Every HOA's worst nightmare?

Well, it finally happened. Facebook kicked me out.

No warning. No explanation. No appeal process. One minute I was sharing photos of trees and the geodesic dome, the next I was staring at a message saying my account had been “disabled.”

Now, I’m not exactly a social media junkie. I don’t scroll for fun or live for likes. But it’s how I’ve kept in touch with friends and family for years, and where the Entrepreneurs Gone Wild community first came to life. Losing access stung.

The good news? We’re not stopping. We’re going to rebuild that community on Skool, where entrepreneurs can connect and share stories without worrying about an algorithm pulling the plug. (More on that soon.)

Honestly, I’m handling it the only way I know how: like a Marine’s daughter. The Anderson family motto is Stand Sure, and that’s exactly what we do.

Which brings me to this week’s feature. Because if anyone knows how to adapt, overcome, and rebuild after a major setback, it’s Travis Holzem, a Marine veteran turned food-forest designer who’s literally transforming lawns into food security systems.

He’s proof that when life deletes your account, you plant something better.

This Marine Corps Veteran Is Turning Lawns Into Food Forests

It started with a dead lawn.

Not his. Someone else’s. A suburban postage stamp of scorched grass and decorative bushes that looked like they’d been designed by a HOA committee with too much time and too little imagination. Travis Holzem stared at it and thought, this could feed a neighborhood.

That thought became an obsession. Then a movement.

But rewind a few decades first. Before Travis was growing orchards where sod once suffocated, he was a U.S. Marine. The kind who doesn’t quit when things go sideways. Later, a single dad raising three boys on his own after a divorce. Then, a web developer grinding through the early internet era, building sites long before “click funnels” were a thing. He worked late nights, paid bills, and kept food on the table. Always adapting. Always moving forward.

The kind of man who can go from desert duty to diaper duty to domain names without blinking.

The Algorithm That Ate His Business

So, it’s no surprise that when his Facebook business account also vanished overnight with no warning, no appeal, no “we’ll get back to you”...Travis didn’t crumble. He put his shoulders back and his chin up, then went outside.

For most people, that kind of digital gut-punch would end a business. Years of followers, gone. Ads, gone. Leads, gone. But for a guy whose motto has always been Semper Fi, “always faithful,” it just meant: find another way.

Because the systems that were supposed to “connect us” had just disconnected him from everything he built. And, let’s be honest, that’s not just Travis’s story. It’s the new occupational hazard of the modern entrepreneur called algorithm roulette.

So, he did what Marines and farmers both do: adapt to terrain.

The Mission: Grow Food, Not Followers

Today, Travis leads Food Forest Design Network, a nationwide collaboration of designers and installers who transform ordinary yards, schools, churches, prisons, and even government campuses into regenerative food systems. Think permaculture that doesn’t just look pretty; it feeds people.

“Everyone keeps asking who’s going to maintain all these food forests,” Travis said. “Nature will. That’s the point.”

He’s done dozens of installations across Minnesota already, each one a layered ecosystem with fruit trees, shrubs, vines, herbs, and tubers all designed to regenerate soil, attract pollinators, and feed entire communities. The idea is simple: grow once, harvest for life.

It’s not a garden. It’s an edible forest that runs itself.

And it’s catching on fast.

Why Food Forests Matter (and Why He’s Furious About It)

We live in a country where cities spend millions on landscaping that literally feeds no one. Empty lawns around libraries, police stations, and churches are all perfectly manicured and completely useless. Meanwhile, kids in those same cities eat dinner from gas stations.

Travis doesn’t say this with rage in his voice. It’s more like exasperation, the kind that comes from seeing the obvious ignored. “We could solve food insecurity just by rethinking what we plant,” he says. “Full bellies don’t commit crimes.”

He’s right. Food deserts, both urban and rural, are killing people quietly. And the fix doesn’t require legislation or Silicon Valley venture capital. It just requires will.

The Accidental Revolutionary

Ask him how he got into all this, and he’ll tell you about his mom’s backyard garden. About a pack of cantaloupe seeds he planted as a kid, just to see what would happen. About the years he spent building a prototype of an off-grid greenhouse with solar panels, rainwater catchment, aquaponics, and chickens.

He’ll also tell you about Food Forest Abundance, the company he co-founded years ago with Jim Gale that helped ignite a national conversation about edible landscaping. That project taught him the power and the pain of trying to scale a movement when Big Tech controls your reach.

So, now he’s scaling differently. The Food Forest Design Network connects designers and installation teams across climates and states, with Travis coordinating strategy and support from his home base in Apple Valley, Minnesota.

He’s creating not just food forests but forest-makers.

From Scarcity to Sufficiency

Travis has seen what scarcity does to people. He’s seen it in war zones, in single-parent homes, and now in suburban cul-de-sacs. And he’s building a world where food security is as normal as a mailbox.

The work isn’t easy. He wears every hat: designer, videographer, marketer, content creator. His YouTube channel now holds hundreds of videos showing installs, teaching soil techniques, and letting people see what’s possible on their own land.

He laughs when people ask how he keeps going. “It’s the Marine in me,” he says. “You adapt, you overcome. Always.”

He’s proof that a single person can turn frustration into food, setbacks into soil, and ordinary land into abundance.

So maybe, when the next social media platform yanks your account for no reason, you’ll remember there’s life after algorithms. It’s called the real world.

And maybe it’s time we all got back to it.

Connect with Travis

See how Travis and his team are turning lawns into living, edible ecosystems at foodforestdesignnetwork.com.

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