• 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.

  • Poco a Poco

    Poco a Poco

    Poco a poco.
    Little by little. 

    Our plan for this house is revealing itself more visibly. 

    Originally, this house was the center of a 440 acre working ranch. They logged, sold timber locally to build houses and barns. They had an orchard, supplying the nearby Sugar Pine Mill workers with apples nearly year round, making cider with the rest, including some they’d leave by the fire to ferment just for themselves. They raised chickens and pigs and a few cows. They grew grapes and other stone fruit and had a garden to sustain themselves. They generated their own power using gravity. 

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  • Dispatch from Neverland

    Dispatch from Neverland

    The heat has finally broken here in Mariposa County. I’ll be the first to admit that I had no understanding just how hot it was going to get here from early July until late August. It was the kind of heat where you wake up thinking it won’t be too bad but by 2 o’clock you just want to hide in the house.

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  • Dreams are Worth Pursuing

    Dreams are Worth Pursuing

    Five weeks ago Jackson and I pulled out of San Diego and headed for Ahwahnee in a 16 foot rental truck from Budget. Several hours later we pulling into our driveway, the truck took out a limb on an old peach tree, and Murray and Kristen greeted us.

    Tonight, Murray and Ms. Bey (our dogs) will load up the Subaru and head back to San Diego to wrap up. From there we’ll wrap things up in San Diego, pack another load of stuff, and (Good Lord willing) head back to our new home early next week.

    Your Dreams

    Last night I watched Adam Sandler’s new movie on Netflix, Hustle. He’s a 50-something year old NBA basketball scout who has pursued his NBA coaching dream his entire life and gone virtually no where. Early in the film he has his Jerry Maguire moment where he realizes that in order to fulfill his dream he’s going to need to take a chance so risky he might lose his job. He says to himself, “In your 50’s you don’t have dreams you have nightmares.”

    What he meant was that by the time you get into your 50’s you should be done dreaming about your life. You should be locked into something secure. You should be thinking about wrapping up your career successes instead of taking on new, risky projects.

    With respect, because I love Adam Sandler even though I’ve never met the guy, I disagree. The last thing I want on my tombstone is the epitaph: “He played it safe and still ended up here.”

    Kristen and I look at the success in our lives we’ve built over the past 25 years and, while certainly tempting to ride out our next 20 years before we think about retiring, we’re thinking about getting after the next big dream for our family: Whatever it is that McLandia Farms can become.

    I think about the risk we took in joining our friends at PPM… from the outside maybe that looked like a big risk? But to us it was a risk worth pursuing. And I’m really loving the work I’m doing, it’s hard, but stuff like launching PPM365 last month is exactly why I still think PPM is worth the sacrifices we make to pursue.

    And as I look at the risk we took in selling our San Diego home to build a new life for ourselves here… sure, it’s risky. (You should see my homeowners insurance: They know it’s a risk!) But it’s a measured risk that brings us a ton of joy and opportunity, too.

    Let me take the focus off my own pursuit and ask you about your own dreams. Maybe you’re 25 and you’ve got dreams for yourself so private you’re afraid to say them out loud because they might sound dumb? Or maybe you’re 35, got a couple little kids and the idea of pursuing your dream for your own self sounds foolish or even a bit selfish? Or maybe you’re 55, you’ve moved on from raising kids to grandkids and looking forward to retirement life?

    I hope you look at Kristen and I and think: Maybe my dreams are worth pursuing after all?

    It’s OK to say yes to the opportunity a smart risk brings along.

    Do we build a barn here next for animals? This is one of the questions we’re asking.

    The Road Ahead

    I’ve been going to the Mariposa Certified Farmers Market each Wednesday evening. It’s been a great way to get to know some locals who are into all things organic, plants, food, and community. It’s only 12-15 stalls each week but I really love going.

    I don’t know yet if our dream will include something for sale at the Farmers Market but I’m not opposed to going that direction. Whether it is or it isn’t I’ve found the farmers market to be inspiring because it’s full of people ahead of us on this journey.

    The past month has been fun getting to know the vendors. Each week I stop and chew the fat with a few, asking about their farms and what they sell and how they got started. Last night I had a nice conversation with a woman who lives in Fish Camp, 4 miles as the crow flies from our house, but 45 minutes over the mountain or around the mountain. I was describing our property and she nodded her head. She told me about her place being in similar condition when she took it over: dry, dusty, full of weeds, not much productivity and not much biodiversity.

    Her sharing brought into my memory the journey Kristen and I took with our house in Rolando. When we bought it in 2015 it came with a “mow, blow, and go” type of gardener who quickly cut the grass and sprayed chemicals before leaving for two weeks. (No knock on those guys, they are feeding their families and providing a service people want.) But it wasn’t what we wanted for our home. We reluctantly fired him and started pursuing a different path towards native plants and edible gardening in an organic, regenerative way.

    I know the path ahead on our dream for this place is going to be hard.

    I joke with friends that everything in the mountains either wants to kill you, poke you, or make you itch. I’m waiting for some new footwear to arrive today that’ll hopefully help me not fall as much on the loose, sandy soil and rocks of our property.

    The path ahead for Kristen and I is going to be hard. We want to move on from weed management to soil management. In the next couple of months we’ll need to make hard choices as we build out the infrastructure this property needs to fulfill our dream. That means spending money… and spending money isn’t in our nature… life has taught us to always hold our money.

    And of course, we’re pursuing all of this part-time while we hold down our real jobs and raise our kids and all of that.

    We know the path ahead is hard. But it was hard in Rolando. It was hard in Romeo. It was hard in Chicago. It was hard in South Bend.

    Just because a dream is hard to pursue doesn’t mean it’s a dream not worth pursuing.

    There’s something deep in me that likes that challenge. And, dear reader, I hope that you like pursuing difficult dreams too.

  • “Hey dogs, want to go for a walk in Yosemite?”

    “Hey dogs, want to go for a walk in Yosemite?”

    We’re just over an hour to Yosemite Valley, truly one of the coolest places on earth.

    When I asked our dogs if they wanted to go… Murray immediately went and jumped in the back of the car.

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  • Our Journey to Ahwahnee

    Our Journey to Ahwahnee

    Last night, I sat on the porch of our century old workshop enjoying the timeless cool, evening breeze. The sun filtered through our towering pine trees. We sat in the silence with only the birds and mosquitoes as background music.

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  • Shifting Your Parenting Goals

    Shifting Your Parenting Goals

    My blogging journey started when we learned Kristen was pregnant with Megan.

    21 years ago, using a Gateway laptop, and a now long-out-dated version of Microsoft Word, I wrote daily entries into a documents pouring out my hopes and dreams for my unborn child.

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