are so alive. Being like having your feet grounded and on a multi species regenerating, regenerating soil. It sounds different. It feels different. It smells different.

Katie Collins: It looks different. Like every, it's like a sensation overload, but in a really positive way. Not like I'm overstimulated, but more like I'm so a part of this. Like it's, it's, it's, it's like being, it's like really saying like, oh, Like me as a human, I'm a part of this. Like being on regenerating soil is just so beautiful.

Katie Collins: It's so different. And we had never experienced that before. And so we knew, you know, I remember looking at Taylor one day while we were visiting a supplier and we were like, They, this is the life. This is, this is, these are our goals. This is, this has to be our goal in life. Whatever we need to do to get down this path, we need to, we need to do that.

Katie Collins: You know, like we knew we wanted to live that lifestyle and really be a part of the land in a [00:16:00] meaningful way. So when we sold Epic, we had the opportunity to purchase land for the first time, which I never fathomed we would ever be able to do such a thing. And so that's, you know, Taylor spent, I don't even know how long, months and months and months.

Katie Collins: I'd see, I'd wake up in the middle of the night, he'd be on his computer looking for different pieces of land. And he found the property that we're on right now. And it's, it's. Half of it was old, degraded farmland that was literally completely bare. It had been abused and extracted from for the last 80 years, 80 plus years.

Katie Collins: And when we saw it, we were like, this is so perfectly awful. We have like, this is it. Like we, this is a blank slate. We can take something that's just completely dead and turn it into something completely alive. It was just, it was just perfect. And so we've been regenerating this piece of property ever since we've had huge improvements out [00:17:00] here, but you know, like the regeneration, the regeneration process is endless.

Katie Collins: I don't think it ever stops. Mother Nature is always cycling, always regenerating. And that's what we're doing out here too. So that the regeneration process will never end out here, but in the process of regenerating this land, we've been bringing people out all the time. We have tours, we have. Turkey harvest, we have bison field harvest, we have, we have a piano conference in April called What Good Shall I Do?

Katie Collins: And you know, so we would bring people out here and share the story of regeneration and how you can bring land back to life and, and what that really feels like and what it really means to be a part of that system. And at the end of every single tour, people would say, like, I'm bought in, I'm a hundred percent bought in.

Katie Collins: Like, what, how can I support this? And it really sucked at the end of all the tours because it felt really hopeless in a way, because I could say, man, there's a [00:18:00] really great farmer rancher in Georgia, but they only ship on the East Coast or, oh, man, there's a guy in Mason, but he doesn't do direct to consumer.

Katie Collins: He only brings his stuff to the auction. So you can come to our ranch and buy some stuff every now and then if you want. But I didn't have like a solution for people. And of course I can say like, go buy some epic bars. But that's not like a format that people consume every single day, you know, like an, uh, an epic bar is perfect for on the go, but I don't expect people to consume an epic bar for dinner, right?

Katie Collins: I surely hope that they're not consuming an epic bar for dinner. And so, you know, it was like, we sort of all looked at each other, Robbie and Taylor and I, and we're like, Man, like, we have to provide something for these people, like, this is a dire need. And we, I mean, it was like one of these things where it's like, oh man, I don't want to do that again, like, Epic was hard.

Katie Collins: And it was so much hustle and so much stress. [00:19:00] And, but, you know, at the end of the day, it's like, I really feel like this is an obligation to provide people with access to this type of protein, you know, like

Laura Bruner: once you learn you can't

Katie Collins: unlearn. Yeah, I can't unlearn.

Laura Bruner: Yeah, and then there's this responsibility on your shoulders that you can't, can't take.

Katie Collins: Totally. And just thinking about the impact that you can have, you know, like with Epic, it's so wonderful I think about the impact that we can have selling these bars, but that's an ounce and a half. Selling a pound at a time, like what the commitments that can be made to ranchers that are doing regenerative ag and practicing this way is so much greater because, you know, it's.

Katie Collins: That much larger volume for them. Yeah, and on the home

Laura Bruner: front to just like listening to you, you know, we, we grab epic bars for a hike or like travel, especially on a plane or whatever it is. You've got some protein, great source, but I love that now you're [00:20:00] offering these meats that impact the actual ranchers and farmers, but then also like changes the whole dynamic of the kitchen.

Laura Bruner: And the way that families are looking at food and the way that they're preparing food and cooking in their kitchens, which I just think is like a whole nother level.

Katie Collins: Yeah, totally. And I mean, it brings that tiny bit of impact, like into the conversation of food creation, as you said, like bringing it into the kitchen.

Katie Collins: It's not necessarily a conversation that's always had on the airplane or while you're walking around. But I mean, we talk about food. We are obsessed with food in our house. I mean, we talk about food all the time, like. Sometimes we pull out some ground meat and it's like, Hey, this was num, you know, our animals are have numbers or sometimes they have names, but like, Hey, this was peaches or this was number 404 and we talk about that animal as we're consuming it.

Katie Collins: And I feel like the concept of regenerative agriculture as a whole is so special and is it. It creates such a connection between people and land that it is a conversation that you can [00:21:00]have with your children about like how this package of meat, like, let's talk about this, where did this come from and how did it get here?

Katie Collins: And like that whole process is just is so critically important for us to be thinking about and conversing about. So I think that wraps up my story. I love it.

Laura Bruner: Yeah, great. You got goosebumps a few different times. It's something, it's amazing because I, I, I really feel like, and I'm, I have a similar story in that I was an endurance athlete, I was a vegetarian, I had crippling, I, my, my training twice a week with my team was at 530 a night and I remember almost consistently I'd have to like run to the bathroom and I'd be, I'd just get the worst side sitch, like the worst side aches constantly.

Laura Bruner: And I have, again, like a very similar, our audience has heard a lot of it, but similar story of like finding real food at the time it was Paleo and I found CrossFit and it was 2000, I don't know, 11 or 12 and 10, I don't know, but just big shifts and it changed my whole world. I went from, you know, infertile to now having kids and, and [00:22:00] so like the impact it can have on our health and then the health of the planet.

Laura Bruner: I just, I think it's, I see a shift in companies like yours and the work that you're doing is, is a huge part of that. For so long, so many people, you and myself included, thought we were doing the quote unquote right thing, both for our health and for the planet, by being vegetarian, that it's just... It's not the case.

Laura Bruner: And so the education here is so key.

Katie Collins: Yeah, totally. And, and, you know, I don't, I don't advocate for meat consumption of period. Like I, I don't want anyone to support a broken conventional system. Like we have to only support these systems that are creating healthy outcomes for the land, for people and for animals.

Katie Collins: I mean, just thinking about. Transitioning to consuming meat. I'm sure this was true for you too, but you know, like what I was told was, you know, you have to focus on grass fed, healthy animals. You [00:23:00] can't eat sick animals like the animals in the conventional system are sick and we can't expect to be healthy by eating sick animals.

Katie Collins: And so it's like we have to eat healthy animals to have healthy bodies ourselves. There's like a direct link between those two things. Thanks.

Laura Bruner: A hundred percent. Yeah. And it, it's, it goes a long way and it makes a big difference. So and the amount of nutrition and nourishment in that properly raised animal, it goes far and above like any vegetable we could really eat, but it's basically an entirely different food than a conventionally raised.

Laura Bruner: So if you think about like the liver, right, like all it's, it's wild. And I know you guys offer, so I have had lots of different organ meat blends and whatnot in my time eating meat because I went from like vegetarian to I am going to go full. I would just like pan sear some liver. Like I went full steam ahead.

Laura Bruner: But your What are your blends? It's called the ancestral ancestral blends. Yeah, they are so delicious. My family can't tell. And my husband has, he's like a canary in a coal mine. When I try and sneak liver and [00:24:00] things, he can always tell, but he loved it.

Katie Collins: So anyways, kind of went on

Laura Bruner: a tangent, but powerful, so much powerful nutrition and properly

Katie Collins: raised meat.

Katie Collins: Yeah, for sure. A hundred percent. And so that's a good

Laura Bruner: segue. And we kind of have already talked about it. You shared a lot about this, but just to kind of really drive it home, why. Regenerative meat, both for the planet and for our health. Why

Katie Collins: regenerative meat, both for our planet? Well, you know, when I, when I think about why regenerative meat, it really feels like there's, there really is no other option if you are headed down a pathway of health and wellness.

Katie Collins: Regenerative is a system that, it's an agricultural system that really Owners and works with the way that mother nature works. It's, it's all about caring for the soil, diversity of plants and animals [00:25:00] and really focusing on like natural outcomes. And so when you think about what the, it's so weird, I'm, I'm sorry, this one's hard for me because I'm like, what do you mean, why not, how could we not, how could we not go this direction, like forming an argument around it is, is, it's almost like an entire book and if you know what I mean,

Laura Bruner: Oh, totally, it's a loaded question, but I'd say like elevator pitch, someone sees an elevator and you have a name tag thing that says like Katie Forrest, force of meats and like, what do you do?

Laura Bruner: Oops. Why regenerative? And it seems so for you and I, because we're so immersed in it and again, like the coming backs and you can't learn,

Katie Collins: right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm

Laura Bruner: like sitting here like, okay, what would my response be? And it's almost it is. It's like if we want the world to continue and the planet to continue.

Laura Bruner: for generations and generations to come, like there is no other answer. There, there is no other path. The veganism is not, because there's, then there's like the monocrops and the [00:26:00]Roundup spraying and, you know, so it's like regenerative

Katie Collins: meat really is, what else do we

Laura Bruner: do?

Katie Collins: What else is there? Yeah, I mean, I guess if you wanted to, like, break it down, you could say that it number one, it helps build healthy land, you know, so it's you're improving soil health, soil structure, you're improving water holding capacity, you're reducing erosion.

Katie Collins: And, you know, that has implications for climate change and et cetera. Number two, it supports farmers and communities. And so, you know, you think about, do you want to sit on a tractor and spray chemicals all day? Or do you want to work within a regenerative system in which chemicals never existed? And it can revitalize rural economies.

Katie Collins: We have some Some of our suppliers that have completely created local economies that didn't exist before, like, have 200 plus employees in a town that was a ghost town because it [00:27:00] had been abandoned and it reduces taxes. The need for inputs, fuel, chemicals, et cetera, and it improves the quality of life.

Katie Collins: Like living within the regenerative agricultural system is such a beautiful thing. The majority, I don't want to say the majority, but in conventional farming you have You have farmers that are leaving their farms and their kids don't want to come back and continue working there. They don't want to come and sit on a tractor and spray all day.

Katie Collins: They see the health implications and the cancers that come from that type of thing. And, and you see farmers killing themselves. Also, which is a huge issue in this country, you know, like there's so much debt in that conventional model. Like they have to, they have to buy the seed that fits the chemical and then they're in debt for the machinery, the millions of dollars worth of machinery to apply all these things and their lives are [00:28:00] pretty dire.

Katie Collins: Like it's not, it's not a pretty sight. You know, regenerative agriculture is all about building diversity. It's a resilient system and improves biodiversity in general, and also protects wildlife habitat. It, it, it, I'm like, I feel like I'm like selling it, but I guess, I guess that's sort of the point, you know, it improves air and water quality.

Katie Collins: It prevents pollution within our water systems and it benefits the end consumer. It improves, like, the nutritional quality of the food. It improves the diversity of our diets. Like, just the, uh, phytochemical And phytonutrients that are found in regenerative meat are unlike anything you can find in any other food products.

Katie Collins: And it reduces our exposure to toxic chemicals. Like when you're consuming regenerative meat, you don't have to worry about that at all. Yeah. It's amazing. So, you [00:29:00]know, I mean, just there's, and there's also been plenty, I don't want to say plenty, there have been studies done on the ability for it to potentially reverse global climate change.

Katie Collins: There's been studies that show the ability for grasslands to sequester carbon is just unparalleled anything out there except the ocean. And so when you have healthy grasslands. Your ability to capture that and store it is just immense. And so it reduces the, you know, if you think about what the impact is overall, it reduces like that carbon emission, you know, input production, but it also is sequestering it.

Katie Collins: So I don't, I don't, I love regenerative ag for so many reasons, but for me, it's about building resiliency. A regenerative system is, it's supposed closed loop.

Katie Collins: Everything that [00:30:00] humans create, there are these open systems. And so. And they're, I'm going to call human systems are, they're open systems and they're complicated. Like, let's just say a truck. If something breaks in a truck, that's, it will not fix itself. Something has, there has to be an input that has to come in and fix it.

Katie Collins: In nature, if in this closed loop system, if something is broken, let's just say like a tree limb, tree limb breaks and dies, it's closed and it will regenerate itself. And so regenerative agriculture is about building, replicating that, that cycle, that regenerative cycle, and, and humans can be a part of that system so long as they're trying to mimic nature as opposed to fight nature,

Laura Bruner: if that makes any sense.

Laura Bruner: It makes a ton of sense, and [00:31:00] I think you put it beautifully, so thank you for that. Hello friends, Laura here popping in real quick to rave about my current favorite product from Paleo Valley. Have you tried their whey protein yet? Not only are they absolutely delicious, And deeply nourishing, but bonus points because they also have colostrum, which heals, repairs, and gives our bodies the extra boost we need for motherhood, work, working out, all the things.

Laura Bruner: I add it to my coffee every morning and it fuels my early morning work, my transition into motherhood whenever the kids wake up, and then my training. Cannot recommend it enough. Give it a try. Creamy, delicious. It's flavor packed and none of the junk you'll find in typical protein powders. We also add it to pancakes and oatmeal and I look forward to smoothies this summer.

Laura Bruner: Don't wait, go grab yours and save 15 percent with paleovalley. com forward slash modern mamas. Enjoy. Awesome. Okay, so that's great. I just want to like go, I want to just bring my girls to your farm [00:32:00] now. I feel like, you know, we do forest school and I'm homeschooling next year and I feel like there's no better.

Laura Bruner: Way to really learn the importance of all this than just to bring them and let them see it firsthand. But I just, I love it. And so on the note of, you know, bringing my girls there and, and raising babies, can you share a little bit about how that journey's been?

Katie Collins: How old are your little littles or little, I'm trying to remember.

Katie Collins: Yeah, I

Laura Bruner: have two. Two, that's what I thought. And then, how's that journey been for you in raising babies and, you know, launching this business, running this business and making the difference in the ways that you are?

Katie Collins: Man. You know, when we, when we started Epic, it really felt like there was no possible way for us to have children because of how much we worked.

Katie Collins: And it was just endless. It was so stressful. And there was, it was like, when I reflect on it, I'm like, that was super unhealthy. I'm, I don't do never want to go back to that place. And so after we sold Epic, we had our first kid Scout, she's six now. And she's about to be [00:33:00] seven, she'll be seven in a month and she's sort of never known any different than the way that our lives are now.

Katie Collins: And then we have a two year old, her name is Wren and she's amazing. But you know, I really feel like my job as. A mother and my job with within force of nature and my job even with on our ranch is to educate others to make better choices for themselves and their families and to help our land improve.

Katie Collins: So thankfully, like the choices. That people have to make for themselves and for their families are ultimately better for animals and land upon which we depend, which is so great, you know, working as this educator, in a sense, it's great because I feel like I feel like I'm it's. It's sort of like homeschooling.

Katie Collins: I feel like it's just such a big part of our lives, like the business is a [00:34:00] big part of our lives, and the ranch is a huge part of our lives, that the girls just kind of are intermixed within it. And I don't, we, we, 100 percent don't run force of nature like we did epic at epic, everybody was young and no one had Children.

Katie Collins: And then with force of nature, everybody has like all of our employees pretty much have Children. And so just like our our values and our boundaries have changed so dramatically. And when we started Force of Nature, I intentionally sort of set boundaries on what type of role I really wanted to be in and what type of role I was willing to have.

Katie Collins: So we intentionally put our former CFO of Epic, you said about, you said this in the bio, as our CEO of Force of Nature. And so he is amazing and he's running the company like a freaking champ. And he's built an incredible team that lives working on and for the brand every day. And as much as I do too.

Katie Collins: I've set much stronger boundaries around how [00:35:00] much time I'm really willing to spend in front of a computer and away from my girls. It's just so hard living in a modern world while also having, you know, revelations that the modern world isn't good for my health or for my family dynamics. It's, it's crazy to think about, like, running a business requires us to do these things that we also recognize to be unhealthy.

Katie Collins: When I say running a business, I'm really talking about force of nature, but with, but with the ranch itself, I don't feel like anything I'm doing is unhealthy. I feel like maybe dragging my girls around in our, you know, little mule and having them plant trees and stuff with me. Sometimes I'm like, is this child abuse?

Katie Collins: But I feel like it's just quite a wonderful way of living. So, yeah, it's, it's, yeah, it's good for them. And. So I think it's really just like a challenge trying to navigate, like, how much [00:36:00]time do I spend on Forced Nature? How much time do I allow myself to really spin on the ranch doing the things that are so important for us to do?

Katie Collins: You know, it's like, I feel like a lot of times people. Like right now, it's such a critical time to seed and to plant trees, and I'll get called into a meeting and I'm like, guys, I got to get these seeds in the ground. Like if it, if it freezes on Wednesday night. Prioritizing. Yeah. And so like, yes, the meeting feels important and very like timely, but like literally these seeds can't not be in the ground.

Katie Collins: So I can't do it. So yeah, it's that prioritizing thing that's constant pull. Yeah.

Laura Bruner: Yeah. Well, I love that. And then I love that you've been able to, I mean, there's ripple effects here. You're raising babies, you're teaching them as you do. And then you're bringing, you know, people are, you're providing these meats and in a way that also comes with education, just the packaging alone.

Laura Bruner: Like it's, it's very much an entire, I can see that anyone who had purchased this would be making shifts in their own home and then [00:37:00] teaching their own kids and making shifts in that way. And then we see the ripple effects of the education they're giving their kids will then ripple into their families.

Laura Bruner: And the more we care, the more we need to make these demands, you know, I had people back when epic. I went under general mills that were kind of like, huh, you know, I heard some huffing and puffing, but ultimately it's. Huge that a company that big would pick up on something like this. That means that there is enough demand for it, and it's just it, it matters and not the good thing.

Laura Bruner: And it's awesome.

Katie Collins: Yeah, I know. And I mean, if Epic is whatever size,

Laura Bruner: like super tiny compared to a huge corporation like that, like

Katie Collins: they're, if they're, if they're learning and willing to make changes on other products, which is, you know, something that they've been working on with some of their cereals

Laura Bruner: and.

Laura Bruner: You

Katie Collins: know, some of their wheat, their organic wheat worms, that is such a huge. Huge impact compared to what we've been able to do at Epic. Yeah. And so it's really about like, you know, getting the ship, I don't know what the analogy is, but you [00:38:00] know, like turning the ship or whatever,

Laura Bruner: turning it in the right direction, which is the direction they really want to go.

Katie Collins: And it's the direction that consumers want them to go in. Yeah, I love it.

Laura Bruner: Beautiful. And well then, just to round out the chat about kids, and I don't know if you have anything you want to share on this. We talked a lot about like our health as grown ups and humans in general, but when we think about our kids and their first foods, I know a lot of people are talking about like avocado or mashed potato or whatever, but what have you seen as far as impact of serving your kids these meats?

Laura Bruner: Regenerative meat from a young age. Can you share anything to that? Because I know we have a lot of listeners with little ones who, and my girls are about the same age as yours. So my oldest turned six in June and my littlest will turn two on January 1st. So we're in a very similar situation. But what can you chat about in regards to these meats and feeding your

Katie Collins: kids?

Katie Collins: Man, I don't, I don't feel like it's even a conversation about feeding your kids regeneratively. I feel like it's about feeding your family [00:39:00] regeneratively. I feel like what happens a lot of time in people's homes and kitchens is the mom will buy organic for their children sometimes, and then maybe conventional for themselves.

Katie Collins: And I think it sounds like a really confusing message to our children. Like your body needs nourishment. Mine doesn't. Your body only sometimes needs nourishment because I give you organic sometimes or I give you like the better for you option sometimes and then sometimes I let you do this other thing.

Katie Collins: It's just like super confusing and I feel like there's like a, I feel like families need to establish what their values are and I think values should always be established around food. Like what does our family believe about food and everyone needs to establish what those values are in order to maintain them for their entire lives.

Katie Collins: So like. Feeding my kids regenerative meat right now doesn't really matter if they don't understand why they're consuming it because they'll, they'll [00:40:00] eat it because that's what I serve until they decide that they want to go eat something else, but not my kids because, you know, my, my scout is six and she is just so ridiculous.

Katie Collins: Like she literally, she, she, she's been raised to have such strong values around food that like there is. No misunderstanding as to what she knows that her body will benefit from versus what her body will suffer from. So she, like we talk about food as fuel and how to like build strong bodies and strong minds and what these other foods would do to your body in terms of like chronic diseases or just the way that your tummy feels.

Katie Collins: I mean, I'll never forget one time my husband brought her to a birthday party and wasn't He, she asked, can I have this? And he was like, I'm going to let this be a lesson. And he was like, well, what do you think? And she was like, [00:41:00] well, I really want to try it. And he was like, okay. And so on the way home, she ended up throwing up in the car the entire way home.

Katie Collins: And she, she got home and was like, I am, I will never eat any of that stuff ever again. But she, you know, like it was this, I don't know. So anyway, you know, I think. I think feeding children regenerative meats is so critical because as I was saying earlier, everybody wants healthy children. If you're feeding your children sick animals or unhealthy animals, which is what the feedlot system is, then you're going to have sick children.

Katie Collins: And not only like short term sick, but you're setting them up for a lifelong pathway of chronic disease and illness. And so, you know, feeding your children and your family regeneratively raised meats, which are healthy animals that have been consuming grasses on [00:42:00] healthy soil, nutrient rich soil, that's what you're going to get within your own body.

Katie Collins: And so it just feels. So critical for like an entire life long stunt of health. So for for us, it's like a no exceptions like we have a sort of a no exceptions mindset in our house. You know, like, Oh, just a little bit of chemicals. No, you know, like, Oh, is it okay if I just have a, I try to like frame it in terms of do you want a little bit of pesticides or, you know, like we talk about like what's on that thing that you don't see that's actually there and like a little bit of poison is has a big impact on your body.

Katie Collins: You probably think I'm a crazy mom.

Laura Bruner: Oh, I don't at all. But I, I'm just like a proponent of like Meet yourself where you are now, and a little change is a good change, and then we can gradually build, and I'm the same way, our house is pretty non negotiable, but I'm a little bit more lax out of the home, and I'm not gonna bring it [00:43:00] in, and then similarly, we've, we've let our older child now, like, we've let Evie make the decisions, and it's fun to watch, like, you know, yesterday was Halloween, and she, we went trick or treating with friends, and it's, it was so fun for her, like, she had so much fun, it was so fun watching her, but she's more into dressing up, And then we get home, and we turn on Harry Potter, and we eat a sourdough pumpkin pie, and she gives her candy away at the door by her own choosing, you know?

Laura Bruner: And she knows, like, she already knows that food dye and sugar, like, they don't make her feel well. We just, pretty, like, hard no on food dyes and certain chemicals, and she, she gets it. And I think that's the big takeaway here. It's just... Wherever you are now and you're listening, it's like just a little bit of education goes a long way instead of just making these like hard and fast rules, it's teaching and we can teach by having our kids in the kitchen and we can teach by answering their questions and sometimes we can teach by letting them have the thing and then they feel like crap and have the lesson as long as we then explain like, ha ha, you got what you deserve.

Laura Bruner: It's like, yeah. Let's talk about why you feel that way, you know, it's just a matter of starting doing whatever meeting yourself where you are, but but still like [00:44:00] we can always do better, you know, it's like there's always room to do better. And like you said, the regeneration never ends. And so similarly, like our journey as parents and

Katie Collins: humans to nourish ourselves

Laura Bruner: better, you know, within financial.

Laura Bruner: Where, where, you know, where we can give in our resources and the money that we have, but I'll tell you

Katie Collins: what, like even go to farmer's market and,

Laura Bruner: and I think people would be surprised. I think we've been taught something and this is a whole like tinfoil hat situation, but we've been told time and time again that like, yeah, the fast foods cheaper, you know, it's easy.

Laura Bruner: It's in the, and for those reasons,

Katie Collins: it's better, but that's not even right.

Laura Bruner: It's not necessarily cheaper, it just, it's, it's all a matter of perspective and prioritizing and yes, it takes a little bit more effort perhaps to seek out the farmer, the CSA, or walk to farmer's market, but you'd be surprised at actually how you can save money if you're doing things with a lot of intention and then also save money down the [00:45:00] road on health expenses and you know, it's, it's, it's a bigger picture thing and so, um, I just, I say that like with love and with an understanding that not everyone can re like, source all the things and do all the things at once, and life is hard sometimes.

Laura Bruner: And, and I, I get that and I see you, but it's like little baby steps, you know? You don't have to be on one side of the spectrum necessarily, but it's like just asking questions and, and thinking critically and seeing like, where could I make a little, a little step here that would make a big

Katie Collins: difference down the road.

Katie Collins: Yeah. I mean, if, I think if people looked at things I don't know, as a price per ounce. Like our regeneratively raised meats are less per ounce than a bag of Ruffles potato chips. And so it's really like actually looking at how much of my, how many, how much nutrients and value is really in this? Like what's the impact on my body?

Katie Collins: What's the impact on the land for this product I'm buying versus this other one? And you'll see that one is degrading [00:46:00] land and one is degrading your health while the other one is actually cheaper per ounce. And it is regenerating the land and regenerating your health. And so it's, it's just a mindset shift.

Laura Bruner: A hundred percent. And I had a friend in college who was like, man, I eat a bag of potato chips and I'm, I finish it, I'm hungrier. And it's like, with those hyperpalatable foods, you're spending money on it, you're spending resources, if we're going like, again, the ripple effect. And it's not even nourishing you.

Laura Bruner: It's not filling that, what it, sure, it's tasty, and not to me necessarily, but it's not doing any good anywhere.

Katie Collins: Where the meat, if you buy like a whole

Laura Bruner: pound of regenerative... Beef, it's gonna, yes, be more expensive than, like, a Costco sized thing, perhaps, of, like, crappy chips, but it's, it's not, you get what you pay for, you know?

Laura Bruner: Yeah. So you get a little bit of beef, you make it go a long way with maybe some, I don't know if you guys do legumes at all, but like, well, you'll get organic dried legumes and I like soak and sprout them and then you make a chili and all of a sudden this pound of beef has gone a really [00:47:00] long way and it's nourishing everybody and it's satiating everybody and you throw some sour, like home baked sourdough and you slap some butter on there and all of a sudden, like, we're good.

Laura Bruner: We got protein, we've got fat, we've got carbohydrate and we're nourished and we're now we're good till morning. We do it all over again versus like, Those snacky stuff all day long, it adds up and it's just, it's, yeah, so I'll get off my soapbox and people won't know about this. I love it. Well, okay, if you were to leave everyone with some final thoughts.

Laura Bruner: It could really be anything like go enjoy your weekend, but any thoughts, like rounding out force of nature, why this matters. And then also before we leave with your final word that was done, because I prefer your beautiful voice to be the wrap here. We do now have a discount code for our listeners. We have a link that we'll share and you can save on force of nature meets with code modern mamas at checkout.

Laura Bruner: And I can speak from experience and you all know that I don't fluff this stuff. I only share things that I absolutely love.

Katie Collins: We have loved every

Laura Bruner: single thing we've [00:48:00] opened and cooked and eaten from the like the cheddar jalapeno, you know, sausages we had that was camping and the ancestral blends like we talked about.

Laura Bruner: I love the ground chicken. I'm really in a season. I'm trying to get a lot of good protein in and I love it. The ground chicken is like in the bison. It's all very high in protein, just really nourishing and super, super delicious. So

Katie Collins: there's that. And then do you have any final thoughts you want to share?

Katie Collins: You know, I would love, if anybody was actually interested in the things that we've talked about today, we host a conference every year, it's called What Good Shall I Do? It's in April, it's April 19th and 20th, 2024. And we have an incredible lineup of speakers we're talking about, we have a full keynote and panel on nutrition.

Katie Collins: There's an entire segment, half of a half of a day revolves around regenerative agriculture. And then we have workshops, which are really awesome, like basic stuff, you know, how to build a regenerative [00:49:00] garden, how to build composting systems. We have some live cooking demonstrations. It's just going to be incredible.

Katie Collins: It's like a life changing event every year, every year I leave and I'm like, my life is different now. And the people that come are just so wonderful. It's a beautiful community of people. And you'll leave feeling very hopeful about the future of the world and about, and having strong connections with the people that are there.

Katie Collins: It's just really wonderful. So we'd love to have anybody that's interested. I'm going to go ahead and just

Laura Bruner: drop this into the universe that maybe we'll have a podcast meetup. Jess and I can come and then we always, we've been wanting to do something and bring, bring people together. So just dropping that.

Laura Bruner: How, where is it? Did you say?

Katie Collins: It's at our ranch. It's in Fredericksburg.

Laura Bruner: How far are you from San Antonio or Austin?

Katie Collins: We are about an hour and ten from the San Antonio airport and thirty from the Austin airport. Oh, sweet. That's,

Laura Bruner: that's great because I know the state is so big. So sometimes I'm like, I can't just go to Texas and assume to see everything.

Laura Bruner: Okay, noted. [00:50:00] For sure. Well, I'm dropping down the universe. We will report back, but I

Katie Collins: would love to be there. That sounds so great. That would be awesome. We'd love to have you. Right on. Okay, well, thank

Laura Bruner: you so much for your time. Enjoy your evening. And I look forward to chatting again soon. Awesome. Thanks for having me.

Laura Bruner: Thank you. Take care. Thanks everyone. Bye.

Katie Collins: Thanks for listening to us. See you next time. Thanks for listening to our podcast. See you next time. Bye.[00:51:00]