We only recommend products and services we use ourselves and think would enrich the lives of the people we care about. Everyone on this page clears that bar. Some of them have nothing to do with farming, and that is the point.

We spend our working lives on targeted plant nutrition — pull a sample, find out what the ground is honestly short of, and feed it exactly that instead of a blanket rate across the whole ranch. It would be a strange thing to put that much care into dirt and none of it into ourselves. What you put in your body and how you look after it matters more than how you look after the ground you farm and the crop you grow. If we don’t take care of ourselves, we can’t adequately take care of and provide for the people who count on us.

And people learn from what you do, not from what you say. Good nutrition, moving your body, eating clean — that is the same job we do for the dirt, done for the people we go home to.

Where we stand

Nobody lands on this page because they asked to. They are here because we use them, and because we would want them for the people we love.

Where we have a personal connection to somebody listed, it is written on their card, in plain words.

None of this is medical advice, and we are not doctors. Talk to yours before you start or stop anything — especially if you take prescription medication.

Michelle Mello

Shaklee — nutrition and supplements

Shaklee has been making nutrition products since 1956, which is a good deal longer than most of what gets sold as a breakthrough has been around. Michelle is a Shaklee ambassador and she works the daily end of it — what you take every morning, how you eat around it, and staying strong and clear-headed for the long run instead of chasing a six-week result.

Start with a conversation. She asks what you are already doing before she brings up a product, and she will tell you straight if she thinks you don’t need one.

Michelle is my wife. We both take the products every day — that is why she is the first name on this page.

Visit Michelle’s page

Fugazzis

Bistro & steakhouse — Hanford

A steakhouse on 7th Street that cooks the way this whole page is about: real food, cooked properly, out of things that change with the season. Albert Armenta runs the room and Chef Fernando runs the kitchen, and the specials move week to week instead of sitting on a laminated menu all year.

The part we lean on hardest is the family-style takeout. There are weeks where the choice after a ball game or a school night is a drive-through window or nothing, and they built the answer to that — a proper meal for the whole table, ready to pick up. Eating clean should not have to stop because the calendar got busy.

Warm room, and people who are glad you came in. They also put on reservation-only evenings worth clearing a night for.

Coming up Wine Dinner with Austin Hope — Thursday, October 8 at 6:00pm. Four courses from Chef Fernando, each paired with a Hope Family Wines pour, finishing on caramelized autumn pumpkin. $150 a person, reservations only, limited seating. Call (559) 587-4568.

No connection here beyond a standing table. We eat there, we order from there on the busy nights, and we send people there.

See the menu

Know somebody who belongs on this page? The bar is that we use them ourselves, so tell us who they are and what they did for you. Get in touch.