A Dream // A Call
Here’s my call—to myself first, and to every dad who still feels the tug from somewhere older than the headlines and louder than the machines:
I want early mornings. I want that hour or two before sunrise when the house is quiet, coffee is hot, and the Bible opens like a well-worn gate. Maybe pen to paper and thoughts written down. Then boots. Then breath you can see. Then chores—feeding, water, moving animals to fresh pasture, prior days eggs in hand, eyes on every creature’s health like a shepherd is supposed to. No noise except the farm waking up and the small voice of God that always seems to show up when we do our part.
I want to walk back into the farmhouse to the smell of breakfast my wife just finished, sit down with our children, and start the day the way families have always started days—together. We eat, clean up, set the plan, and move out as a unit. She runs the household—the real headquarters—gardens, cooks, bakes, nurses babies, teaches, and keeps the hearth burning. I shoulder the work of our regenerative farm business—our shared livelihood, built on grass and stewardship and sweat. We each own our responsibilities. We help each other where needed. It’s a team, not a committee.
Our kids float between us—helping with chores, tinkering, reading, getting lost in a project, or diving into whatever homeschool subject caught their imagination that day. They pedal into town sometimes—errands, library runs, friend meetups, a dose of autonomy and belonging. They learn how to be free by learning how to be responsible, and they learn how to be responsible by living inside a family that actually needs them. They don’t just “live here”; they belong here.
Lunch is simple. Sometimes together, sometimes staggered. Then back out: more work, another fence line moved, a repair done right, a gate rehung, maybe a quick lift and a short HIIT session to keep my body strong and resilient for the years to come. Afternoon falls into evening and we reconvene—always—for dinner at a real table. We say grace like we mean it, each of us taking our turn, out loud, together. We talk about what went well and what didn’t. We laugh. We make plans. We take responsibility. We try again tomorrow.
Our kids aren’t coerced into this life or even into that table. We lead by example. We sit. We do the work. We show up and show respect. And because it’s real—because it matters—they want in. Not every moment, not every day. But over time, ownership takes root. It’s unforced. It’s uncoerced. It’s natural.
When the dishes are done and the tools are put away, the hearth comes alive and draws us in. We read. We tell stories. We talk. A couple kids drift to their corners—drawing, building, disappearing into a book. Maybe someone slips in a VHS tape and watches an old movie grainy enough to slow the heart rate down. No one’s chasing a dopamine drip. We’re just living. What grows here—day after day, year after year—is roots. Permanence. Individual callings inside a shared calling. Deep, durable relationships that stand up to weather and time and whatever storm rolls in from the world outside.
This is not nostalgia. This is a blueprint. This is a counteroffensive against the machine that eats our hours, our hearts, our attention, and then tries to sell us back a hollow version of what we were made for. I’m done with being optimized into a ghost. I want to be a husband again. I want to be a father again. I want to be a man again—under God, under a roof I helped raise, on land I tend with the people I love.
Fellow dads, I’m asking you to remember who you are. Turn off the stream that numbs. Log off the outrage that steals your days. Walk toward what is heavy and real—toward your wife, toward your children, toward your neighbors, toward the dirt itself. Plant yourself. Build a small economy of meaning on your own ground. Learn to grow grass and turn sunlight into food and food into strength and strength into service. Teach your kids how to handle a tool, read a ledger, read a room, read a soul. Give them a community to grow up inside so they don’t have to invent one out of pixels.
We don’t have to do it perfectly. We just have to do it faithfully. Start with mornings. Start with dinner. Start with prayer. Start with one animal, one raised bed, one fence post. Start with forgiveness where you’ve failed. Start with a real schedule, a simpler budget, and a willingness to trade convenience for competence. Start where you are and move one field length at a time.
If we do this long enough, something holy happens. A family becomes a household. A household becomes a farm. A farm becomes a place where other families gather, trade, learn, and lean on one another. A town wakes up. A culture shifts. It doesn’t take everyone. It takes fathers who refuse to outsource their calling.
And one day, when my work is finished, I’ll lie under a simple stone on a little square of our ground—surrounded by the lives we made, the lives our children made, and the neighbors who became kin. They’ll walk back toward the house we built and the hearth we kept, and I’ll watch them go with the peace of a man who kept faith with his vows. Then I’ll lift my eyes and go home to Jesus, and I’ll wait for the day my family joins me around a better hearth than the one we tended here—a brighter one, burning in the grace of God Himself.
That’s the dream. That’s the stand. That’s the invitation.
Dads—turn away from the machine. Turn back to your wife, your children, your land, your church, your town. Start again. Start small. Start today. And keep going until roots become a forest and dinner becomes a table long enough to seat your grandchildren’s grandchildren.
-The Dissident Dad
