TD: Jd. Hall, welcome to the fearless podcast. How you doing today, brother?
Jordan Hall: I'm doing well. I'm so thankful to be with you.
TD: Yeah. Well, thanks for coming on for those of you that don't know Jd. Hall. He is an intrepid goat farmer. So
TD: so
Jordan Hall: That's right.
TD: And so we have. We have some similarities in common, and you know, for all people that raise goats. One of the questions I always ask them is, you do know why God called lost people goats right.
Jordan Hall: I feel like this is a joke, and I should know the punchline already.
TD: But it's not a joke. But if you raise goats it's a joke, because we raise goats for an incredibly long period of time, and they are.
TD: There's lots of goatisms like, you know, any fence that can like
TD: hold back water can obviously keep in goats and stuff like that. So you know I like to mess. I tortured myself with goats for a very long time, so I like to mess with other goat farmers. But goats are fun. Goats are great and shoes are better.
Jordan Hall: I've often joked about that. Yeah, speaking of sheep because we have sheep, and we have goats and
Jordan Hall: goats are the sweetest creatures they really are like they would never hurt.
Jordan Hall: Another creature. They're nuisances, you know.
Jordan Hall: and it shouldn't be curiosity killed the cat. It should be curiosity killed the goat. They're into absolutely everything, like if you go out into the pasture and you have something you don't want them to touch, spill, knock
Jordan Hall: they will right, but harsh.
Jordan Hall: Our sheep
Jordan Hall: have the kids so terrified they don't want to get in their pasture, because, you know, they'll they'll they'll knock them over. They'll aim for them. They'll wait for you to turn around and then charge you and run after you. They've had my oldest son. He's he's 18. He's 6 foot 8, and they've had him like like
Jordan Hall: over like, bent over in pain on numerous occasions, for charging him and and hitting him in the midsection. And so it's their sheep are just kind of mean, and it's like you would think for now that I know this, that God would have chosen the goats and cast off the sheep, but.
TD: For whatever reason, I suppose he kept with the illustration, yeah.
TD: Well, okay. So I was joking a little bit. That was our inside joke because me and Jd. Were really tight, you know. But.
Jordan Hall: Right.
TD: But anyway, for those of you that are unfamiliar with Jd. Hall, you're basically the founder of pulpit and pen and Protestia.
Jordan Hall: Yeah, we founded pulpit and pen, and like 2,012, something like that before that it was. It was around since 2,010 under a different name. And then, during Covid, we got shut down so many times on so many different media outlets or social media outlets and platforms, that we
Jordan Hall: launched Protestia. We didn't get rid of pulp, and we launched Protestia also, because, you know, we had been stricken from like Google Adsense and all of our the ways that we generated revenue to keep our our writers paid, and food on their tables. So we tried to circumnavigate or circumvent all that that boycotting, blacklisting, blackballing, and turns out that didn't work.
Jordan Hall: you know. Protestia got flagged almost immediately, to, you know, because we would write about things like the the Covid shutdowns and masking, and at the same time, even if we
Jordan Hall: like not taking a stance on January 6, th just reporting facts about it, or about election interference. Just
Jordan Hall: it. It got the mark on us of of big social media and Google, and and just all that, all of our ad sponsors. So that's why Protestia exists. And we started that like 2020,
Jordan Hall: one or 2. And so, yeah, I started both those.
TD: Yeah. And then your newest venture is insight to insight.
Jordan Hall: Right. It's insight to insight. The 1st insight and the second one are spelled differently. It's like insight to insight, like
Jordan Hall: to incite a mob or to incite a riot.
Jordan Hall: and that that's just the daily article 6 days a week writing about whatever it is that I want to write about. And it's more just.
Jordan Hall: It's more cathartic for me than anyone else. But I did not expect it to grow in readership like it
Jordan Hall: like it did, and it's kind of taken off and blown up, and I'm super excited to be able to get my thoughts out. Not everything I want to write about is polemics. And so, even though the guys at Protestia are happy to have me right there, and I produce stuff for the Protestia insider that's put behind the Paywall. I want to write about stuff that's not necessarily necessarily polemical. As a matter of fact, these days, that's probably pretty far down on my list. But an insight to insight. I can write about whatever I want. So that's why I enjoy doing that.
TD: Yeah. And I want to encourage you all to go check it out
TD: from substack where it is on spotify. But I mean, it's just really awesome content. The one you put out today about the natural and supernatural was incredibly profound. And just, you know, great stuff to think about. Ponder on meditate, and it's really good. I really appreciate it. That's why I reached out to you, and you know I appreciate you taking the time
TD: 1 1 farmer to another, but I wanted to have you on. You had made a tweet or a well.
TD: Is it a tweet anymore, or would it be a zweed note.
Jordan Hall: Not twitter. It's XI think they've stuck with the Tweet, you know. We don't.
TD: Okay, cause.
Jordan Hall: Want to dead name or misidentify someone, but I think it's I think it's still Tweet. I think you're okay with that.
TD: Yeah. Well, I was thinking it really should be like, maybe now, like a zweet now or something. But anyway but who knows?
Jordan Hall: I don't know who makes up the rules.
TD: You had mentioned about how you and your wife, when you met you had a very short courtship and got married, and that's very much antithetical to in the postmodern culture we live in in this new
TD: Christianity. That kind of ignores like
TD: very obvious Scripture, and and bends it to the culture and to the the social norm, so that we're not too peculiar or weird or whatnot. And I thought that was really insightful.
TD: So I thought maybe we could start out by talking about
TD: fatherhood and raising a Christian family, and then we could kind of delve into that idea of, you know, courtship. And why would you have a short courtship? And you know, isn't? Isn't that problematic? And all these different things? So
TD: today, what do you see as the Biblical role of a father in the Christian household.
Jordan Hall: Well and in terms of what you you just got done talking about advice that I was given. I call that staying within the staying within the except accepted realm
Jordan Hall: of of acceptability in the Overton window, meaning that Christians, pastors, evangelical leaders.
Jordan Hall: Too often we compromise what the Scripture says in relation to things like, say fatherhood, or whatever, or how long you should be engaged, or what's the purpose of engagement?
Jordan Hall: We shelve that for kind of what's appropriate, we think in our culture. And so there's always these 2 factors weighing into our consideration when directing our lives. One is Scripture, which is great, but the other one is
Jordan Hall: when Scripture conflicts with culture, how we lean heavily, oftentimes towards culture and away from Scripture
Jordan Hall: to stay within that Overton window of what's okay and what's acceptable. And you know, one of the reasons why I farm now is because it was an intentional lifestyle choice, because I was not doing the job that I should have been doing as a husband or as a father being a slave to busyness, being a slave to ambition frankly, being a slave.
Jordan Hall: Dave, to sin, and then you get so busy caught up in all of the various things that
Jordan Hall: you, you feel compelled, as you make excuses in your brain for your shortcomings, you feel compelled to do for God.
Jordan Hall: and then, as you get caught up in doing things for God, you begin to lose sight of what the Scripture very clearly says is your 1st job and and your highest calling, which is as a father and a husband.
Jordan Hall: I'm under the impression that feminism has run rampant in the Church. Even the Evangelical Church, even the Conservative Evangelical Church, even the Reformed Conservative Evangelical Church. It doesn't matter what what niche or corner of Evangelicalism or the church you want to look in.
Jordan Hall: There is sort of a I don't know if you're familiar with the term longhouse. But there is a long House mentality of the roost that is ruled by the hens in which our lives become very centered on female prerogatives.
Jordan Hall: We in this age, as Christians, have to strive against.
Jordan Hall: strive against the the Zeitgeist of our age that
Jordan Hall: looks at parenting and marriage within the lens of secular culture.
Jordan Hall: and to get back to a lens of Biblical culture where we're led and guided by the Word of God. And when we're led and guided by the Word of God, we see that
Jordan Hall: it is men that God has chosen to make the leaders of His home.
Jordan Hall: It's God that has chosen men, not culture, not tradition, not the patriarchy
Jordan Hall: to take the leadership prerogative when it comes to his children and to his wife. I think I did well in that for most of my marriage, but there was certainly a time when, due to exorbitant busyness.
Jordan Hall: even though a lot of those things I was busy doing was in my head, for God was certainly losing focus on the things that mattered most. And so we've adopted in terms of the farming. A very
Jordan Hall: simple lifestyle like I've not gone Amish yet. We're not Luddites, but we definitely, intentionally avoid certain aspects of technology, so that it's not a distraction, and that there, there's not an avenue of infiltration into our home of secular ideas that are contrary to the Scripture. And it's it's been a fun transition, but it's also been difficult, as we wean ourselves of some of those ideas.
TD: Yeah. And this is where I've
TD: thought that we did have a lot in common. 11 years ago. We relocated to Texas and one of our major, and prior to that
TD: I had a very successful construction company that that I didn't own it. It owned me, you know, and I was working 6 days a week, and we had 3 young children. And I can absolutely concur with everything that you're saying. And 11 years ago we decided, you know we want to
TD: live a slower, more intentional lifestyle, and it involved agrarianism. And that's why we talk about this so much is one. By becoming agrarian. We can
TD: more fully understand
TD: the analogies and the parables that God gives us in Scripture, whether it's the fig tree or the vine, or grafting, you know, and when you, and then with husbandry and animals, and when you participate in this, these analogies and parables come alive.
TD: and at this exact same time one, you are interfacing with God's creation as you were designed and intended.
TD: And you know, when you talk about this, you know, there's lots of people that are suburbanites. There's lots of people that are city dwellers, and they're stacked, packed and tracked, and their lives are completely synthetic. They're completely so artificial. They're so detached. And and when you slow down, and I'm not saying you can't do this in a city or a suburb. But when you slow down, and you.
TD: because, just like all of the social media which completely disconnects you and all this artificial environment and artificial communication. When you slow down and you live an intentional, simplified, simple life. It allows you one. It gives you time to think and ponder and meditate, and 2, the Scriptures come alive. You have more time
TD: to husband, your wife. You have more time to father your children. You have real one of the biggest challenges
TD: I saw growing up in a very incredibly blue collar by today's standards very poor, relatively speaking, I mean nobody's poor in America but compared to where we are now grew up poor. And so when you do have success, and you work hard. One of the things that I always wrestled with is, how do you create an environment where your kids grow up hard. And
TD: the one thing that I found is that the farm life and farm chores and grass and dirt, and outside, and life and death, and all the other things of life, whether it's procreation. When you, when you put yourself
TD: in an agrarian farm setting, you have all types of illustrations to talk to your children about to work with them, to lead them and guide them. And I, personally, I can't think of a better way and a better environment to raise a family, to husband your wife and to
TD: rear your children. It's an optimal situation, in my opinion, as far as to be the father, that God created you to be and to be in an environment that is slower, and that has the time and has all these built-in illustrations that you're perpetually interacting with every day. It's absolutely beautiful.
Jordan Hall: Yeah. So I wrote an article a few months ago called Tim Keller and the agrarian God. And so Tim Keller, he's a minister, or was, he's. He's passed away now in Manhattan, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Very toity, a very hoity toity, intellectual.
Jordan Hall: philosophical kind of Guy, and he enjoyed a positive reputation among a lot of lost people, reputation probably not as positive among people who are actually reformed and and Christian. He dabbled with
Jordan Hall: theistic evolution. He was one of the founders of biologos, etc. But in all of his writing there was a heavy
Jordan Hall: metropolitan and urban theme, and so his catechisms, the new city catechism, he would tweet things like we always talk about bringing the gospel to the city, but we never think about the gospel bringing the city to us, and I got to tell you.
Jordan Hall: even back before I was farming. I was still a rural guy, and I would look at that.
Jordan Hall: His infatuation with the city, his spiritualizing of it always in a positive sense, and I never felt more disconnected from an idea in my life as to when he would wax eloquent about the way that city life benefits us as Christians. He did an article on this topic, the city as a metaphor for God's kingdom on earth.
Jordan Hall: And you know, he said, things like, and this is a paraphrase, so it may not be exact. Something along the lines of the
Jordan Hall: It building cities
Jordan Hall: was the ultimate goal of God on earth. That that. And he's looking at eschatological language in reference to the New Jerusalem. Right? And he's like. So God wants us to build cities. And and so in that article, as I had done several times before, over the years, I kind of went through the Scripture.
Jordan Hall: starting in Genesis 3, and worked my way up through the end of the book and the Bible that is, and demonstrated that very seldom, if ever, did God ever have anything positive positive to say about the city?
Jordan Hall: Cain was the 1st builder of a city.
Jordan Hall: He was not in God's will. God told man to spread out, not to bulk up, not to wind up in a pile right? And then we go from. We go from Cain, the city builder to Nimrod, the city builder. We see
Jordan Hall: Babel, and we see Sodom and Gomorrah, and we see Nineveh. And then, if you think Jerusalem was a Holy City. Think again. God's most condemning language was reserved for Jerusalem, and the way it had become the hotbed of of wickedness, that it was not what God had intended it to be. But it seems like whenever humans
Jordan Hall: bulk up in a single place. That's where you have the infestation of crime and godlessness, and
Jordan Hall: the only city that will ever be worth living. One living in is the one that God Himself brings down from heaven.
Jordan Hall: And so you had mentioned a moment ago the the language that that God chose to employ, the metaphors of Scripture that are very agrarian, with
Jordan Hall: with David as a shepherd, and Jesus is our Good Shepherd, and the parable of the vine dresser, and the parable of the fig tree, and behold, the kingdom of God is like a sower who went out into his field to sow, and what Keller had said in that
Jordan Hall: article of his lauding the excellencies of city life, he said, well.
Jordan Hall: these were agrarian people, they would not have comprehended what it was like to live in a city. So God only employed.
Jordan Hall: The the Sitzm Laben, as Herman Gunkel would say, the the life setting of
Jordan Hall: of the ancient day Israelites, so that he would understand. And I'm saying to myself, Why, okay.
Jordan Hall: hear me out the Israelites were familiar with cities. As they escaped into the wilderness, they came out of
Jordan Hall: the most populated
Jordan Hall: city, the the most civilized nation on earth which would have been Egypt. They! They would have seen the Pyramids even back then they
Jordan Hall: they knew city life.
Jordan Hall: They understood how wicked Nineveh was, they understood Rome, they would have comprehended in the New Testament. Athens like these weren't a bunch of hillbillies and bumpkins that if God would have made a reference about urban living, they wouldn't have comprehended it, but rather God chose to employ language of
Jordan Hall: stewardship and animal husbandry and farming to be able to convey the ideal situation and setting that God created the world to be and to to further become.
Jordan Hall: And so, when I came out to the country life, I had had withdraws from Xanax, and fell and had seizures, and tore both my rotator cuffs. They had to life flight me because I almost died having seizures, and when I fell I really tore up the upper half of my body
Jordan Hall: really badly. When you're 6 foot 2 and fall down a flight of stairs repeatedly. It caused a lot of problems, and so there was a time when I couldn't pick up a bag or a piece of luggage. I couldn't. I couldn't carry groceries in from the house, and the doctor said, you have to
Jordan Hall: have surgery, rotator cuffs don't heal themselves, they just will not heal themselves. You can take some steroids and some other shots and try to do some physical therapy, but it's it's not going to work. And I asked him, can I ever can. I ever pull my bow back because I like to bow, hunt, and he's like, not without surgery. But even then it's not a guarantee.
Jordan Hall: The damage has been permanently done. So anyways, we bought this farm, and it had been farmed last about 30 years ago. The the farmstead itself was built in the year 1,900, but because it had just been used as a residence. No farming for 30 years there were wells, but the wells had to be
Jordan Hall: not Redug, but they had. They had to be recapped, and and I had to do. I had to plumb them, and I had to put up fences and barns and outbuildings, and so, within a course of about 45 days, I put in over 500 T posts.
Jordan Hall: pounding them one at a time into the ground, and my son, my oldest son, I used to have him pick up the post held. Driver, if you've ever, you know, driven a T. Post. You know, those those drivers are really heavy, right? So he would actually pick it up, put it over the 4 or 5 foot post, and then I would pound it. I didn't even have the strength to pick it up, but I could kind of pound it like this.
Jordan Hall: and within about 6 weeks to 2 months. My rotator cuffs were completely healed, my soldiers shoulders were completely fine. I can pull back a bow at like 60 pounds.
Jordan Hall: And so it was sort of a healing for me. It was the best physical therapy I could have imagined. I didn't even notice that it was physical therapy. It was just work that had to be done. But what I saw that, as was sort of an illustration of a rehab that I didn't just need like physical therapy in terms of
Jordan Hall: my shoulders. But I needed.
Jordan Hall: you know, I needed to be rehabbed in my soul, in my mind, and to me the farm was a healing place to do that, and a simple place to not focus on all of the distractions. You know
Jordan Hall: what I noticed is, and one of the problems that I had was sleep
Jordan Hall: before coming out to the farm.
Jordan Hall: The root of a lot of my troubles were sleep related, and
Jordan Hall: a couple of things really help you sleep well or help me sleep well. One is being exhausted from farm work right?
Jordan Hall: But the other one is
Jordan Hall: the lack of constant audible stimuli of cars driving by sirens, people walking down the street talking. And you know, even though a lot of that, that white noise when we live in town.
Jordan Hall: Our brain is still digesting and deciphering that on a subliminal level.
Jordan Hall: and going out to a quiet place where, if I hear a dog, it's my dog. If I if I if there's a car coming, they must be coming to my house. They'd be driving by for no other reason.
Jordan Hall: You know it brings a lot of peace to you when you're asleep, and I think it does it when you're awake, too. And so I think that city life wears on us a lot more than what we think. I don't think it's particularly good for our spirituality, and that's I'm not the 1st one to opine this, when someone can live a week, 2 weeks a month at a time in their life, and not see anything majestic that God has made, but all they see are the works of human hands.
Jordan Hall: Then you begin to appreciate the God of nature less because you're not seeing much of nature.
TD: Yeah. And it's very ironic that
TD: the power brokers and Wef and all those that want to help us. They want to consolidate us. They want to stack us, pack us and track us. And you know, I don't think that's I don't think that that's a coincidence, and even the founding fathers wrote extensively about how
TD: problematic cities were and how cities were
TD: the bane of humanity. I mean, there's lots of yeah. There's yeah. There's lots of writings on that.
Jordan Hall: Jefferson was the founding father that wrote about that, the most the importance of America in its soul being an agrarian nation. There's something about being tied to the land that is good for the American soul, because that's that's really who we are.
Jordan Hall: We are that it's the way it's supposed to be so like. If
Jordan Hall: you know I've got the farm lot right where I have a pasture where I can put goats and another one for sheep, and then another one for my Cooney Cooney pigs, and then the chickens kind of roam wherever they want. But but then I have land that I lease that is, around the house where you'd have your cattle roam. But
Jordan Hall: if there were a problem or like, so, for example, it freezes, and their water sources all froze up, or you need to round those things up
Jordan Hall: the the cows, that is, you then heard them into a corral.
Jordan Hall: and that's what you do to cattle right before you butcher them. That's what you do to cattle. When you're calving.
Jordan Hall: You put them all in a specific place where you can count them that you can feed them easily, and I think that the systems and the powers that be in this world very much view us as nothing but tax cattle. We exist to pay taxes where they're tax cattle. We are debt cattle for bankers, we are. We are
Jordan Hall: livestock. Essentially.
Jordan Hall: we're given a number just like a cow gets a numbered tag in the ear, and when we live in cities we can more easily be quote unquote, taken care of and fed by
Jordan Hall: by those authorities when we're out wandering on the open range.
Jordan Hall: we're a little bit harder to nail down and control, and I think that there is a concerted effort to put as many people into the cities as is humanly possible, because that's our corral. As humans.
TD: Yeah. And interestingly enough, when you do have dirt around you, and you can plant things in the ground or tend animals.
TD: All those things translate into food, and now you are more self-sufficient, which also becomes problematic when
TD: bankers are trying to control you. If you are more self-sufficient, and if your if your Hamburg is wandering around the backyard, you know, and not at the shelf at Walmart, or you know your chickens are laying eggs in the backyard. That is one. It's incredibly rewarding to experience that.
TD: And it's very illustrative for your children when you say, Okay, here's your chores. Your job is to feed and water. The chickens, keep the nest box clean and collect the eggs, you know, and then chickens are doing all the different things that chickens and roosters do, and then and then you're one of your younger
TD: sons or daughters will be like, hey? What's the what's the rooster doing to the chicken, you know. And all this, and it just provides these illustrations that are incredibly God designed and natural. And now you can have a conversation, and you don't have to read some creepy textbook.
Jordan Hall: You don't. You don't, I think, have to teach a child about the birds and the bees? Well.
Jordan Hall: and when you watch American television on sitcoms. There's always an episode about having to teach one of the kids birds and bees. I don't know any kid growing up in my very rural community like, you know, farm kid from the Ozarks. I don't think any of my friends got to talk by their parents.
Jordan Hall: because we've all been to a farm. We understand we like this isn't. Leave it to Beaver. We're living in the suburbs in the 19 fifties, and you know we've we've never taken a field trip out to the dairy farm like we understand how life works. So there's a lot of those
Jordan Hall: a lot of those lessons out there, right? My son asked me. Coming back from church on Sunday.
Jordan Hall: We we go to church 45 min away, so it allows for a lot of time a lot of time for conversation, and he asks about he had heard, maybe from from one of the teachers at the Christian school. They go to that in some places. You can't collect rainwater in a barrel, and he's like, What's that about?
Jordan Hall: And and so, I explained.
Jordan Hall: coming back from church is a great time to go on one of those epic rants, you know.
Jordan Hall: And so like, I went on, a pretty good tear about
Jordan Hall: the government wants you reliant upon them, so that you will be subservient to them so that you will owe
Jordan Hall: them.
Jordan Hall: They don't like the thought that you can just
Jordan Hall: have enough water at home without being attached to the municipal water supply. They don't like the thought of you getting water from a spring. They don't like the thought about getting you getting water from a well, which, by the way, try to dig a well sometimes
Jordan Hall: sometime, in most not municipalities, but even in most rural counties, the red tape you have to go through you have to put that on a map. The Commissioners know where all the wells are. You have to have permission. You've got to have an environmental impact study all of that. It has nothing to do with the environment, and it has everything to do with them controlling you.
Jordan Hall: It's kind of like a mask on your face. It's not about Covid. It's about what that represents. They don't like the thought of you going to your neighbor's house and buying a jug of fresh, unpasteurized milk.
Jordan Hall: They want you to have to go to the store.
Jordan Hall: They want you to have to go to the, to the grocery store and to enter into kind of the food supply network with everyone else, because a person that they cannot control is dangerous, and the best way to control people are by the food that's by the food that they eat.
Jordan Hall: because we all have that need as human beings what we drink and what we eat, and if they can't get you to
Jordan Hall: you know.
Jordan Hall: Get the shots and vaccines that they say you ought to have, you know. That's kind of up to you, but you're going to have. You're hungry. You're going to get hungry before the days out. And so the more dependent upon the rest of society
Jordan Hall: the better so far as they're concerned. I think this is why you've seen the videos we all have of Swat teams busting down. You know the Amish farmers market because they're selling cocaine, I mean. No, not cocaine. They're selling milk for crying out for crying out loud, they they need you to do that to become a part of that system. But I'll give you one other benefit, and that's not just like
Jordan Hall: in case there's a food shortage. You have food security, although that's pretty beneficial, right?
Jordan Hall: I think we all during Covid in the early days we all had that thought, okay, hold on a second. If there's a run on the grocery store. Are we going to have enough like? That's part of the peace of mind I have when I go to bed, too, knowing that I'm going to have milk. I'm going to have eggs. I'm going to have pork. I'm going to have chicken you know what that means. I'm going to live like, even even with, with a few dozen chickens, and you don't have to have a few dozen. It's just what I have with a few chickens with eggs
Jordan Hall: and with pork, you know, to raise hogs. You only need about 8 by 12 feet
Jordan Hall: for every 2 hogs. That's not much land. They'll eat absolutely anything. They're not expensive to eat, and if you have what like you have, and I have Kuni Kuni, they can eat grass all right. You can just let them go. Worst case scenario. You don't feed them at all. You just let them go eat grass. They'll come back at nighttime. You can kill and eat them later, like fantastic. That's you know. You're not going to be starving to death if something happens, but
Jordan Hall: it allows you mentally to say I can be resilient, I can persevere, and I can survive, and when you realize for the 1st time, once you become relatively self-sufficient, that you don't rely on the government. It makes you comprehend that you do indeed still rely on God, and that's part of that homestead mindset. If you meet homesteaders.
Jordan Hall: they are usually either people of faith or they're faith friendly like. You don't see too many hardcore atheist, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchen fans among homesteaders. They're open to it because
Jordan Hall: they can. They can throw off reliance upon the Government. They can homeschool and throw, throw off reliance on public education. They can, you know, choose not to leave their farm. They don't have to be reliant upon the transportation system right like they can just disconnect from all of that. But there's a part of their brain that still makes them know I can't throw off the yoke of reliance
Jordan Hall: upon my Creator, because if I farm, God has to make the rainfall he has to make the crops grow. He has to to bless the harvesting of my animals, and it's it's just a beautiful thing, and I tell you what, I'm thankful that so many people are talking about homesteading. I love it so much, and I hope a lot more people.
Jordan Hall: I hope what's happening is that it's a movement actually of the Holy Ghost that he's drawing his people to simplicity, to quiet, to resilience, and and to self-sufficiency.
TD: It
TD: really is. I mean when you, when you especially we're we're carnivore now, so we're not planting as much crops or anything. But we are. I have about 400 fruit trees and and graft. I became
TD: fascinated and obsessed with grafting. Once I tried it to perfect it.
Jordan Hall: Do you have enough water in Texas for 400 fruit trees?
TD: We sequester our gray water, and we've been able to make it work.
TD: They're planted in such a way that
TD: some zones are not watered, but then we do. We have a well, and so we we drip, irrigate them. So I'm still. I'm still trying to
TD: perfect all that. But, largely speaking. Yes, for for about a hundred or so they're they're all kind of
TD: passively watered. And then the other ones are more experimental with like, how much water do you really need? Because they'll grow great? They just the fruit.
TD: The fruit production won't be there, or in the summer they'll get scorched because it just gets blazingly hot. But it's it's so.
TD: I became so fascinated with grafting. And then once you
TD: once you start participating in that and the analogies. It's so. It's so transformative. And you know you hate to.
TD: you hate to like try you don't. The intention isn't try to make it something bigger than what it is, or different than what it is. But it's so neat how the way God created everything. And if we're interacting and participating in that, and that's that kind of like leads back to
TD: Christian fatherhood and postmodern American Christianity where a lot of Christians will regurgitate. Oh, yes, you know the Bible is our final authority for all matters of faith and practice. Right and a lot of them will focus on the faith part and the doctrine part, and they'll teach that. But when it comes to the practice and the practical, you know that all gets
TD: be synthetic and analogized right? And so so it literally gets dismissed
TD: due to just like you were talking about between feminism and very much so American Christianity is completely controlled by feminism and psychology. And I mean, they're almost the same thing to be really honest with you psychology. And
TD: you know, psychology is basically what is the foundation of feminism, in my opinion. And when you take those 2 things, and you're saying that yes, all matters of faith and practice. But then you reject the practice part because of you know, egalitarianism and complementarianism. You know, this is how
TD: we as fathers. This is how this inordinate imbalance has taken place to where
TD: you know this is why people don't know what their gender is, and all this stuff, and and it's why there's pastrixes and.
Jordan Hall: I in so many different ways. Those illustrations given to us in Scripture related to farming and animal husbandry.
Jordan Hall: have have
Jordan Hall: started to mean so much more to me than they already did, and I think that, like I'm a pretty literate guy like I know the Bible pretty well.
Jordan Hall: you know. I I sure would have thought that I understood all of those illustrations.
Jordan Hall: but when you start to do it yourself, I remember
Jordan Hall: So I had a a dog, bite one of my sheep.
Jordan Hall: and I did not know that it had bit the sheep. I I thought that
Jordan Hall: I thought that they had an interaction.
Jordan Hall: but I couldn't see there was no blood. It wasn't acting
Jordan Hall: like it was hurt, or anything like that.
Jordan Hall: And so by the time I found out that the dog had bit it up underneath
Jordan Hall: the armpit on the front leg. A week later the infection had already grown.
Jordan Hall: and there was nothing I could do to to save that sheep's life.
Jordan Hall: It was too far gone.
TD: Hmm.
Jordan Hall: And
Jordan Hall: it's I get emotional about it. But I had to put it down
Jordan Hall: like I could have taken it to the vet and see if the vet could save this animal's life. But when you're a homesteader and like cash is not in abundance, and it just it made no sense right?
Jordan Hall: it just it made no financial sense. You have to make some tough decisions when you're when you're raising animals sometimes.
Jordan Hall: But I didn't have a firearm and so I mean.
Jordan Hall: I listen. I've I've gutted a lot of deer, and I've I've killed a lot of deer like they're wounded with a bow or you know it wasn't a great shot their gut shot
Jordan Hall: I've taken the lives of a lot of creatures with a knife, but like that was different.
Jordan Hall: That was so different. It was.
Jordan Hall: It was almost a traumatic experience for me like, and and I'm a guy that would kill 6 or 7 deer a year, 2 antelope and an elk.
Jordan Hall: and gut them and butcher them, and and I'm not. I'm not queasy, but it's like God.
Jordan Hall: God put me in charge of this sheep.
Jordan Hall: A neighbor's dog got through my parameter and bit this sheep.
Jordan Hall: and now I have to jam a knife
Jordan Hall: into this thing, which was the most humane option available at the time, and
Jordan Hall: it was just traumatic. And and I I realized in that moment that I would give my life
Jordan Hall: for my sheep like I get it, and I have these 2 livestock guardian dogs like they're half Pyrenees, half half Anatolian shepherd, and they would. They would, too, right like. I don't know if you've been around those Lgds much, but like they would so die for their sheep. I I saw a headline about one. I think it was in Georgia, Alabama, somewhere in the southeast. And like
Jordan Hall: this.
Jordan Hall: this Anatolian or this this half Pyrenees dog like killed 8 coyotes, and like disappeared for a few days
Jordan Hall: and then they they said, well, the reason it disappeared is because it it ran off to kill the rest of the pack of coyotes that came into this guy's farm. So like it was like a liam neeson
Jordan Hall: action movie. This dog is chasing down these coyotes, killing them one by one like I get it. I understand that on a deeper level like when I see a coyote. Now, it's like it's not just like I want to shoot you for sport. It's like
Jordan Hall: you are an enemy of this thing that God has given me charge over like it's so deep and emotional. One other example that I'll give you.
Jordan Hall: You know I have in the past struggled with anxiety, and I've had a lot of pressure in the last few years, and it's hard for me to get my mind off of stuff and idle hands, or devil's playground all of that, and so I would disappear for hours at a time. My wife be like, where are you at?
Jordan Hall: And I'm in the woods cutting down trees. Why are you cutting down trees.
Jordan Hall: I.
Jordan Hall: So
Jordan Hall: you know, those power washing videos that people watch on Youtube or like they're doing lawn maintenance. And they're weed eating. And it's cathartic for people to watch right like it's so cathartic to see it go from from disorganized to organized, from tall to short to dirty to clean.
Jordan Hall: and in my mind, and I was trying to explain this to my son one day as I go out in the woods. For no reason, I don't have a particular plan for this parcel of of timber.
Jordan Hall: God gave a Dominion mandate to take control over the earth, to dominate it, right to to improve it, to do something with it, to manicure it, to take care of it.
Jordan Hall: And it did me spiritual good to take about 2 and a half acres is all. It was of overgrown forest, and then to tame it.
Jordan Hall: to make something that was wild, domesticated.
Jordan Hall: There's something in us as men that benefit spiritually from taking unmanageable things and then making them manageable. And so me out there cutting standing timber with a chainsaw, and then you break out a hatchet and a machete for the smaller stuff, and then you do a controlled burn, and by the time you're done you have something that's pretty beautiful to look at.
Jordan Hall: But that did a lot for my, for my physical discipline and my financial discipline and my
Jordan Hall: my discipline and organization at my day job at work. It was like, if you can. If you can take control of 2 and a half acres of wilderness and tame it, you can take your checkbook and balance it. You can take your bed and make it. You can take your fat butt to the gym and lose some weight. You understand what I'm saying. It's
Jordan Hall: the discipline in farming or land management
Jordan Hall: helps the discipline with everything else in your life, and when you take people away from that.
Jordan Hall: we lose something of spiritual discipline like in in suburban areas in in town. We've all seen those people like we might have been neighbors to some, like the old guy that mows his yard twice a week right, and he's out there. I had a neighbor. He would be out there with a measuring tape, measuring his grass, and if it got just a little bit too long he'd be out there cutting it. Why do they do that? Think about it for a moment? Why do people in suburbia
Jordan Hall: pay to water the grass
Jordan Hall: like they pay to put in sprinklers and pay a higher water bill to water the grass than they pay to fertilize the grass just so they can go out and cut the grass more often.
Jordan Hall: So they're they're paying to water. They're paying to fertilize. They're paying for herbicides and pesticides. Keep the dandelions from growing, then they're cutting it more often. Why, okay, I don't think it's just because people need something to do. It's because God is placed within the heart of men in particular.
Jordan Hall: the desire to sow and reap.
Jordan Hall: to plant and harvest. There's something in them that says you should be planting this time of year, so they're excited about going to Home depot, or Lowe's or the Walmart Garden Center and getting their, you know their fertilizer, their topsoil, whatever the 2 cycle oil for their weed eater that time of year, there's something in your heart that says
Jordan Hall: you are tied to the seasons just as much as the rest of God's wildlife.
Jordan Hall: and then it's time to harvest, and in the fall we're putting up our place for winter. It's not just like, Oh, I'm a dad with new balances and white knee, high socks, and this is what I grill, and I like mowing the yard. Bro. That is something that God put in your heart that you can't divorce yourself from. He's done that he gave the times and seasons, and so
Jordan Hall: it's just when you don't have a farm, or even a garden. You do really lame stuff to satisfy that innate desire God gives you, which is, you know cutting dandelions in your lawn. I'm sorry to ramble, brother. I get excited about this stuff. It's it's fulfilling a primal urge that God gave me, and I think He gives everyone.
Jordan Hall: and I'm just so thankful that God allows me to satisfy that that in my heart, through those things that make my family healthier, make me more active and and gives us, you know, things like food security and important life lessons.
TD: Yeah, 2, 2 things on that. So you know, I mentioned, I have 400 fruit trees. Well, exactly. What you were saying is, once it's in you. You get so excited because I didn't start out, obviously with 400 fruit trees, and I started out planting and then propagating the trees that I had, and then every spring was like.
TD: and and I came up. You know, I got out of the market the financial market in 2,008. And so, as the Lord prospered us, and I didn't want the money sitting in the bank, I'm like, well, what should we do? And I came up with this idea of like a food. 401 K. And I'm like, well, if we get enough dirt and we buy a cow, you know that is, that's our food. 401 k. And then
TD: if I plant a tree, I mean, you know these fruit trees. So every spring I'd be like. I need to plant more trees, and it was so enjoyable and fulfilling.
TD: And then, when it comes to like forestry management, you know, when we bought this place it was. It was definitely a dump with lots of trash and the
TD: the back because this used to be a watermelon farm where we live here, and all the trees had grown up to within
TD: maybe 40 feet of the back door, and it was when we moved here. Our 3 oldest were little. They were like
TD: 12, 9, and 7 something somewhere in that range, and those 3 young men with hammers, Hacksaw, and a Sawzall, cleared an entire acre.
TD: the entire back acre. And that was part of that training ground. And and that just that work ethic and
TD: the the
TD: bizarre insanity as an adult, right? And you're watching these young boys. And now in in modern, in postmodern, Karen, America, helicopter parent America. It's like, Oh, John, don't let Johnny don't give Johnny a Sawzall. He'll cut his finger off, you know. But
TD: there, with this freedom and frontier, and another thing that you were mentioning is, we read these biographies and autobiographies of these Kit Carsons, right and these Jim Bridgers, and this
TD: just
TD: going out into this frontier and taming the frontier, made these men like these tall tale. It's unbelievable when you read of their exploits and what they actually did, and the character that they had
TD: the frontier
TD: is largely responsible for that, because one they didn't have a choice right? And then the draw of that raw, untamed land is what drove them to domesticate it, and to make it
TD: better, and to make it more. And we've seen that so much in our own life with with practicing this type of lifestyle. The proof is in the pudding. I mean, it is self-evident, and it is incredibly satisfying. And you know, because parents are always reaching out. How do you get your kids to do this stuff. And and how do you create buy-in? And
TD: you know, yeah, you're you're accumulating all this property. And you want to build a living legacy, and you want your children to to build on on your property. And you want to create this old.
TD: this, this
TD: you know pre 18 hundreds, kind of like a real family homestead where the family didn't you know your your oldest son didn't fly off to New York City to live in a high rise, you know, and
TD: and it's it's fascinating how the Lord you know there was. We didn't read a book about it, and you know we didn't watch a documentary about it. We, you know, God gave us these ideas, and we just did our best to try to implement them. And the fruit of it is is incredible.
Jordan Hall: So, you know, in terms of your fruit trees. It reminds me of of a
Jordan Hall: saying that I tried to trace the source of it. I could never find it. Precisely, but it's most people think it originated in the East from from a Confucius type figure, but the the expression is something along the lines of the man who plants
Jordan Hall: a tree.
Jordan Hall: knowing he will not live long enough to rest in its shade, has discovered the meaning and purpose of life.
Jordan Hall: And but how true is that? Because
Jordan Hall: you know, as I'm planting trees.
Jordan Hall: I think about well, what kind of tree do I want? Well, you can buy this tree over here. It's it's less expensive for sure, and there will be some marginal shade
Jordan Hall: that'll be produced in about 6 to 7 years.
Jordan Hall: But you know my kids are playing around these trees that are. I assume they were planted when the house was built. So they're 125 years old.
Jordan Hall: and 5 grown men couldn't stretch their arms out and make a chain around these trees, and they're just absolutely gorgeous. They're probably at the end of their life cycle, I would imagine.
Jordan Hall: And I mean, I'm gonna be.
Jordan Hall: I'm going to be depressed when these things eventually die like every winter storm I'm looking at. I'm like, please don't fall down. You know. They're getting up there in years.
Jordan Hall: but it's about leaving something for your kids that you're developing that you're growing. And so I have this
Jordan Hall: this neat place that I've described for you where there were wells in the ground that were capped.
Jordan Hall: Probably 50 years ago, because 30 years ago the place got on rural water.
Jordan Hall: And so, like, I'm uncapping these things and testing the water and
Jordan Hall: seeing how deep they are, and nobody can tell me. And they're not on this, the the State
Jordan Hall: website for registered wells. So like nobody knows they're here. And I have to find out about these things. And
Jordan Hall: and it's like I, I get these things going again. And
Jordan Hall: it's they're 27 feet deep. And there's about
Jordan Hall: 19 feet of water in them.
Jordan Hall: and it sure looks clear. You can see to the bottom.
Jordan Hall: And I had it tested. It's flawless water. I filled up a swimming pool with it. We bought a swimming pool, filled it up like a big one.
Jordan Hall: and the next day it's full of water again, and like I'm getting misty eyed and tearing, tearing up, as I've
Jordan Hall: like, you know. Realizing this about.
Jordan Hall: I didn't dig that well right. Somebody did. 125 years ago, and they provided water for my family. They provided water for my kids to swim in. They provided water for my animals to drink, because somebody that I'll never know.
Jordan Hall: and I'll never be able to say Thank you.
Jordan Hall: Went to the effort of digging it by hand, because that was the only way to do it back then, and they they lined it with stones. They built it well.
Jordan Hall: and if Jesus tarries it could go another 125 years. So as you're making these improvements to land, you're building things. You're putting up fences. It's it's crazy. What goes through your mind as a farmer that it may not if you were just a suburban dad, so like when I build a fence and I'm making corner posts.
Jordan Hall: I think to myself, things like.
Jordan Hall: Will my grandkids have to rebuild this because I did a shoddy job.
Jordan Hall: I'm not building it for me.
Jordan Hall: I'm building it for people that don't want to have to reinvest in new fencing right? At least the corner posts make them well.
Jordan Hall: And so it kind of ties the generations together as you do that, and I think it's from that simple concept of you Plant.
Jordan Hall: You may never lift the harvest.
Jordan Hall: but God will bring it. Somebody's somebody's going to benefit from the harvest. And I think about the people that planted those trees originally.
Jordan Hall: and how many children just like mine over the last 125 years played tag with this tree as base.
Jordan Hall: and you know you live in the city, and you know you.
Jordan Hall: you you have landscaping that doesn't take into account your grandchildren, right? It takes into account like the Hoa rules.
Jordan Hall: Yeah. We miss something from our life that I I think I think would benefit every Christian believer to go put their
Jordan Hall: their feet
Jordan Hall: in the grass once in a while. Which, by the way, now that I'm thinking about it. Let me throw this into as like I'm recovering from
Jordan Hall: I'm talking 2 and a half years ago, recovering from all the crap that I went through in that busy part of my life the health issues
Jordan Hall: that were really bad. I lost a bunch of weight, not healthy.
Jordan Hall: and I noticed a couple things. The 1st one was I would feel really good after getting a sunburn.
Jordan Hall: Well, it's you get. You get vitamin d from the sun. It is good for you. I'm not sure a sunburn is, but it's like.
Jordan Hall: I don't know. Your skin starts tingling because you've been out in the heat. There's just something about it that makes you feel alive inside, like zapped but alive. But I started to notice how my mental health would improve with my feet actually being in the dirt.
Jordan Hall: And this was before I had ever researched or studied grounding. I don't know if you know much about that. Yeah.
Jordan Hall: But turns out a lot of people think, and there are some studies at least, that indicate that
Jordan Hall: there are actually some very significant health, not just mental, but health benefits from having your feet in the actual grass and and in the dirt. And so, you know.
Jordan Hall: who would have thought that living kind of a lifestyle
Jordan Hall: that the Bible suggests that we live would be good for us. You know we we are just much too interested in in easy solutions, you know,
Jordan Hall: instead of a hard life, that at the end of the day is actually much better for us.
TD: And in the exact same way, you know, we're talking about fatherhood, and we're talking about
TD: long-term thinking, rethinking, your thinking legacy, thinking, you know legacy is maybe
TD: thinking 70 years out. We live in such an instant gratification society, and most of our most of the postmodern thought is well, what benefits me and what benefits me like either. 30 seconds from now, whether it's what's whatever Styrofoam plastic, wrapped, highly processed, delectable, you know. Lunchable thing is going to come out of the microwave.
TD: or you know, or what I'm going to get through the fast food drive through versus this long term legacy, thinking where you're actually doing things for your posterity, and you know we can do them now with our posterity.
TD: my wife
TD: and and my goal. When we started rethinking our life and lifestyle is, we want to give an inheritance to our children in our lifetime so that we can participate with them, and by participating with them. We can give them the wisdom that we've been given, and we can walk them through that process rather than
TD: hoard all the get all you can can all you get sit on the can, and when you croak, you know, give it to your benefactors, but they don't have any.
TD: They're not used to using the money and properly, and being a good steward, and you're going to ruin them that way. That that's a where, if you change your mindset and you have a long term generational thinking. And if you're thinking 70 years out, and when you plant that tree, if you're thinking long term, you're like, well, wait a minute. Maybe I should move the tree over there.
TD: you know, and it is. It's so powerful like what you were saying is just considering the people that have gone before you that dug that well. And and when you really start applying this to like the different aspects of your life.
TD: this is what creates a Christian father
TD: where you are going. You know you're not thinking about tomorrow. You're not thinking about when your child is turning 20. But you're thinking about when your child's child
TD: is turning 20, you know, and it and it will. It will greatly impact the decisions you make. It'll greatly affect the way you spend your money, what you do on a daily basis.
Jordan Hall: It's like, I think, that a lot of people might listen to you say that and say, Well, I don't live in the country. I don't have a farm, but I understand the concept, because, you know, when we do work to the house, we're thinking about its resell value. We're thinking about additions and accoutrements and and a few different things that whatever we can do to keep the resell value high.
Jordan Hall: And it's like that, it's completely different. Like, yeah, you're taking care of your stuff you're not thinking about just for today, you're thinking about the future.
Jordan Hall: But it's a complete different level than thinking.
Jordan Hall: This is actually the table that my
Jordan Hall: grandchildren are going to sit at.
Jordan Hall: or this is the piece of property that they know come hell or high water, they can always come home.
Jordan Hall: If there's an apocalyptic event we go to the farm.
Jordan Hall: and if somebody dies we go to the farm.
Jordan Hall: and if somebody gets married we go to the farm.
Jordan Hall: The farm is just where we go. It's where the family goes. It's
Jordan Hall: it's not the family, but it's so closely tied like. It would be weird for us not to be here now. I'm not saying that we're going to live here forever. I may not buy another farm. But we're thinking about.
Jordan Hall: A farm, or or just a simple homestead.
Jordan Hall: A homestead is not something that a man does for himself.
Jordan Hall: A homestead by its very nature is something that he does for his family.
Jordan Hall: and that's a different mindset than you know just living in an apartment. If it wasn't for my family. I would not be living this lifestyle.
Jordan Hall: I I just wouldn't.
Jordan Hall: I would, if it was just me.
Jordan Hall: But like for real, I would probably buy a camper
Jordan Hall: and just just move it behind the pickup truck
Jordan Hall: to different. You know. Bureau of Land management.
Jordan Hall: You know, accesses around the country and National forests.
Jordan Hall: and just kind of you know I would. I would be like a gypsy
Jordan Hall: living on as little money as possible out in the woods.
Jordan Hall: and you know I might just pick up and move to a new hauler like I could have that type of nomadic, disconnected life, and live out in the woods and be fine, and I could live in a different patch of woods next month, and this month, and I'd be fine. But this is about. This is about roots, another, you know, agricultural metaphor. And and so that's what we're doing with family. We're we're we're building these roots. And I was thinking about this the other day when
Jordan Hall: It was about 2 weeks ago, and there's snow on the ground, and it's really cold, and my son was like iffy like. Maybe he should go to school. Maybe he shouldn't. He had just gotten over a sickness.
Jordan Hall: and I could have done all of the chorring that morning myself.
Jordan Hall: I did the day before, when he was, you know, sicker than he was then, and it so
Jordan Hall: I made the conscious decision to make him go with me to do the chores with me
Jordan Hall: because I wanted him to grow up tough and realize that animals still need fed. Even when you're sick.
Jordan Hall: animals still have to be taken care of, even when you don't feel well.
Jordan Hall: And so it's like I didn't make him get out there while he had the flu, but it's like that. No, we and I certainly didn't need his help. But it's about a life lesson we get up and do things we don't want to do, even when we don't feel well, because some things just have to be done. And there's nothing
Jordan Hall: in a suburban
Jordan Hall: condo, for example, or an apartment complex, or, you know, just a shotgun shack in the middle of town. There's nothing quite like that equates in the same way where some other living creature is going to require you in your discomfort and in your cold, and not feeling well to be there for them.
Jordan Hall: And so I I think it's character developed. I hope so, or he's going to grow up and hate me, for you know, being a slave driver. But it's it's about.
Jordan Hall: It's about a lesson much more long term than what I could ever give in a suburban suburban environment.
TD: Yeah. And I think I think maybe in the moment when they're experiencing it, Dad.
TD: gonna make me, you know. But I can absolutely attest to the fact. You know my oldest son is 20. I think he's 20, or he's almost 20, and no, his birthday is very, very soon. He's not 20. My son is 19, and he's married now, and and I would always say to him, I know what you're thinking, you know, but he so appreciates it now, and and his wife
TD: they appreciate the lifestyle. They love the lifestyle, they want the lifestyle. I don't know if that was always the case. He's always been. He's always been an animal lover, and he's always, you know, loved carrying around the baby Cooneys or the chickens, or whatever. But it absolutely is the training ground for for young men, and we have one little farm girl, and she
TD: she just embraces the lifestyle, and we do. We all run around barefoot, and we do lots of grounding and all that. Good stuff.
TD: And it it is.
TD: It is a perfect environment for raising and rearing and training a family, and it provides you the opportunities to think long term, think long range and build and do, because, just like you were saying you could do the nomadic thing. I said, man, I could live on a wet, flat rock. I don't need any of this stuff, you know. I can deal, and I can cope, and I can exist.
TD: and I can be content. But I'm doing this for my family, and it is it just just as Christ gave Himself to the church. The father's role is to sacrificially give of himself, which is going to be financially. It's going to be physically, it's going to be mentally, and it's not about
TD: all the extracurricular activities, the paintball and the tennis and all the sports and all these things. But it's about. It's literally sacrificing those things and saying no, these things that give me temporal satisfaction and blessing do not benefit
TD: my children and my wife, and so I sacrificially give them up to do the things that I'm called to do, and and to embrace the higher calling, and to and to live it out. These these matters of practice.
Jordan Hall: Yeah, I you know the the part of living in a a simplified life that is so rewarding is
Jordan Hall: when you recognize that you don't have as much time as you thought you had for the things that you thought you needed to do.
Jordan Hall: you know. So I think a lot of us are aware of the lie that that women are told in our culture that you can have it all right. A lot's been said about that, that. You can be a full time, mom, and you can be a full time career, lady.
Jordan Hall: and it's like, No, you literally can't, though. I mean, that's just not how that works. And so in the life that I had lived, which was, you know, a pastor and polemicist, and a political kingmaker and
Jordan Hall: speechwriter and ghostwriter. And there's all these different things that I was doing. I kind of believed a version of that lie myself, which is, I have time for all of this somehow.
Jordan Hall: and I had to hit a wall for me to realize you literally don't
Jordan Hall: have time for all of that like like I felt like
Jordan Hall: god was saying, like, I'm not trying to be mean, but you actually
Jordan Hall: don't have all the time in the world. You're on a clock, and so I would always pray that God would magnify my time, that somehow he would allow me to to
Jordan Hall: let me get 32 h of work done in a 24 h day. But it's the most stubborn, stupid thing, because
Jordan Hall: time is the great equalizer, no matter who you are.
Jordan Hall: pauper or prince, king, potentate, beggar doesn't matter.
Jordan Hall: You have
Jordan Hall: 24 HA day. The sun will rise and the sun will set because you're not the center of the universe.
Jordan Hall: You don't determine how much time nature gives you. You have the seasons just like everyone who's ever lived on this planet has had the seasons. They are what they are. You are finite, your speck of dust, your vanity. You have the limitations that God has provided you.
Jordan Hall: Okay. And
Jordan Hall: I think that you know things like electricity, which I'm not against. Obviously I've got electricity, but things like electricity have fooled
Jordan Hall: our circadian rhythm.
TD: So, so to speak. Yeah, that's why I got the block or something.
Jordan Hall: We have this, we have this artificial, I think, self aggrandizing, almost
Jordan Hall: godlike thought in our head that we are beyond
Jordan Hall: the limitations of light and dark like. I don't have to get my work done before sundown. I'll just go inside and turn the lights on right like. So it's like we've mastered darkness by light, and that concept has kind of overflowed to the watch on our wrists where we're like. Well, if I don't have to have this work done before the sun goes down, because I've got electricity on at the house. Then maybe in some way.
Jordan Hall: I don't know that time will work differently for me than for other people. And you're like, I'm just. I'm going to get all this done. I'm going to be a good dad. I'm going to be a good husband, and I'm going to spend 10 or 12 HA day at this job. I'm going to spend 3 HA day on this side hustle, and then I'm going to spend, you know, a little bit of time with my family, and it will all work out, and I had to reach a place in my life where it's like. No, you're going to hit a wall is what you're going to hit.
Jordan Hall: You can't do all that. And so you're going to be not as good a Christian as you should be, and you're going to be a crappy husband, and you're going to be a disappointing father, and you're going to be, you know. Eventually you'll even be bad at things like your job. You're going to have no time for anything of interest to you personally, because, you know, a lot of people in the course of human events have been enslaved by others. But in this culture and in this age we enslave ourselves.
Jordan Hall: We enter into willingly of our own volition, slavery.
Jordan Hall: because we're rats in a race that we could pull ourselves out of at any time.
Jordan Hall: We just don't.
Jordan Hall: And so the Homestead movement is
Jordan Hall: is full of people who it? A light bulb went off over their head, and they thought to themselves, I can get off this ride whenever I want.
Jordan Hall: and they just get off the ride.
Jordan Hall: and it seems complicated, right like
Jordan Hall: like it can't be that easy.
Jordan Hall: and and there might be things you have to do like pay off debt, or something else like. Decide to live on less, sell some property.
Jordan Hall: you know. Pray, that God blesses you with a piece of land that you can afford, or whatever like things may have to align. But you actually can
Jordan Hall: escape from the rat race whenever you want. You don't have to keep up with the Joneses.
Jordan Hall: Yeah, hey, listen to this. This is now, you can cut this out of the podcast if you want to, because this is
Jordan Hall: maybe a little controversial. It might even be sinful. I'm not sure you can. You can tell me what you think. But.
Jordan Hall: You don't have to give your kids a college fund.
Jordan Hall: Believe it or not, you don't have to. You don't have to give them trust.
TD: Didn't.
TD: Yeah.
Jordan Hall: Okay. So I'm not.
Jordan Hall: I'm not alone in that. So there's like these expectations like, I. I hear people call into Dave Ramsey, and they're like, you know, they they talk about.
Jordan Hall: I've only got $40,000 in my kids savings college savings. And I'm like you guys are saving for your kids. I'm terrible, but it's like, No, really, I don't have to do that. There's no law that says I have to do that. There's no Scripture that says I have to do that. I'm not going to work myself to death now, so that my my daughter can have a Bmw. At her sweet 16 party, and we can make a reality show out of it. I don't have to, you know.
Jordan Hall: Be able to give my son a check for for $40,000 a year for the course of 4 to 6 years for him to go get a degree that he probably doesn't really need. In the 1st place, like I can just opt out of this whole thing. It's a free country. It's a free world. I can just decide not to do it.
TD: Yeah. And what if, instead of doing all that right and this higher education? What if, instead, when your son says, I want to get married.
TD: What if you can not give him the money? What if you can make your son a loan
TD: that he could never get at a bank?
TD: And
TD: he could build a home.
Jordan Hall: Right and I.
TD: How powerful is that.
Jordan Hall: I'm I'm probably running out of time here. I've got.
TD: Yes, yeah, this is, gonna be it.
Jordan Hall: A few minutes, but on that point you know, I can tell you, getting a little bit emotional about that. I do, too. And here's why. Okay.
Jordan Hall: you and I. Our generation might be the last generation in America that can own a home
Jordan Hall: and and and own a farm that was not inherited.
Jordan Hall: If you weren't born into money. It's been this way in Europe for for a couple 100 years now, because they don't make more land.
Jordan Hall: If you're a homeowner, you are either ridiculously successful, like, like off the chart, successful.
Jordan Hall: or it was willed to you, and
Jordan Hall: all the things that we're talking about, require property, land.
TD: Yeah, right.
Jordan Hall: So one of the things I did from
Jordan Hall: from the time my kids were small I had in my in my head.
Jordan Hall: The 5 guns that I wanted to buy each kid before they turned 18,
Jordan Hall: and I started with the ones that I thought were most likely to be illegal.
Jordan Hall: So the 1st gun all of my kids got was an AR. 15, because I figured by the time
Jordan Hall: they were 18 it'd probably be legal by then
Jordan Hall: I wanted to be able to do that for them, because I didn't think they were going to be able to do that themselves.
Jordan Hall: You know our our parents, and especially our grandparents, they were able to purchase property. It was no big deal, a 20 acre farm. That's
Jordan Hall: man. You practically giving it away. And now
Jordan Hall: the the boomers that bought homes for $30,000
Jordan Hall: are now worth a half 1 million, or maybe a million, depending upon where they're at.
Jordan Hall: and that has been their savings. That's been their retirement, their home.
Jordan Hall: and very selfishly most of them are selling that home,
Jordan Hall: taking the money, retiring on it, using that, as their.
Jordan Hall: you know, life savings, and that's their nest egg. It is their house. In the meantime their children
Jordan Hall: are living in 2 bedroom apartments.
Jordan Hall: Yeah. And they just unless again, if they're just like a normal person that
Jordan Hall: they, they're going to go work at the factory. They're going to drive a truck. They, you know, she's going to be a hairdresser. He might be a school teacher like like homeownership is going to be out of the
Jordan Hall: the question for them. It's just, it's not going to happen. And for our children that's especially true.
Jordan Hall: And so I think that one thing everybody should do, if if they have that intergenerational mindset, is
Jordan Hall: you buy a piece of land big enough
Jordan Hall: that your children will at least be able to put a home somewhere.
Jordan Hall: and so when we bought this farm, we bought a parcel that was not connected, but nearby, for 2 reasons, number one, because it had water, and I wanted the water source.
Jordan Hall: but also because I I thought to myself, I want I want a place for my
Jordan Hall: for my daughter, for my son to be able to put a house.
TD: Yeah.
Jordan Hall: It's about, you know, and the Scripture says a wise man leaves an inheritance for his children.
TD: It's children, children, yeah.
Jordan Hall: And it's children's children right, and I don't think that has to be money in the bank. But it may be.
Jordan Hall: how's this? It could just be a place that they can call home.
TD: Yep.
Jordan Hall: And that's more important than money in the bank.
TD: Well, that is awesome. And we were talking about time, and how
TD: finite it is, and we are running out of time. So the one thing I almost forgot, is every
TD: guest on the fearless podcast gets a free gift, and I believe you are an American, and red blood flows through your veins, so I would assume that you drink coffee.
Jordan Hall: I do drink coffee. Yeah.
Jordan Hall: Well, we have our own coffee line. And so we have.
TD: Dark medium and light roast, and then we have a new white coffee, which is 1st crack roast, and it's high in caffeine. But I didn't know what what you would prefer when it comes to.
Jordan Hall: You know, I think
Jordan Hall: I like my coffee like I like my women, which is white and highly caffeinated. So
Jordan Hall: no, I'm just kidding terrible joke. Yeah, give me that. Give me that, that the white we'll see
Jordan Hall: white roast.
Jordan Hall: Yeah, we'll try.
TD: Great. Great. Yeah, I'll get your address. This has been absolutely what I expected to be. It's been phenomenal. Greatly appreciate it. Hope I can get you back on soon. I know you got to run. Greatly appreciate your time, appreciate your insight. This has just been a blessing, and in closing anything, anything I mean. I think we really talked about it. But is there anything you want to say in closing.
Jordan Hall: No, I I would just well, I mean yeah. Let me let me add that
Jordan Hall: if if your life, like like mine had been for a while gets really chaotic.
Jordan Hall: And you struggle with priorities.
Jordan Hall: You should never be too busy that you can't get alone with you and the Lord, and ask yourself a very serious and sincere question. That is, what kind of life do I want to live?
Jordan Hall: And 1st and foremost, at the center of that has to be
Jordan Hall: Jesus Christ. And so you know, I take it that you're a Christian, and I bet a lot of your listeners are. But you know that
Jordan Hall: the gospel of of Jesus Christ is His death, burial, and resurrection to save us.
Jordan Hall: and we can develop a lifestyle and some habits and
Jordan Hall: a homestead, and and adopt all of those.
Jordan Hall: all of those life tips and good habits.
Jordan Hall: But without Christ we may have a lot of peace surrounding us, but we won't have it in our heart.
Jordan Hall: and that's super valuable. So if you've not yet repented of your sins and believe the gospel, I would really encourage you to
Jordan Hall: to turn to the Scripture, and to begin to explore what it means to do that. But no, that's that's all I've got to say thanks so much for having me. I sure appreciate it. I do want to talk to you sometime about Kuni Kuni. I've got a lot of questions for you, sure. So let's talk about that another time.
TD: Great. Well, we appreciate. Y'all, we love and appreciate you. This is a value for value proposition. So if you do enjoy our content, go on over to thetexasboys.com. We do have the coffee, the honey. My daughter-in-law is launching a new tallow based skin line. So be checking that out. Make sure you're signed up for our newsletter, and we'll see you all on the next show.
Jordan Hall: Thanks, so much.