• The Unraveling of College Athletics

    The Unraveling of College Athletics

    College sports fans might be too close to notice it but the world of college athletics seems to be coming apart at the seams.

    A Quick Caveat

    I want to be clear about what I’m talking about and what I’m NOT talking about.

    In college athletics men’s football and basketball are revenue sports, they are supposed to make money, whereas the rest of the athletics departments non-revenue sports aren’t really what I’m talking about. Baseball, softball, soccer, volleyball, golf, etc… those sports are non-revenue. They are financed as a by-product of the football team primarily.

    This post is about revenue sports only.

    Goodbye Illusions of Amateurism

    The NIL and transfer portal era has meant athletes are now low-level professional free agents.

    It’s no longer about recruiting 18 year olds to come play in an exchange for a free or reduced cost of education. It’s now about attracting the most talented athletes with perks and money to get them to play for your school– one season or half season at a time. Schools are barely pretending these kids ever attend a class. Do some of them? Sure. Do the top ones? Not really— maybe some online classes, just enough to make it look like they are students.

    The NCAA has given up control of the so-called Power 4 schools, they are now allowed to self-regulate.

    Without having to sit out a season or lose eligibility everyone is now a free agent all of the time. It’s not like a rigorous academic schedule is holding anyone back… they just bounce around from paycheck to paycheck, trying to bolster their hopes of hitting it big.

    So what’s happening is it’s become a game between rich alumni fan bases– whoever fuels the most money fields the best team and wins.

    You just have to look at college football to see that in action in real time. Perennial doorstop, Indiana University, with a ravenous basketball alumni base where they literally reseat Assembly Hall each season based on who donated the most THIS CURRENT YEAR (as opposed to most, who seat based on lifetime giving) suddenly has the best team of transfers in college football. How did that happen? Money. Lots and lots of money.

    This is fueled by three factors.

    1. Ridiculous media rights deals by NewsCorp (Fox Sports) and Disney (Disney/ESPN/ABC). Earlier this year the SEC announced that they’d distributed $800 million to its 16 member schools.
    2. Sports betting. All of a sudden it’s cool to gamble on sports. How much money is changing hands? Just look around a stadium and you’ll see betting apps advertising– in some states you can place a bet on every play in the game, individual player performance, etc. The money is flowing in gambling right now and it’s having unintended consequences.
    3. Bragging rights between rich fan bases. You might not care who wins this years college football playoff but there’s a lot of money invested in getting teams into the playoff and winning it. Like bajillions of dollars invested in programs as well as gambling.
    4. Just in the past few weeks let’s look at the impact unchecked money/power is having on college campuses. Remember, these are COLLEGES, not semi-pro teams. Colleges where you’re supposed to be getting an education to be a teacher or engineer or nurse. So many coaches were fired as soon as their team wasn’t going to make the ESPN “playoff.” But don’t worry about those coaches, top coaches like Brian Kelly are getting $50 million paydays to get fired at LSU, where the average professor makes $125,000. That jackass got paid 400 times that to not work or teach a dang thing. Yeah, college football is out of control. Wasn’t this supposed to be about academics? Imagine being a professor fighting for some research dollars only to see that some clown is getting $50 million to not show up.
    5. Some schools like the University of Michigan burn through coaches for ethical reasons, the last one (allegedly) for getting his 20-something year old employee & mistress pregnant, paying for her to have an abortion, then when confronted about it and fired (allegedly) breaking into her home and threatening suicide before getting arrested. The previous one? He’s in the NFL now because he got banned from college sports for a while. For a school that prides itself about the “Michigan Man” this should be a new low. But money talks so they don’t care.
    6. Multiple NBA prospects and current players are headed “back to college” to play THIS SEASON as teams make their bid for the NCAA tournament. Now 18 year olds are supposed to compete against players who have been drafted by the NBA and chose to come back to “amateur” sports? Let’s just admit that college athletics is minor leagues sports, ok?
    7. Disney/ESPN/ABC decided not to invite Notre Dame (owned by NBC/Peacock) to its pretend national championship tournament. Remember, it’s not a sanctioned championship… it’s literally just for TV. Consequently, the semi-pro-athletes at Notre Dame decided they didn’t want to play in a bowl game– because nearly all of the bowl games are owned by, guess who, Disney/ESPN/ABC.
    8. As the football season winds down the transfer portal season winds up. All of these free agents want more and more money to go play for your favorite college team– not for any academic reason at all– but to get paid to play while they showcase themselves for the NFL– well, at least a couple of seasons in the NFL before they bounce back to college as a 28 year old.
    9. Let’s not forget that the NCAA allowed some crazy rules when it comes to eligibility during the COVID years. There are players who are getting 6th and 7th years of eligibility. These guys will never make it at the top pro level but they bounce around from place to place in the minor leagues.

    This is what college athletics has become, the minor leagues for football and basketball.

    It’s always kind of been that way. Let’s not pretend like players weren’t paid for decades through an unofficial system of cash envelopes, shadow summer jobs, and the parents getting sweet deals on cars and houses.

    So what’s the problem? Everyone is enjoying themselves and there’s a lot of money changing hands? What’s wrong with that?

    The problem is that minor league sports are boring.

    And while it’s exciting for the teams whose alumni are footing the bill to be at the top, the other 100 or so Division 1 schools just can’t keep up or compete.

    Do you really want to pay hundreds of dollars to watch young college basketball team get drilled by players getting paid a million bucks to wear an Arizona uniform for 4 months?

    It’s boring. And eventually that level of boredom leads to less people forking over to feed the ever-increasing-hungry monster.

    All of that means that mid-level schools are starting to ask big, important questions like “Why do we even have these teams anymore if the players aren’t going to class or graduating, the coaches are treated like gods, and the alumni are constantly hit up for cash for athletics to the detriment of academics?” “Isn’t this more embarrassing than fun?”

    More and more schools are teetering on the edge of moving out of the top division of college athletics.

    Maybe it’s not hitting the tipping point in 2026 but the tipping point is coming when lots of these lesser-funded schools will just decide to stop being the whipping boy of Disney and NewsCorp semi-pro teams.

    The justification all along has been about school or community pride and marketing your school to a broad audience.

    But the question these schools must face, sooner rather than later, is if it’s worth it?

    Do they want their college name to be a brand owned by a shoe company and media rights deal? Do they want to be minor leagues? Do they want to exist to get their asses handed to them by NBA dropouts?

    Or do they want to focus on the real reason they exist– academics?

    Sooner or later state legislatures are going to make that decision for them.

    If you’re a fan of a big, powerful, Disney or NewsCorp fueled team, you probably aren’t seeing it.

    But ask a fan of a G5 or below school and you’ll hear all about it.

    Most of those schools get $1 million to $5 million in media rights money per year. How can they compete with $40 million – $50 million?

    They can’t.

    So they won’t for much longer.

  • Putting Guardrails on AI

    It’s the lack of guardrails that is concerning.

    I don’t care if AI is giving me better search results or drafting some email content or even helps with customer service chats or meal planning or whatever.

    AI is really cool. It does offer some great advantages. But we’re going to need some guidelines and laws governing what we can and cannot do with it.

    We need to set true ethical limits while the technology continues to improve. You can’t ever expect a machine to truly think like a human. Ultimately, every computing decision is a 0 or a 1… it’s binary. Humans, especially when it comes to ethics, do not compute things so simply. We just don’t work like that and the implications of thinking like that are disastrous.

    You can’t let an AI driven car kill its passengers and have a CEO come out and say, “Wow, yeah we’re going to learn from that and adjust our models.” Human life isn’t a video game.

    The best technology will never and should not be allowed to ultimately replace the authority of humans.

    Also, consider this: What we’re seeing today is just the commercial side of the equation– 10-15 years behind what’s being developed and deployed within the intelligence community. What we’re getting is merely the declassified and “safe” versions… so, considering we know the impact of human-powered troll farms on elections and political influence… what else is out there in the machine-driven world?

  • Thank You Geneva Center

    Thank You Geneva Center

    Last year my high school closed it’s doors.

    This year the presbytery sold off my childhood summer camp.

    Yesterday was the final celebration of that work, culminating 60 years of welcoming kids from all over northern Indiana for a week of crafts, games, swimming, and hand-churned ice cream.

    Obviously, I didn’t get to go but I was added to a chat group and kept up a little with the happenings, who was going and who wasn’t, that kind of thing.

    Geneva Center was the highlight of my life each summer from about 5th grade and into high school. Sure, lots of other things happened through the year but in my mind that week of camp was what mattered most. I had my friends at home and then I had camp friends.

    Many times I tried to make camp friends into “real friends” but it was always too awkward and a life lesson that time and place often form relationships that don’t endure but are true friendship.

    There’s a theory in religious circles that adults who move into the clergy or church leadership are subconsciously trying to recreate an intense religious experience they experienced in the past.

    That’s probably true for me to a certain extent, as well. I know I was always trying to get people to that moment— consciously or not— of an intense religious experience because I knew it had the possibility to shape a life.

    Likewise, within the church ecosystem there are lots of ancillary businesses— camps, mission trips, retreat centers, school bible clubs— pretty much the entire youth ministry world— designed to help you recreate that mountaintop moment.

    A lot of good and bad things happen in church world because of this subconscious desire to relive that moment.

    This subconscious search drives a lot. And as time goes on you realize you’ll never quite get that same high but you keep trying.

    It’s a high you can’t quite replicate for yourself but you kinda hope that something you might spark that moment for a young person, thereby launching another person on the quest of their own, going into leadership or seminary or whatever sojourn it takes to try to recreate their campfire moment for them.

    For non-religious types this same type of thing might be your annual camping trip or even a cruise. Nothing will ever be like “that one time” but every year you try to recreate it and drag other people along in your attempt. This is captured in movies and television shows about traveling, nostalgic flicks always seem to be trying to take you back to “the moment”.

    When I think about Geneva Center of course I think about the fun. Belly flop contests in the pool, canoe trips down the river, and the thrill of holding the girls hand. Did you know I juggle? A skill I learned at camp.

    But I also think about the adults who were my counselors. I still remember their affirmations, (appropriate) affection for me, the way they accepted me and included me. Maybe I don’t remember their names but I definitely remember how they made me feel.

    When I think about my time as a pastor I hope I was that for a few others.

    But I also think of that time as the highlight of my religious life, a place where I was accepted for who I truly was.

    Before making a detour into evangelicalism, I was spoiled with the idealism of a small, loving community in the “liberal” PCUSA. I thought and still think having a female pastor was normal, thinking of God as neither male or female wasn’t an intellectual leap for me, the idea that God is big enough for all of us to have our own ideas on what they might be like.

    Hitting the teenage years I ended up going a different direction with my church life. I was attracted to bigger youth groups, ones that were more serious about Bible study and more self-disciplined. But who also have a much smaller definition of God, an ever-shrinking one if we are honest.

    I don’t regret that turn towards evangelicalism but I think I now realize it was a detour away from where I felt at home the most.

    And I’m ok with that. It wasn’t a bad detour. Life is a journey after all, full of detours and side quests, triumphs and failures.

    It’s hard when things you love, even if they are just distant memories, come to an end. It floods you with waves of thankfulness and even a bit of guilt, not that I had any power to change the course of history but maybe I should have stayed more involved in GC somehow?

    As you might imagine, I’m not handling loss right now particularly well. Whether it’s a chicken on the farm or sending a fair goat to the butcher or, in this case, a camp I’d not visited in 30+ years closing, finality is hard as it gets loaded in the washing machine of emotions in my head every grief-filled day.

    Thank you for the memories, Geneva Center. You were living proof that idealism and a few acres could change lives. You did mine. And I hope I’m living out what I learned there every day, Rooted in Love.

  • Lightning, Fire, and Grazing

    Lightning, Fire, and Grazing

    “Feels very fire-y out. Windy, hot, lightning.” 

    Sent that text to Kristen as I made my way out for deliveries yesterday. Driving north on the 49 the big, tall van was getting blown around. 

    A line of thunderstorms ran just west and north of us off and on all day. Some areas got flash flooding while others were spared the floods but speared by lightning. 

    Dozens of spot fires took off in nearby towns like Raymond, Catheys Valley, Hornitos, and further to the north along Highway 120. The grasslands dried out in May and by early September what grass the cattle haven’t eaten is so crisp it breaks when you step on it. 

    It’s really dry right now. Really dangerous. 

    It sounds like the historic town of China Camp, about 50 miles north of us, took heavy damage. 

    Around our immediate area we are rattled, but fine. Later in the day a wind came through with gusts north of 30 MPH. Just a spark and we are cooked. 

    There’s irony in it all. 

    While the country is feeling the effects of the highest beef prices ever, fires leave cattle running for their lives. 

    We need more cattle, sheep, and goats grazing in the foothills to help mitigate the impact of a more volitile, changing climate. Not just in the grassier areas— everywhere. 

    But as herds head to the market the cattle families are asking themselves… do we cash out and retire? Or do we reinvest and buy the most expensive calves in history? It’s a fair question because by the time these replacements are ready the market might dip so much they’d lose money. 

    Imagine yourself as a local cattle ranching family. They’ve never taken money out of their ranch, just reinvested earnings to keep growing the herd and pay their bills. But with high prices and kids getting ready for college? It’s tempting to cash out, lock in the future, and wait for the dip. You’re torn by this because you want to serve the community you love, as well. But…

    When things are as uncertain as they are right now? Certainty is awful tempting.

    Early yesterday morning, before all of this happened, I sent an email to our Sierra National Forest team asking about our own grazing project. Why? Because winter is looming and I need to know: Am I buying to increase my herd, selling to reduce, or just breeding? 

    We’ve been in a holding pattern for months but I am at the point where it’s critical to have an answer. 

    I’m under no delusion, one day the dry lightning is coming for us, too. 

    We’d like our goats to be part of preventing a disaster but the land next to us doesn’t belong to us… so we are stuck waiting for permission. 

    Will it come in time? I have no idea. 

    Fingers crossed today is cooler, less windy, and those fleets of firefighters and bulldozers are able to contain that spectacle of fires. And fingers crossed I get a call from North Fork with the go ahead.

  • Why the County Fair Matters

    Why the County Fair Matters

    In sociological terms a “public” is a place where a local society meets or hangs out. It’s where you catch up with friends, meet new people, relax, conduct business, develop friendships, or simply be.

    In a sense these are usually “public spaces” but it doesn’t have to be publicly-owned spot. Back in the late 80s a “public” in the small town I grew around in Indiana might be the parking lot of a McDonald’s along McKinley or the USA Roller Rink or in the early 90s it would be cruising the mall, slow walking a Saturday night in hopes you might get invited to a party or be there when the fight happens, sipping on an Orange Julius or sneaking a peak into Victorias Secret.

    Social media has brought about the erosion of publics. People don’t hang out in person quite like they used to because apps have taken the local public from the coffee shop to your pocket. But, as we’ve learned, a digital public can be dangerous… they can accidentally turn into echo chambers. But we all know enatelt that there’s nothing quite like sitting around and chewing the fat with people in real life.

    In a small town like Mariposa the county fair is one of our main publics. It’s 4 days of pageantry, intrigue, and drama by which the social calendar of our 18,000 residents revolve. Whereas, in the Upper Midwest kids might get the opening day of deer season off from school, here you get the opening day of the fair off and if you don’t make it to school on Thursday the attendance office doesn’t seem to notice.

    Everyone knows Saturday night is the derby and Sunday is the livestock auction right before the rodeo. Even if you don’t go to any of it you know the whole world around here revolves around these 4 days.

    For kids, it’s “what are you showing this year?” Not “are you going to the fair?” It might only be 150 out of all the kids in the county but it sure feels like everyone.

    If you’re a city or suburban dweller you might not even know things like 4-H or FFA still exist. But around here? They are the lifeblood that makes the county fair a public. These programs have more members than all the churches combined. Our town loves youth sports but even the sports teams know better than to mess with the fair.

    I’m enjoying the fair. It’s the break I need at the end of a long, hot summer. It’s exhausting. But it also fills my tank. One full day left for me then back to harvesting on Monday for the week to come.

    Fair is important. And we like participating in our small ways.

    Jackson did much better this year than last. He’ll always be remembered in the rabbit group as the kid who showed his rabbit covered in blood because it ripped a toe nail out on the way into the ring.

    But I hope the core memory he’ll have from this week is the improvement he made showing his goat. He was first out last year in both market and showmanship, a source of a year’s frustration and embarrassment as his friends saw him place last. This year he moved up a division and finished 4th out of 15 in showmanship and 3rd in his group for market goats with the goat we bred.

    Tomorrow all attention will shift to the payoff, selling his goat to the highest bidder at the annual auction. It’s emotional for me to see the community rally and spend upwards of $500,000 on 160 fair project animals. And it’s especially emotional for me to see someone graciously overpay for a $300 goat to encourage my child’s interest in agriculture.

    Zooming out the lens, this is why it’s so important to invest in your communities public. I don’t know what it is where you live. But it’s there for you to find. And your life will be enriched when you join in.

    In Romeo it was Halloween and the Peach Festival. In Rolando it was the street fair and (RIP) the Boo Parade. Here? It’s the fair.

    Truly, I don’t think anyone who lives here would have it any other way. Even if they avoid going.

    Though, everyone should go to the derby once in their lives.

  • Free Puppies at Pioneer Market

    Free Puppies at Pioneer Market

    An older lady cut a long line at Pioneer saying “I’m a local, I can’t wait.” I did what any reasonable Mariposa man would do. I put one of those free parking lot puppies in her back seat. Good thing you’re local!

  • Christian Employment is Broken

    Christian Employment is Broken

    Over the last 4-5 years I’ve slowly been processing the abusive work relationships I had working in the Christian world. There’s no need to point to or call out one as it’s been a patten consistent for the entire time I was in from 2001 to 2022.

    Maybe it’s a pattern you’ll recognize in your own life, too? I dunno. But here goes.

    Outward Signs

    I knew things had become untenable and I couldn’t continue. It’s taken me some years to see that it was more than the outward things that led me out.

    On the surface I felt at the the rise of Trumpism, hatred towards outsiders, exploitation of the poor for personal profit, the persistent two-faced approach to the gay community, hatred of women as a whole, the death cult fetish with Israel– those things made it so I had to leave.

    That hasn’t always been there. But it started in the early 2000s and has gotten progressively worse.

    Those were outward things. I last attended a church service without getting paid around Easter 2017– I couldn’t take hearing one more “sermon” about the pastors surf buddies, scripture twisting, while ignoring the rising hatred of immigrants in our midst. It was too much.

    Dude spent a long time telling us where “regulars” had to park for Easter and I looked at Kristen and said, “That won’t be a problem. One less car for them to worry about. I’m not coming back.”

    I quickly learned I wasn’t the only “leader” who only went to church when there was a paycheck. In fact, I’d say that’s true of just about every “leader” I know. They are there when there’s a paycheck otherwise they don’t bother. They maintain a relationship with a home church that’s convenient to them but that’s usually to maintain a credential or something like that. Most of my friends working in churches will readily admit that they wouldn’t go to their church if they weren’t on staff.

    The truth is that the evangelical church as I knew it– as most of us in our prime years right now knew and gave our lives to– died in the mid-2000s. It’s just not the same and I don’t think it’s worth being around.

    Many of my friends feel trapped. They want out but they can’t find jobs where they’ll be treated as well or paid as well. So they stick around.

    That’s the outward stuff.

    Looking Inward

    Let’s talk about the inward stuff. These are things that I’ve realized while listening to audio book after audio book about farming or truths I’ve learned from hours of hearing pop songs in my headphones while pulling weeds.

    As time has gone on I can more clearly see the inward things were abusive and untenable, as well. Things that gnawed on me and made me realize I was part of something that wasn’t true to myself.

    I realized that many of the people I was consulting with and working with cared about my ideas, my ability to make money, my ability to build a community around an idea– but they didn’t care about me at all.

    Not one bit.

    That was proven when we lost Lilly and very, very few people I’ve worked with reached out. I called them and mourned with them when their dogs died but I lost a child and not even a card or text.

    To them, I was nothing more than a means to an end. I didn’t feel that way about our relationship but they did.

    In my roles I was expected to deep dive into their personal lives.

    Go to their homes, get to know their kids, remember their wedding anniversary, help them deal with everything in their personal lives, plan vacations, give them meaningful gifts, timely compliments and encouragement, on and on.

    My roles were never just about the work. It was always “doing life with” as well.

    But it was deeply one-sided.

    When I was “for them” (read: making them money and notoriety) they were all about Adam McLane. They couldn’t get enough of me. And I liked that reputation as the “get shit done” guy with so many orgs.

    But as soon as I shared things that I cared about or if I asked them to get to know my family, even remember my wife’s name, maybe drop by and share a meal– when I dared to prioritize living out my own faith in my community by getting involved– I was suddenly a liability.

    I spent decades in this cycle where when I was “for them” everything was great but if I tried to ask others to be “for me, too” I was out.

    That’s not what friendship, partnership, leadership, or doing life with someone is meant to be.

    When we lived in San Diego it would always shock me that people would come to town for vacation and not say anything to me. I’d fly to their ugly ass shithole town in the middle of winter, hang out with their family, meet them for a beer at their favorite spot. But when they came to my town? Nah, nothing.

    It’s taken me a long time to admit to myself that those people were never actually “for me”. They were never on my team, cared about me, anything… I was just a tool to them as they tried to build their empire exploiting the faith of others for personal gain.

    So, a few years back when I knew it was time to call it quits, I made an important distinction for going forward.

    I decided that my life, my values, my ideas, my potential, my kids, my wife, my heart— these things needed to be conditional.

    I’m fine working with or consulting with someone in a dispassionate way. That’s fine, let’s just keep it professional. I don’t want to know about your kids and I’m not going to talk about mine.

    My Path Forward

    When I think about the culture and business we’re creating now I’m aware that I will readily give of myself if it’s reciprocated but if it isn’t?

    Then you’re not for me. There are 6 billion people on our planet and not all of them have to be my friend.

    I hope this work I’ve been doing on myself changes my work/life relationships going forward. I don’t know that it will as old habits are hard to break. But I do think that by owning the reality that I put myself in an abusive pattern is part of breaking that pattern.

    As I think about the business we’re building right now and the people that are coming alongside of us to do it… I’m really conscious, maybe overly so, that I want to be genuine, that I want to truly share in both the heartaches and victories of it.

    I used to believe that bad shit happened to me for a greater purpose. I believed, and even wrote about on my blog, that it somehow made me better. I used to resonate deeply with the story of Joseph and his brothers in Genesis.

    But I don’t want to identify with that anymore because that’s not the relationship I want to have with people. I reject the version of a god told in the Joseph story, that he puts bad things in your way just to get your attention or help you find meaning through the chaos he created for you. That’s not love, that’s abuse. [Don’t even get me started on the paternal failure of the Prodigal Son story.]

    I don’t want to believe that all the bad things a person does to me is somehow for the greater good… I just don’t want bad things to happen to me in the first place!

  • Farm Failures and the Future

    Farm Failures and the Future

    This week I’ve been wrapping up 2024, catching up on bookkeeping and things like that as the spring 2025 nursery season will hit us just after New Year’s Day.

    I woke up with a mental list of my top farm failures of 2024. My mind quickly rattled off 10-12 of them and started sorting them into a top 5 list.

    While the coffee maker squeezed out a cup of joe I was forcing myself to make a list of things that were successful on the farm in 2024.

    And then I stopped in the kitchen, holding my cup of coffee, and zoomed out the lens.

    In the last 2 years, with no farming experience whatsoever, in a non-farming area, somewhere we didn’t know a soul when we arrived, not coming from a farming family or background, without outside investment– Kristen and I have built a freaking farm from the ground up out of nothing. We’re not there yet. But we’re on the right path.

    It’s easy for my mind to focus on the negative. I can’t tell you how many times this year I’ve looked at Kristen or Cody and said, “Well, that didn’t work.” Learning how to grow all of these different things, how to market our farm products, how to sell stuff… that’s full of failure.

    But the overarching thing is that we’re building a farm from scratch having no idea what we’re doing. It’s a heckuva thing.

    In 2005, I learned from the Google how to build what became YMX. In 2010, I remember turning to Google to learn how to turn a Word doc book manuscript into an actual book. So it’s no wonder that in 2024 we’re learning how to build this new business mostly from Google, YouTube, and failing our way forward.

    Yesterday, I was listening to a podcast about farming and the guy being interviewed was talking about how he wasn’t ready to jump into his farm full-time. He listed a whole bunch of money reasons why, how he didn’t want to risk his kids financial future, or his retirement, and how he hoped to go full-time on the farm once he’d secured all of his financial goals. To him, the risk was just too great and you could hear the subtext of not wanting to fail his kids.

    As I listened I thought… but what the hell are you teaching your kids? Those kids won’t care that dad has a fat retirement or that they’ve got a giant college savings if they saw their dad be a weenie to a job he didn’t like his whole dang life. Maybe what he needed to teach his kids is that it’s better to try and fail than it is to do the safe thing all the time? Had he considered that?

    I know I do. Yes, our kids might see their mom and dad fail at trying to start a farm in the middle of nowhere with no idea what they are doing. But I hope what they see is that their parents are willing to take big risks to lean into their dreams and passions, too. For me, that’s worth the risk.

    So yes, it’s easy for me to look back at 2024 and reflect on all of the failures, the things I want to do better in 2025. But I forced myself to make a list of successes in 2024, too.

    And it’s one heckuva list.

  • Permission to Thin the Herd

    Permission to Thin the Herd

    As of right now there are 337 million people living in the United States.

    “Two-thirds (67 percent) of Americans say they have a friend whom they have known since childhood” according to this study from the Survey Center on American Life.

    According to Pew Research 53% of people have between 1 and 4 people whom they call close friends.

    According to Facebook, the average user on the platform has 155 “friends”.

    What’s the point?

    The point is that there are a lot of people out there in your world and you don’t have to be friends with all of them.

    Social media has mislabeled friends as acquaintances so long that we forget that our actual circle of friends isn’t that big.

    It’s OK to thin the herd.

    Thin on social media

    It’s certainly OK to unfollow or unfriend someone who is unkind or doesn’t see the world the way you see it. Or posts too much or things that aren’t relevant to you. 10 years ago I was interested in growing my sphere of influence on social media wider and wider. But over the past few years I’ve grown my social media following on Instagram from 4,000 to about 450.

    Thin IRL

    It’s certainly OK to thin the herd in your daily lives, too.

    As the world becomes more divided unsafe I’ve distanced protected myself more and more from people I no longer enjoy feel safe being around.

    I think that’s what maturity looks like.

    Sure, I can be curious about others and how they chose to see the world. But I don’t have to translate that curiosity towards being close with them.

    And surely, for business or community relationship purposes, I can be friendly or even be an acquaintance with a lot of different types of people.

    But you don’t have to sit in my living room. I don’t have to let you inside my head. And I surely have no obligation to be friends with those whom I don’t want to be.

    Give yourself permission to…

    You don’t need me telling you this. You already know it. But it’s totally OK to give yourself permission to end a relationship that is toxic in your life.

    There’s 337 million people in this country. You ain’t gotta be friends with all of them.

  • The News Stand and the Farm Stand

    The News Stand and the Farm Stand

    I used to say that my life was really big and really small.

    It was really big because 100 days per year I lived out of a suitcase, flying around the world meeting people, promoting my business, and towards the end of that period living out my Savior Complex in a foolish attempt to reform the Christian tourism industry.

    It was really small because the other 250 days per year I lived within the square mile of Rolando, our neighborhood in San Diego where we worked, ran a small dog sitting business, kept busy with our gardens, and walked Jackson back and forth to elementary school.

    Now my life is just small. Recently, I took Jackson to Fresno to get a haircut and realized it was my first time in the megalopolis of Fresno, population 450,000, in about 4 months. Otherwise, our daily lives in Ahwahnee, population 400, ping pong between Oakhurst, population 5,945, and Mariposa, population 1,800.

    These days my life has gotten very small geographically but Super Sized in other ways. Addition of fulfillment by subtraction of meaningless work travel.

    My Stand Against News

    One aspect I love about starting up The Farm at Worman Mill is that I have no time for television. Specifically, I have no time to watch cable news.

    I still pay attention to national news here and there. I enjoy the AP News app on my phone, the BBC app provides a nice dip-of-the-toes into an international perspective. But that’s about it. I’m more attuned to what’s covered by the Mariposa Gazette than I am the LA Times.

    Largely, I’ve Tuned In to the world around me while Tuning Out to the world beyond my tiny town.1

    1. See what I did there? I just referred to a book that no one bought, Tuning In, which is now only available in my garage because no one bought it. Screw you Amazon. ↩︎

    Tuning out of the daily news cycle has provided me some clarity and a whole lot of inner peace.

    For example, the media has been reporting that Kamala Harris has raised over $1 billion in her campaign to become the first president under 70 years old since Barack Obama. Coincidentally, since that was reported, the polls have shown her lead narrowing from 4% nationally to 1.8% nationally— which is still within the margin of error for 4% but gives her campaign enough fear to spend that $1 billion on ads in swing states, that money flowing to– you guessed it– the same damned companies who do the polls showing that the race is tightening even though she is out-fundraising-and-out-campaigning her opponent 2:1.

    If you turn on the news you’re convinced by the people on television selling ads to campaigns that the world is enraptured with a Presidential campaign. We could have voted a year ago and the outcome will basically be the same. The difference? The 3 big media companies have a bottom line fueled by extracting ad money spent only if they convince a roomful of politicos to buy ads. Ads don’t swing voters. Relationships do.

    The media machine is just trolling you to get you to sit there and watch more ads.

    Let me share a little farmer secret with you. If you turn off the news your world gets much more quiet, you hear the birds chirping, the frogs frogging, and the bees buzzing.

    You begin to realize that what happens on the TV isn’t that important. That shit isn’t even real. Nothing on TV or in your news feed is nearly as important as the world right in front of you.

    And in the world right in front of you people don’t really care about the bullshit on TV that divides us. Everyone in the real world is looking for a good price on bread and a really flavorful tomato.

    It doesn’t matter who you vote for or what you think about the war in Gaza, we all want some good bread and tomatoes.

    The Farm Stand

    I spent more than a decade of my life talking about being “Good News in the Neighborhood” to impact my community when all I ever needed to do was start growing some vegetables and put a farm stand at the end of my driveway.

    The Good News jargon was never really about religion to me. It was more about being something good in my community.

    For a million reasons, this little farm startup in this little 400-person corner of this little 20,000-person corner of middle of nowhere of California, has begun to meet a utilitarian need.

    In the first year of our farm startup we grew veggies and plants and then packed them into our white pickup truck and drove them to the big city of Fresno to try to sell them.

    On the one hand I loved it. I liked meeting people and enjoyed the thrill of growing something, setting up my little tent, then enticing them to come look at the vegetables I grew. It’s fun because you’re hoping to convince a stranger to buy my tomatoes instead of the bacon-wrapped-churro-dipped-in-caramel thing the booth next door to me was selling.

    But on the other hand I didn’t enjoy the driving. And too often we spent more money going on this adventure than we made at the farmers market. Along the way it dawned on me that I was out selling vegetables more than I was growing them and that felt completely backwards for a person starting a farm.

    So in June we stopped going to farmers markets and got the farm stand. 96 square feet of freedom for less than $2000. What a deal!

    [This is where the camera zooms in on Adam in the middle of the TED Talk stage. He pauses dramatically, allowing the audience to think about the waste of time farmers markets are for vendors, he clinches his pen, bends his elbow… they switch to camera 2, a close up of Adam’s face. Then he continues.]

    Then something magical happened. Something that made no sense. Something that made every Seth Godin trained, Google Analytics informed, marketing-guru’d blood vessel in my brain pop– people drove up the road.

    And they kept coming. Every dang day. All summer long. Now well into fall.

    We learned that people are willing happy to drive to the edge of nowhere, where we live, to buy flowers and honey and baked goods and tomatoes and microgreens and nursery starts.

    Why? I HAVE NO IDEA! But also why? Because it makes sense.

    In a world where nothing makes sense. In a world where television and social media seek to divide us. In a world where no one talks. In a world where everyone is afraid of everyone else.

    In that world, there’s a place you can go where things are simple and make sense.

    You drive up the road. You park. You pick out some eggs or veggies or cake pops. You put money in a red box. You snap a picture for the gram. And you get what you want. Or not because we’ve sold out.

    Everyone, and I mean everyone, comes to a farm stand.

    People who drive Teslas and people who drive beater pick-ups. It doesn’t matter if you’ve lived on this mountain your whole life or you’re visiting here from the UK– you see a sign on the side of the highway that says “farm stand” and you drive way-the-hell-up this little winding road to a farm stand and buy yourself some eggs.

    I used to fly 100,000 miles per year in search of something that I now find daily 200 feet from my pillow.

    It’s beautiful. It’s simple. And maybe it’s ephemeral.

    But in moment in our history, in this moment in my life, where nothing makes sense and the media is fueled by our desire to seek division, our little farm stand is there to bring us microgreens and a little bit of hope. (And a damned good heirloom tomato.)

    At least that’s what it does for me.

    And that’s good enough for me right now.