We're Zach and Natasha, the farm managers at Gamble Creek Farms. Both of us came to farming through personal health struggles, watching loved ones decline, and seeing the impact that a lack of access to nutritious food can have on our local community. When we started paying attention to food and where it comes from, everything changed. We felt better, thought clearer, and realized most people have no idea what's actually happening to their food.

Here's what we see: conventional farming treats soil like dirt instead of a living ecosystem. Chemicals like glyphosate, abundantly used by most commercial farmers, destroy the soil's ability to hold nutrients. The soil is the gut of the earth, and when it can't absorb nutrients, the plants can't either. Then we eat those plants, and our bodies struggle the same way. Yet so few people are aware of and doing anything to change the processes that are causing so many health issues for people.

That "healthy" orange from a conventional farm? It could be missing vital nutrients and spike your blood sugar almost like soda. And those synthetic fertilizers, unable to be fully absorbed by plants, leach into Florida's watersheds and feed red tide in the Gulf. The environmental cost is as real as the health cost.

So we farm differently. We build forest-like systems, make our own fertilizers from farm waste, let nature guide us instead of fighting it. No chemicals that require protective gear; if we can't apply it safely with bare hands, it doesn't go on our food.

People deserve to know where their food comes from. Small farms like ours need support to keep doing this work, but the hope we see growing here (literally) reminds us every day that a better way is possible.