(gentle music) - When we moved here to a farm community and I was at the market like, "Where's the local eggs?"

"Ah, there ain't any."

"Huh, how about the local milk?

Can we get that?"

"No, don't get that either."

"Meat?"

"Nope."

Got more damn cows here than people.

You gotta get your, where do you get the beef from?

(gentle music) I don't have an official title.

My name is Steven R. Doyle.

I'm a retired US Coast Guard and bought this farm and moved the whole family here in 2007.

So we started selling things like eggs, raw milk, chickens, and getting in trouble with each step.

"You can't sell that.

You can't do that.

You gotta have a kitchen.

You gotta be certified by the state."

On and on and on.

Cease and desist orders.

In 2015, we ended up in the Senate chambers with probably about 40 or 50 people.

Standing room only.

Everybody there was there for the Food Freedom Act.

There were farmers, there were mothers, there were clergymen, there were doctors.

The room was packed.

And at the end of it, the five senators voted and they voted "aye" and it was a done deal.

It's a magic moment.

- If you imagine food making its way down a road from the farm to the plate, this was a road that was full of potholes.

The Wyoming Food Freedom Act has decreased regulations, which has directly opened opportunities, opened access.

Has allowed farmers to innovate, to invest more into their own processes and less into jumping through hoops and regulatory tape.

- Has everybody jumped on board?

Nope, not by a long shot.

And part of the problem is the economics of it.

We're going toe to toe with Walmart and Kroger.

We can compete three areas, right?

Price, convenience, and quality.

Kick their ass in quality.

We can, we own it.

The price, we won't be able to, not for years.

Convenience, our little stores are really helping.

(bright music) - My name is Alma Law.

I've lived in Riverton for 14 years or so.

Well, I'm now the president of the board Fremont Local Foods, and we run the Fremont Local Market here on Main Street in Riverton.

One of the values of this market is we are here from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM Tuesday through Saturday, 10 to 2 on Sunday.

And so if your problem with the farmer's market was, "I don't know where I am on Wednesdays.

And anytime I have a moment, it's not a habit, so I don't even think about it."

Now it can just be on your way home any day of the week.

(bright music) - I'm Anna Smedts.

I'm excited to be part of starting Meadowlark Market, which focuses on providing local food in a brick and mortar farmer's market setting in Lander.

So we think that the Meadowlark Market will have significant concrete benefits to producers in gaining access to a consumer market.

Challenges of food storage, food aggregation, food distribution, we hope that we're making it much more efficient for farmers to get their product from the farm into the hands of the consumer in those ways.

- The stores provide a service to the farmers for them to leverage their time much better.

Drop off chicken, some beef, and then go back to go back to the farm and work.

- We also have just opened access by being open five or six days a week.

- One of my favorite things about the market is seeing them flex their spending and their habits around it.

Before I went to Smedts' I wanted to see if you had milk and we have milk and they're good with that.

We have eggs, they're good with that.

But some people are really basing their diet around what they can find here.

- I can come here to Lander or to Riverton and buy everything I need for the week.

- The Meadowlark and the Fremont Local Market probably has increased our sales here and our revenue 25%.

My name's Morgan Doyle.

I'm the owner of Red Roof Meat Company.

So our beef are raised on pasture.

They're born and raised here on the farm.

They never leave.

We do rotational grazing.

So every day during the growing season, they're moved to fresh pasture.

Our chickens are on pasture and they're moved every day as well.

None of our livestock receive any antibiotics, vaccinations, hormones, and there's no herbicides or anything used on our pastures as well.

When the Fremont Local Market opened, we really had to plus up numbers.

We doubled our herd sizes, tripled, quadruple our lamb size.

And quite frankly, we're still not there.

We're sold out a beef and we're pretty much sold out of lamb.

The rest of the chicken for the year is pretty much entirely spoken for.

(bright music) - Every producer that's been involved in the market has increased sales.

- I'm Jan Francisco, and my husband and I, Ben, we run Country Meadows Dairy here in Lander, Wyoming.

Well, we had the one cow and we loved it, so we bred her and got a second cow.

Then Meadowlark was like selling so much that we were like, "Well, we'd be stupid not to buy another cow."

And so now we have three and we're making 15 half gallons a day.

It's increased our sales fourfold.

So if you are new to raw milk, there is a lot of negative education out there about it.

Don't only look at that because the health benefits are incredible.

The non-pasteurized milk has all of the good bacteria and the good probiotic action that your stomach needs.

I actually was lactose intolerant my whole life.

I would always get a stomachache every morning after I ate my cereal and we just dealt with it, and then we bought a cow.

And so I tried it, and about a week into it, I was like, "I am not sick.

I am fine eating this."

And it was like my gut had repopulated with all of these good healthy probiotic things.

I think the warnings especially would be important for big dairy with thousands of cows, miles of tubing.

But our operation is so small and everything is clean.

They live in the pasture.

They don't live in a feedlot.

It's like an apple and an orange.

So you can't really compare them.

We have not had any instances of illness in four years of doing this.

When people are just starting out with local foods, I think they're kind of sticker shocked.

But then once they see the health benefits, it's worth it.

It's way cheaper than copays, I would say, to buy good food than to just poison ourselves and then have to go to the doctor about it.

(gentle music) - The benefits of local food that we see are environmental, health, nutrition, boosting of the local economy, the money that's spent here stays here, generally.

The best thing you can do for your health, for the economy, for the environment is to shake your farmer's hand.

- Pay your farmer or pay your doctor.

This is a regenerative farm.

And that regenerative to most people think soil, and soil is a good start.

I mean, soil is the start, but I got a daughter who stayed here to work on the farm.

How often is that happening?

How do you get all this wrapped up?

You gonna talk about health, you gonna talk about community, you gonna talk about economics, you wanna talk about all these different things.

It's all tied up, it's all connected.

The people that I've met, engaged in the local food movement are the kind of people I wanna hang around with.

They're interesting, they're optimistic, hugely optimistic.

That in itself is magic, isn't it?

So the people in our store connect.

They know the cashiers, they know each other, you know?

And so there's a lot of time where people aren't shopping, they're in there talking.

That's a real healthy, healthy thing.

And when they get to meet their producers, "Oh, I've been buying your meat.

It's wonderful to meet you now."

"Hey, can I come visit your farm?

Would that be all right?

I'd really like to see your..." Yeah, connection.

Connection to the soil, to the grass, to the cow, to the farmer, to the farm, to the community.

It's all good stuff.

I think that's a big part of it.

"Oh, I'm here for the corn on the cob."

You're in it for something bigger than that, but appreciate you buying corn on the cob and get some radishes on the way out too, (chuckles) if you could please."

(gentle music) (gentle music fades)