Movement Series IV: From the Land — Post 12

Before you plant another damn thing, make sure you know what you’re trying to grow.

I’ve never been much of a gambler. Never cared much for casinos, slot machines, or putting my hard-earned money on a table and hoping the odds work out in my favor.

Funny thing is, I might be one of the biggest gamblers I know.

I decided to build a farm.

Not buy one. Build one.

In an age when food production is increasingly concentrated in the hands of large corporations, I decided that five acres in Indiana, a handful of animals, some mechanical experience, a little money, and a whole lot of determination might be enough to build something meaningful.

Now, depending on who you ask, that’s either ambition, stupidity, or faith.

Some days, I’m not entirely sure myself.

But here’s something I’ve been thinking about lately. How do you know when something is actually growing, and when you’re simply adding more to it?

That’s not just a farming question.

I’ve seen relationships last for years without getting any healthier. I’ve seen men climb professional ladders only to discover they don’t particularly like who they’ve become. I’ve watched people spend a lifetime collecting responsibilities, possessions, titles, and accomplishments, believing each addition must somehow mean they’re moving forward.

And I’ve watched people lose everything they thought defined them, only to discover that the rebuilding process gave them something they never had before.

I’ve been on more than one side of that equation myself.

A soldier. A husband. A father. An instructor. A student. A prisoner. A business owner. And now, apparently, a pig farmer.

Those titles don’t all fit neatly together. Neither does the road that brought me here.

But every one of those experiences taught me something about the difference between wanting a particular outcome and being prepared for what comes with it.

And that’s where this conversation really begins.

Because you can have good intentions, plenty of ambition, and the willingness to work harder than everybody around you—and still be building something on a foundation that isn’t ready to carry it.

Sometimes you need to push.

Sometimes you need to change direction.

And sometimes, before you plant another damn thing, you need to figure out what’s happening in the soil.

That older shelter in the footage is where we started. We still use it when an animal needs separating before loading or when managing breeding. As the herd grew, we built out the barn and pens, adjusted our feeding and ground management, and brought in arborist wood chips to protect high-use areas. We hope the organic material and the animals’ activity will improve the soil over time, but that’s something to observe and manage—not a result I can promise today. The point is that the ground showed us what needed to change, and we paid attention.

What Are You Actually Trying to Grow?

That’s a question I wish more people would ask before they start making sacrifices.

A man says he wants a better marriage. All right. Better how? More time together? More trust? Less arguing? Or does he just want the argument to stop without ever discussing what started it? A woman says she wants a better job. Does that mean a bigger paycheck, more freedom, a chance to learn something, or a life that doesn’t leave her too exhausted to enjoy the people she’s working for?

Two people can say they want the same thing and be working toward completely different outcomes. Then they spend years wondering why the relationship feels like a tug-of-war.

Maci and I aren’t trying to see how many pigs we can fit on five acres. We want a farm that produces good food, serves people, and eventually gives us options. Maybe it becomes something our children want to carry forward. Maybe it helps finance our retirement. Maybe its greatest legacy is that it taught our family how to build instead of simply consume. Those possibilities aren’t identical, but they all require a farm that functions beyond the excitement of bringing home another animal.

Because here’s the trap: I enjoy pigs. I enjoy watching them grow. I enjoy new breeding prospects and all the possibilities that come with them. But if all I do is collect animals, eventually I’m not running a farm. I’m the neighborhood’s proverbial cat lady—except my cats weigh 275 pounds and eat a hell of a lot more.

A functioning farm has a beginning, a middle, and an end to its production cycle. There has to be room to raise the animals, feed to finish them, a processor when they’re ready, cold storage for the meat, and a customer on the other side. If the animals keep coming in and nothing is going out, that’s not a business model. That’s an expensive collection.

And if you’re reading this from an apartment, don’t get distracted by the pigs. Your calendar, your money, your relationships, and your ambitions work the same way. What are you bringing into your life that you haven’t made room to carry?

Pressure Doesn’t Always Produce Progress

I’ve spent a good portion of my life believing that when something wasn’t working, the answer was to work harder. Sometimes that was absolutely the answer. You don’t get through difficult training, finish a repair correctly, or build a business by folding every time a task becomes inconvenient.

But sometimes working harder just drives the wrong part farther into the wrong place.

I spent years turning wrenches and teaching people how to diagnose machines. If a bolt won’t thread, forcing it doesn’t make you a better mechanic. You stop, inspect the threads, check the alignment, and figure out what you’re missing. The strongest hand in the shop can still ruin the job if it refuses to understand the problem.

People are not bolts. That’s exactly why the lesson matters even more with them.

In Ultimatums Are Fear in Armor, I wrote about the fear that sometimes hides behind our demands. And in What Discipline Didn’t Prepare Me For, I examined the moment discipline stops answering the question in front of us. I won’t drag you through those conversations again. They’re there if you need them.

Here’s where I’m taking the thought now: Pressure needs a purpose, and purpose requires judgment.

A spouse might need an honest, uncomfortable conversation—not another lecture. A young man might need accountability, but he might also need somebody to show him what success looks like. A business might need more customers, or it might need a week of checking its numbers before taking on another order. Sometimes the ground needs to be worked. Sometimes it needs to be left alone long enough to recover.

And yes, sometimes the right answer is to quit talking, put your boots on, and do the hard thing. Knowing the difference is the work.

I’ve Lived More Than One Version of Myself

When I say that, I’m not trying to make my résumé sound interesting. I mean there have been chapters of my life that don’t look like they belong to the same man.

I joined the Army as a young man and became a Cavalry Scout. I served in Iraq, carried responsibility for other soldiers, and learned what it means to make decisions when tired, uncomfortable, and under pressure. There are lessons from that period I still use on this farm, and there are parts of it that took a long time to understand once the uniform came off.

I wrote more directly about that in The War Didn’t End When I Came Home. If you’ve ever wondered how somebody gets from a combat mission to a pasture in Indiana, that story helps connect a few dots.

My life also includes incarceration. That’s a fact. It isn’t the whole story, and I’m not interested in pretending it didn’t happen. I wrote Man Code while I was incarcerated and published it after coming home. Even then, I was trying to put lessons into words—about becoming a better man, taking responsibility, and figuring out what kind of person I wanted to be when I had another chance to choose.

There is something almost funny about that now. I was writing about improvement before I had finished learning how much improving I still had to do.

Later came classrooms, technical education, automotive and diesel work, operations, and instructing others. Some days I was the one with the answers. Other days I was the student who needed to shut up, listen, and learn. Eventually I stepped away from a more predictable professional path to build something far less predictable with my own hands.

None of that happened overnight. And none of it happened in a straight line.

What all those versions of me have in common isn’t that I always made the right decision. I didn’t. It’s that at some point I had to decide whether the next version of my life was going to be a repeat of the previous one or the result of actually learning from it.

Veterans Day is a fitting day to think about that. Service remains part of who I am. It just isn’t the last chapter I’m allowed to write. And the same is true for you, whatever chapter you’re in right now.

Most of Life Happens in the Gray

I’ve seen what happens when people decide there are only two sides to every question—and naturally they’re convinced they’re standing on the correct one.

War will teach you that people can have different languages, backgrounds, beliefs, and motivations while still being human beings standing in front of you. So will a prison yard. So will a classroom, a repair shop, a family gathering, or a difficult conversation with somebody you love.

The lesson isn’t that every decision is equally good or that we should excuse everything. Wrong is still wrong. Boundaries still matter. Sometimes somebody needs to be corrected, and sometimes you need to be the one mature enough to accept correction.

But if you end every conversation the instant somebody says something poorly, you’ll never find out whether there’s something worth understanding underneath the words.

I’ve said ignorant things in my life. I’ve heard them, too. I don’t have to agree with a person’s words to finish listening to the point they’re attempting to make. And listening doesn’t require me to surrender my standards. Sometimes understanding the person gives you a better chance of correcting the problem than winning an argument ever could.

That’s especially true in relationships. We get so invested in our position that we stop asking what the other person is actually afraid of, hoping for, or trying to protect. We defend the post we’re standing on and ignore all the life happening in the space between us.

I don’t want a life where everybody has to think exactly like me to have a seat at the table. A farm doesn’t work that way. A community doesn’t work that way. Neither does a family.

Maybe part of tilling the soil is being willing to break up a little of the hard ground in our own thinking.

Building Something Worth Leaving Behind

Ownership and stewardship aren’t quite the same thing. Ownership tells me what I can call mine. Stewardship asks what condition I leave it in, and who benefited while it was in my care.

Start with the people closest to you. What kind of husband am I becoming? What kind of father? What happens to the people who depend on me when I get overwhelmed? Am I building relationships strong enough to hold an honest conversation, or simply collecting years together? Those questions come before the machinery, the money, and the land.

Maci and I want DaleWood Farms to become something durable. We’re trying to build with what we’ve earned, reinvest carefully, and create systems that eventually support themselves instead of depending entirely on another note or another benefactor. That doesn’t mean there’s no risk. There is plenty. It means we want to understand the risk before we invite more of it through the gate.

But building something worthwhile can’t end at our property line.

One of my favorite examples wasn’t a sale at all. At a community event at Daleville Town Park, we helped serve roughly 75 meals. Neighbors brought desserts. Families talked. Kids enjoyed the evening. For a little while, a meal did what an advertisement can’t always do: it gave people a reason to sit together without anybody needing to buy something.

I talked about that day in Building the Circle. It’s one of the better examples of why we’re doing any of this. The farm should feed people, yes. But if we’re doing it right, it should also connect them.

I hope our kids have the option to inherit something useful. Maybe they want to farm; maybe they don’t. I wouldn’t call it a legacy if the only thing we left them was a pile of responsibilities they never asked for. I’d rather leave them examples, opportunities, and the freedom to decide what to build with them.

Don’t Confuse Patience With Standing Still

Some people hear ‘slow down’ and take it as permission to never make a decision. That’s not what I’m saying.

I don’t go to casinos, but I take risks every day. I bet on a business model, on my ability to learn, on the people I build relationships with, and on the belief that human beings will continue needing to eat. Food demand alone doesn’t guarantee this particular farm will succeed. We still have to do the work, watch the numbers, earn trust, and change what isn’t working.

That last part matters. Sometimes growing means going somewhere that has nothing to do with your main job.

I still spend time around classic cars and the people who preserve them. I’ve worked in a butcher shop because understanding what happens after livestock leave the farm makes me a better producer. I’ve learned from people who know how to process food, manage equipment, and solve problems differently than I would. Those experiences may not look like progress on a farm spreadsheet. They make the man running the farm more capable.

Take a trip. Volunteer. Learn a trade. Ask a question that makes you feel like a beginner. Visit someone who’s doing the thing you hope to do. Spend a day with your family without trying to turn it into a productivity exercise. Sometimes the next step forward starts by walking outside the circle you’ve been wearing into the ground.

And leave room for imagination. Not every worthwhile idea arrives fully engineered, financed, and guaranteed. If I’d required that before beginning, there wouldn’t be a DaleWood Farms. Reality matters, but so does the courage to picture something that doesn’t exist yet and then do the unglamorous work of making it possible.

There’s a difference between allowing something time to grow and standing around hoping somebody else will grow it for you.

So no, you can’t rush growth by demanding a harvest tomorrow. But you can test the ground, change what you’re planting, remove what is choking the roots, and keep showing up. You can make a decision, see what it teaches you, and make a better one the next time.

And when the season calls for it, you can plant.

Before We Leave the Fire

I started this conversation talking about a gamble. I’ll end it with a question I think is worth more than the odds on any table:

What are you building, and is it becoming something you actually want to live with?

Not the version that looks impressive to somebody passing by. Not the version that wins an argument or gets applause online. The one you have to wake up inside tomorrow morning.

If the answer is yes, keep tending it. If the answer is no, maybe this is the season to stop counting what you’ve added and start looking at the ground underneath it.

That’s not quitting. That’s knowing why you’re here.

Continue the Conversation

I’d like to hear from you. Have you ever had to slow down, change course, or start over because what you were building wasn’t becoming what you intended? What did that experience teach you?

If this conversation gave you something to think about, explore The Movement Series or visit DaleWood Talks. These are connected conversations, not one-off speeches. You can also support the farm through DaleWood Market or get in touch to learn more about what we’re building.

Support the Mission

If this conversation resonates with you and you want to help us keep building, you can support DaleWood through a purchase, a share, or an optional contribution.

Brian Webb
DaleWood Farms LLC
Pasture-Raised. Purpose-Driven.