Steward Sues Its Largest Borrower: StarWalker's $9.79M in Loans Are in Default and Steward Wants a Receiver

Update, October 20, 2026: receiver denied, preliminary injunction granted

The Siskiyou County Superior Court docket for case 26CV12995, Mad Capital Perennial Fund II, LLC v. StarWalker Organic Farms Inc., viewed October 20, 2026, records an order filed by the clerk on October 15, 2026 denying the motion to appoint a receiver and granting the motion for a preliminary injunction. The docket entry is the only record of the ruling AltStreet holds. The order itself has not been obtained, so what the injunction restrains, whether it reaches the sale or movement of the livestock, crops and equipment pledged to Mad Capital, and any conditions attached to it are not yet known.

What the entry settles is that no receiver takes over the farm entity on Mad Capital's motion, the outcome Kristina Walker's September 11 declaration argued for. What it leaves open is the injunction's reach over the collateral that supplies the two Steward borrowers, StarWalker Meats and Starharvest, and whether the buy-out of the Mad Capital loan that the declaration described has closed. Steward's own case, 26CV15549, is unchanged on the docket, with nothing scheduled before its March 11, 2027 case management conference; Steward's request for a receiver in that case is separate and has not been heard. AltStreet is seeking a copy of the order and will report its terms when it has read them.

Update, October 7, 2026: receiver motion continued to October 15

The Siskiyou County Superior Court docket for case 26CV12995, Mad Capital Perennial Fund II, LLC v. StarWalker Organic Farms Inc., viewed October 7, 2026, no longer shows the October 1 setting for the motion to appoint a receiver. The next event is listed as a motion hearing on continuance at 9:30 a.m. on October 15, 2026 in Courtroom 2. The case management conference remains February 11, 2027, and the docket records no ruling on the receiver.

The question of a receiver over the farm's herd and equipment, the raw material for the two Steward borrowers, therefore stays open at least two more weeks. Steward's own case, 26CV15549, is unchanged, with nothing scheduled before its March 11, 2027 case management conference. AltStreet has not obtained the minute order or the reason for the continuance and will report the outcome of the October 15 hearing when the docket shows it.

Update, October 2, 2026: the holding company reports a $500,000 equity sale

Steward Holdings (US), Inc., the platform's parent, filed a Form D on October 1, 2026 reporting $500,000 of equity sold to a single investor, with a first sale dated June 5, 2026. The notice does not refer to StarWalker or to the loan book. AltStreet's report on that filing, and on the seven notices the holding company has filed since 2022, is here: https://altstreet.investments/news/steward-holdings-new-form-d-october-2026-starwalker-default-2026-10-01

Update, September 24, 2026: receiver motion set for October 1

The Siskiyou County Superior Court docket for case 26CV12995, Mad Capital Perennial Fund II, LLC v. StarWalker Organic Farms Inc., shows the order to show cause why a receiver should not be appointed on calendar at 9:30 a.m. on September 24, 2026 before Judge Hannon in Courtroom 2. The docket records no ruling from that hearing.

The next event on the docket is October 1, 2026 at 9:30 a.m. in Courtroom 2, listed as a case management conference together with the motion to appoint a receiver. A further case management conference is set for February 11, 2027. With the motion set a week out, the question of a receiver over the farm's herd and equipment stays open at least until then.

Steward's own case against the three borrower entities and the Walkers, 26CV15549, is unchanged: nothing is scheduled before its case management conference on March 11, 2027. AltStreet has not obtained the minute order from today's hearing and will report the outcome of the receiver motion when the docket shows it (the October 1 setting was later continued to October 15; see the update above).

Steward, the regenerative-agriculture lending platform that had reported zero defaults across more than $44 million of loans since 2021, has sued its largest borrower. Steward Lending, LLC filed a breach of contract complaint on September 9, 2026 in Siskiyou County Superior Court (case 26CV15549) against Starwalker Meats, LLC, Starharvest Co., LLC, SWOF, LLC and owner-operators Jason and Kristina Walker, the companies and people behind StarWalker Organic Farms of Fort Jones, California. In a lender update dated September 11 and forwarded to AltStreet by a loan participant, Steward Lending president Ryan Anderson told lenders that both StarWalker loans, $9.79 million funded in May and June 2025, are in default, and that the suit seeks foreclosure on Steward's collateral and the appointment of a receiver.

What the lender update says

According to the note, Steward originated two loans in May and June 2025: one to buy a USDA-inspected processing facility in Yreka, California that the Walkers had already been renting for more than six months, and one to retire high-interest loans and fund the purchase of animals from the farm entity for processing and sale. The financials at underwriting showed operations at or near break-even, and purchase agreements with large grocery chains 'showed great promise.' Both loans performed from origination through March 2026, with payments often delayed but inside each loan's ten-day grace period; in January 2026 Kristina Walker reported direct-to-consumer sales up tenfold in six months.

From April 2026, when year-end financials and tax returns were due to Steward, 'loan performance changed significantly.' April payments the Walkers said were delayed never arrived. In May the Walkers attributed the shortfall to delayed receivables from wholesale customers, in a statement Steward relayed to lenders at the time. Since then, the note says, 'only one payment has been made on each loan over the last 5 months, putting both in default,' the Walkers became unresponsive and provided neither annual financials nor supporting documents, and the limited preliminary information received shows challenges that 'run far deeper and are much more complicated than aging accounts receivable.' Two complaints by other parties have been filed against StarWalker entities and the Walkers; one of them, by the lender Mad Capital, is described below.

• —Docket (Siskiyou County Superior Court case portal, viewed September 16): Steward Lending, LLC v. Starwalker Meats, LLC et al., complaint filed September 9, 2026, case type contract: breach of contract/warranty; defendants Starwalker Meats, LLC, Starharvest Co., LLC, SWOF, LLC, Jason Walker and Kristina Walker; next event a case management conference on March 11, 2027. Per Steward's note, the remedies sought include foreclosure on collateral and a receiver who would take over management immediately if appointed.
• —Steward's stated recovery view: a Regenerative Organic Certified brand with active sales channels and integrated processing is worth more operating than as property and equipment, so it prefers a receiver and new management over liquidation.
• —Working-capital participants: primary collateral is the inventory of StarHarvest Co., LLC and StarWalker Meats, LLC, which the note calls perishable and movable, making a receiver 'particularly important.'

The two loans and who holds them

Per Steward's project pages, the processing-facility loan of $7,168,000 (funded May 27, 2025; 9.25% borrower rate, 8.75% net to lenders; 36 months, interest-only) was made to SWOF, LLC and is secured by a first mortgage on five SWOF properties and a UCC-1 on all SWOF business assets including the facility's equipment. The working-capital loan of $2,620,000 (funded June 20, 2025; 11% borrower rate, 10.5% net; 36 months, three months interest-only) was made to StarWalker Meats, LLC and StarHarvest Co., LLC, secured by a second mortgage on farmland and a distribution center, a third mortgage on the processing facility, and a UCC-1 on the two companies' assets. On September 17, both project pages and the SRC fund page carried a 'Default' status label on the two loans; AltStreet's text check of the pages on September 16 had not recorded one.

Both loans were funded by direct participations and by Steward Regenerative Capital, the pooled SRC fund. At the Q3 2025 snapshot in AltStreet's Steward review, the SRC fund held $4,388,800 of the real-estate loan and $1,207,700 of the working-capital loan, $5,596,500 in total or 29.8% of an $18.8 million public loan book, the single largest concentration on the platform. The fund's page now shows the book at June 30, 2026: $25.44 million across 19 loans, with the StarWalker real-estate loan at $4,388,800 (17.25 percent) and the working-capital loan paid down to $999,847 (3.93 percent), $5,388,647 in total or 21.2 percent, still the largest borrower, with Chapul Farms' $3,930,000 (15.45 percent, maturing October 31, 2026) second. The review modeled a 50% recovery on StarWalker as roughly a 15% principal impairment for SRC lenders from that one relationship, and held Steward's track-record score at sector-typical on the grounds that the clean record was self-reported, the portfolio young, and the credit cycle untested.

StarWalker Organic Farms describes itself as the first Regenerative Organic Certified pork and beef operation in the United States, on about 7,000 acres in Siskiyou County's Scott Valley, operated by the Walker family since the 1970s. Steward's own review of the underwriting, per the note, is that the company was 'starting from a strong foundation'; its conclusion now is that the Walkers' actions 'make them inappropriate custodians of Steward's collateral moving forward.'

A second lender sued a month earlier

Court filings from Siskiyou County, provided to AltStreet by the same reader, identify one of the two other complaints. On August 6, 2026, Mad Capital Perennial Fund II, LLC, a Boulder, Colorado regenerative-agriculture lending fund, filed a verified complaint (case 26CV12995) against StarWalker Organic Farms, Inc., the farm entity that owns the herd, for breach of a $1,604,000 loan, money had and received, claim and delivery of its collateral, and specific performance of a receivership clause. The complaint, verified by Mad Capital chief executive Brandon Welch, pleads an Event of Default under the loan agreement's insolvency clause, states that Mad Capital accelerated the loan on July 23, 2026 and demanded payment by August 4, and claims $1,603,950 of principal plus interest, a late fee, a prepayment fee and at least $100,000 of attorneys' fees. Mad Capital is itself a Form D issuer: its most recent amendment, filed April 6, 2026, reports $49,875,000 sold to 72 investors.

The loan documents attached to the complaint describe a relationship that predates Steward's. Mad Capital Group PBC lent StarWalker Organic Farms $835,000 on January 16, 2024; the loan was increased to $1,604,000 on April 25, 2024 with StarWalker Meats, LLC as co-borrower, and restated on May 19, 2025, eight days before Steward funded its $7,168,000 facility loan, with Meats released. The restated loan carries 8.65 percent interest, interest-only payments of about $11,000 a month, a March 31, 2029 maturity, an 18 percent default rate, and a first-priority lien on all of the farm entity's livestock, crops, farm products, equipment and accounts. Its covenants bar the farm entity from taking on more than $20,000 of new debt, granting any other lien, or entering material transactions with affiliates without Mad Capital's consent.

The security agreement's schedule of existing liens, signed by Kristina Walker on May 19, 2025, lists three UCC filings already on the StarWalker companies: Mad Capital's own (January 2024, on Meats and the farm), MDF Fund I, LP (August 2024, on Starharvest, Meats, the farm and SWOF, LLC) and Dakota Financial, LLC (October 2024, on Starharvest, the farm and the Walkers personally). SWOF, LLC is the borrower on Steward's facility loan, which Steward's project page describes as secured by a first mortgage and a UCC-1 on all SWOF assets, and Steward's note says its working-capital loan was made in part to retire high-interest loans. Whether the MDF and Dakota filings were satisfied when Steward funded in May and June 2025 is not on the record AltStreet holds.

The borrowers' account, under oath

The Walkers' side of the dispute is on the record for the first time in a declaration Kristina Walker signed on September 11, 2026, the same day as Steward's lender note, opposing Mad Capital's motion for a receiver and an injunction. She states that StarWalker never missed or was late on a Mad Capital payment before June 2026, when Mad Capital declared a technical default because, in her words, it 'believed that StarWalker was taking on too much debt in its efforts to grow'; that the company stopped paying after Mad Capital accelerated the balance in late June; that she has offered payment plans; and that two groups are working to buy Mad Capital out of its loan but need three to six weeks beyond the September 24, 2026 hearing, which Mad Capital declined to postpone. An earlier ex parte application by Mad Capital was denied, per the declaration; the order to show cause on the receiver is set for September 24 at 9:30 a.m.

On the collateral, the declaration disputes a Welch declaration that values the livestock more than $100,000 lower than in July. Walker's own spreadsheet, attached as an exhibit, puts the herd at $2,681,500 on August 27, 2026 against $2,536,000 on July 10, with pigs at $1,433,000 and cattle at $1,248,500, and total collateral above $4.6 million including $450,000 of stored crops and $1.53 million of equipment, against the $1.6 million loan. The same spreadsheet shows the cattle count falling from 365 to 321 head over the period, heavy feeders from 70 to 33 and breeding stock from 86 to 72, while pig numbers rose from 1,494 to 1,921. She states that a receiver would put 57 people out of work across the farm (10), StarWalker Meats (7) and Starharvest (40); that Meats buys all of its livestock from the farm and Starharvest does more than 80 percent of its processing for Meats; and that August 2026 online store sales were $217,364 against $35,059 a year earlier, with a Houston Texans supply relationship in discussion. The declaration also refers to 'the current financial challenges' and 'the short term challenges facing StarWalker.' It does not mention Steward or the September 9 suit.

What the lien record shows

A search of the California Secretary of State's UCC records on September 17 fills in the priority picture the project pages left open. On SWOF, LLC, the borrower on the $7.17 million facility loan, Steward Lending is the only active secured party: its financing statement was filed on June 13, 2025, seventeen days after funding, and MDF Fund I's August 2024 filing, which had named SWOF, is terminated, consistent with Steward's statement that proceeds would pay off existing debt. The first mortgage on the five properties is a county record and was not checked. On StarWalker Meats, Steward's July 1, 2025 filing is the only active one apart from Mad Capital's original January 2024 statement, which the record shows amended in 2025, consistent with Meats' release from that loan.

StarHarvest Co., LLC, the processing company on the working-capital loan, is different. Two filings predate Steward's and remain active: Dakota Financial, LLC of Los Angeles (October 31, 2024, the filing the Walkers disclosed to Mad Capital) and Handtmann, Inc., a maker of meat-processing equipment (March 5, 2025). Steward's project page described 'a UCC-1 on all assets held by StarHarvest Co, LLC' without saying that two earlier secured parties were on file; whether their filings cover specific equipment or all assets would require the collateral descriptions, which the search's list view does not show. Multivac, Inc., a packaging-equipment maker, filed in March 2026.

The heavier layering is on the farm entity, which Steward did not lend to and whose livestock supply every animal StarWalker Meats sells. Beginning twelve days after Steward's second loan funded, StarWalker Organic Farms, Inc. added eight secured creditors: Farm Credit Services of America (July 2, 2025), TFund Capital Corp. (November 2025), Blue Bridge Financial (January 2026), 360 Equipment Finance and AGCO Finance (April 2026), Ranchwood Enterprises of Kuna, Idaho (July 14, 2026), Woodhouse Co. of Merrill, Oregon (August 4, 2026), and, on August 20, 2026, two weeks after Mad Capital sued, a filing made through a representative service of the kind commonly used by merchant cash advance funders, which also names StarHarvest as a debtor. Mad Capital's loan agreement barred the farm from taking on more than $20,000 of new debt or granting any lien without its consent, which gives its June 2026 'too much debt' declaration a concrete basis. The farm's own record shows several earlier representative-style filings from 2020 to 2023, all now terminated or lapsed, and a 2020 Small Business Administration filing still active.

The credit map

The map above puts the entities, the loans and the secured filings on one page. The point it makes is structural: Steward's two loans sit on the brand, the processor and the property holder, while the farm that owns the herd, which is the raw material for both Steward borrowers, carries Mad Capital's first-priority lien and eight further secured filings added in the fourteen months after Steward funded.

Steward's response

AltStreet asked Steward for comment on September 16. The company replied the same day and again on September 17, saying that it was away that week and could not review the matter in detail, and directing AltStreet to its Steward Regenerative Capital fund page for current figures. It did not address the lender note, the litigation, the Mad Capital suit or the lien record.

The page he pointed to shows the fund's loan table as of June 30, 2026 and, as of September 17, marks both StarWalker loans 'Default.' It also shows that Steward's quarterly SRC performance reports, the documents that carry the fund's delinquency and loss rates, stop at Q3 2025: no report for Q4 2025, Q1 2026 or Q2 2026 is listed, although unaudited balance sheets and income statements for Steward Credit LLC are listed through Q2 2026 (their links did not resolve to documents in AltStreet's fetch). The Q3 2025 report, the last published, showed $18,785,793 outstanding, 0.00 percent delinquency and 0.00 percent loan loss, and defines nonperforming loans as those 'more than 90 days past due, or are otherwise in nonaccrual status,' which is why payments that ran late inside a ten-day grace period never appeared in it. The page states $42,184,374 raised to date and a fixed 7.50 percent rate paid monthly to lenders, with a 0.50 percent premium on rollovers.

The pattern in AltStreet's data

Steward's loans are promissory notes, not SEC-registered securities, so there is no EDGAR record of the borrowers or the loans and AltStreet's filing monitors cannot see this event; the review's zero-default and 0% loss statistics were drawn from Steward's own quarterly performance reports, all unaudited. The docket is the first court record AltStreet holds for any Steward borrower, and this is the first borrower default recorded on the platform in AltStreet's data, which covers 47 Steward campaigns and 26 quarterly reports back to August 2021. The two StarWalker deal records now carry the default, and the Steward review's zero-default claims have been qualified as through Q3 2025.

Why it matters

The review's concentration finding has become the event it warned about. A $100-minimum, no-accreditation platform whose marketing rested on a spotless record now has its largest single exposure in litigation, and the collateral that matters most to working-capital lenders is inventory that can spoil or move before a receiver is appointed. What SRC lenders recover depends on things the note does not yet say: the value of five Yreka-area properties and a processing facility in a forced-sale or receivership context, the state of the livestock and inventory, the two third-party claims, and whether a court grants the receiver at all.

The note is also candid about the mechanism. Payments ran late for a year inside grace periods, which Steward's reporting counted as current; the platform's quarterly reports showed 0% delinquency through Q3 2025 while, by Steward's own account, payments were 'frequently delayed.' Lenders reading a 0% delinquency line on any platform should ask how late a payment can be before it is counted.

The Mad Capital filings change the collateral picture for Steward lenders in two ways. First, the livestock and equipment of the farm entity, the raw material for the processing and meat companies Steward lent to, are pledged first to another lender that has accelerated and is asking for a receiver, in a motion now set for October 15, 2026; Steward's own suit seeks a receiver over its borrower entities, so an integrated operation faces two receivership requests from two secured creditors in the same courthouse. Second, the sequence in the filings runs against a simple story of one lender reacting to the other: by Steward's account its payments stopped in April 2026, Mad Capital declared its technical default in June and accelerated on July 23, and Steward sued on September 9. Which creditor stands where against which asset is a question that the Steward complaint, not yet obtained, and the county's lien filings would answer.

On the origination question the lien record cuts both ways. Steward's position on SWOF is what its page said, first and alone, and the MDF filing it set out to retire is gone. On StarHarvest it sits behind two earlier filers its page did not mention. And the debt that ultimately buried the group was borrowed after Steward funded, by the one entity Steward had no covenant over, starting within two weeks. That is a structural gap in how the loans were built, and a monitoring gap afterward, rather than a lien missed at closing.

Steward's answer, in the end, was the fund page, and the fund page tells two stories at once. The concentration has fallen from 29.8 percent to 21.2 percent as the book grew to $25.4 million, and the reporting that would have shown lenders the deterioration stopped three quarters ago. The page states a fixed 7.50 percent paid monthly; whether distributions have continued in full through the default, and what the fund's Q2 2026 balance sheet carries against the $5.39 million, are the questions Steward has not yet answered.

What has not been verified

The suit is confirmed by the court's docket, but AltStreet has not obtained the complaint itself, so the description of the remedies sought (foreclosure and a receiver) rests on Steward's September 11 note rather than the pleading. The loan facts in the note were checked against Steward's public project pages and AltStreet's own loan-book data. Of the two third-party complaints the note mentions, one, Mad Capital's (case 26CV12995), has been read in a copy a reader obtained from the court; the other has not been located. The UCC search is of the state's list view, which shows secured party, dates and status but not collateral descriptions, so it cannot say whether the earlier StarHarvest filings cover specific equipment or all assets; mortgages are county records and were not searched. The Walkers have not responded to AltStreet; their position is taken from Kristina Walker's sworn declaration in the Mad Capital case, which addresses that loan and not Steward's, and the livestock valuation in it is her own calculation, which Mad Capital disputes. Nothing here establishes what lenders will recover, whether a receiver will be appointed, or the borrowers' side of the dispute; the first scheduled court event is a case management conference in March 2027. Steward's response is described above; it did not address the substance. AltStreet will update this article when it obtains the Steward complaint, the fund's 2026 financial statements, or the ruling on Mad Capital's receiver motion.