102 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF: MIKE JAMES Though he was a standout student at MIT and a tech entrepreneur focused on robotics, AI and the Internet of Things, you don’t have to tell Twisted Fields owner Daniel Theobald to go outside and touch grass. A passionate fan of regenerative farming, his love of growing things started while exploring his grandmother’s bountiful garden in Los Altos as a child. It carried through to his days living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Daniel kept bees and raised chickens in what he describes as a tiny “postage-stamp” of a yard. Though he grew up in San Jose, Daniel’s career kept him based on the East Coast for years—but he never stopped looking for opportunities to return to California. On a trip to the Golden State, he came across this beautiful piece of farmland bisected by tree-lined seasonal creeks. Sure, the soil was trampled and depleted from over-grazing, and the fields were littered with all kinds of old junk—including a mattress and a mysterious pile of garage doors— but he could see its potential. “It’s just magical. I knew that if I didn’t buy it, I’d always regret it,” he recalls. Daniel has spent the past nine years using his Coastside farm, complete with a farmhouse dating back to the original Rancho San Gregorio land grant, to test his theories and to experience first-hand the challenges facing small-scale farms that shun industrial farming techniques. The problem, he says, is that while small-scale farms are great for their comPHOTOGRAPHY OF KATIE BRADFORD AND DANIEL THEOBALD COURTESY OF: TWISTED FIELDS ABOVE: Daniel Theobald, the owner of Twisted Fields in San Gregorio; Rotate8 CEO Katie Bradford with the farming rover. Field Studıes
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