Why I Still Farm My Family’s Land
Folks that have had the fortune to find themselves sitting under the shade tree at my family’s farm might have a hard time explaining to those who haven’t what takes place there. For those who have, they always come back. People I sat with as a child, now bring their grandkids there. Out of state grandkids bring their grandparents (who are...
TCM Events: Farm Retreats for TCM Readers
This article is an invitation to St. Joseph’s Farm, especially for men who have completed Exodus90 and want to take a “next step” in their fraternity. Spots are open for November 17-19 for the men’s weekend, and November 10-12 for the father/son weekend. Fall is particularly beautiful in Western, NC, so don’t wait to sign up. My w...
Is There a Catholic Back-to-the-Land Movement?
There are many Church-y “efforts” these days. People see the devastation of this post-whatever era we are in and want to work to recover some sanity, or sanctity, or both. Even if the results are mixed, there’s a simple and sincere desire to bring the wildly broad love of God to people starving for it. “We all know the way we’ve been ...
How Consumerism Emasculates Men and How to Stop It
Wendell Berry’s novel Hannah Coulter watches the breakdown of an agrarian culture through the novel’s namesake. Hannah Coulter knows waves of life take us where we weren’t expecting, yet she knows too that as man drifts from life sustained on the land to life sustained by specialization and mechanization he drifts away from something he nee...
A Place on Earth: The Desire for Land and Its Limits
Land has a central place in the Bible. We spring from it and are placed within it deliberately by God: Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed (G...
This Is Your Invitation To Retreat On The Farm
This article is an invitation to St. Joseph’s Farm. For now, this event is limited to Exodus 90 men, preferably groups of brothers that went through Exodus together. Spots are open for Memorial Day weekend, May 26-29. The cost is $280 and includes lodging and food alongside The Green River in Western, NC. My wife and I began our littl...