 Hi, I'm Tim Hill with tan books. Thanks for joining us for this author interview The book is the liturgy of the land and one of the co-authors right here Jason Craig joining us today Jason Thanks for coming in. Thanks for having me Tim. Absolutely Can you tell us how the the book came about the liturgy of the land? Sure the co-author is a friend of mine and we were both At the same time in life sort of working for a Catholic apostolate called fraternus and part of that apostolate a part of that apostolate is Really helping to mentor to guide young men to help men to be good fathers and it's really good work And it's necessary work, but we were asking the question. Why is it necessary? Sort of what happened? Why is there a man crisis? Why is there such a problem with fam? Why is there so much breakdown? Why is and I found myself I was in graduate school for theology and so I'm in these history classes and philosophy classes and theology classes and When you ask these questions you inevitably come up against the reality of the industrial revolution and sort of the technological revolution and the sexual revolution and all these revolutions and and What were they revolutions again? What are they revolting against and it's sort of this old order this old way of things in that old way was although there's lots of forces that predominantly formed by living on the land and the Economic reality of most families was to work directly together and to work directly from the land and for their needs and there's some You know accusations of us romanticizing that that era and there's certainly some hardships but there's also the reality that the family unit did better when society was revolved around these things which makes sense because God created man and put him in a garden to work, you know and And so Tommy and I we both decided to move sort of back to the land at the same time it's about 12 years ago and as We're doing it. We're staying in contact. He's in Florida. He becomes a beekeeper I'm in North Carolina and I become a a dairy farmer. We still have a micro dairy and he's a commercial beekeeper So we've got you know lands of milk and honey Which was the original idea for the book title. It didn't work out, but I think it's better now Um And we we've just been in contact with our families because when we started we had, you know, one two and three kids And now I have eight and he's got I don't know five or six or something. I know Catholic friends and um um We were comparing notes and talking this whole time. We've been in communication and in that time we've Had family or you know friends and family that come near us and they want to homestead and a lot of them maybe fail We've had our own failures just piles and piles of failures And we've slowly come to realize that the the life of homesteading the life from the land works on a completely different logic It works on a completely different rhythm a different Just there's completely different forces that shape how you live your life It's it's very different from the the technological media saturated hustle of suburbia And that was what we realized in the the shape of the book is sort of if you wanted to either Live on a homestead if you wanted to live closer to the land Or if you even wanted to sort of have the lessons from it at all just recognizing that Whatever we're doing now. There's some there's some deficiency in the way that it What it does to the family particularly in individuals is just we're not And a lot of people like they they immediately point to our material well-being They're like, how can you question our material well-being? And it's like, I yeah, I know manna is very alluring but at the same time We're not doing well on almost like every metric Possible and moving back to the land does not solve all those problems but it solves a lot of them and Um, it does so naturally in the way that I think it's pretty clear if we really look at the the history and theology of How God wanted us to live there are things he teaches us and wants to teach us that we learn From the land and there is no other source to learn these let which is I mean we act as if we You know, we all live from the land, right? You mean you you live from the land three times a day It's just what is the nature of the relationship you have is it is it distant or is it close? Um, so we've chosen a life that's Closer right is and we've been we intentionally want to be closer And that the reality of that is it it's a conversion And not just a a life hack or an easy way to escape your cubicle It's actually a convert meaning it hurts and it's difficult and you can't just buy your way into homesteading or Choose your way into homesteading you actually A conversion is required and as we've learned that Lessons slowly and difficulty that's Difficultly that is how the book sort of took shape And as I read the book, it's not necessarily a how-to It's not necessarily you should do this to me. It came across as more of just an explanation Of the liturgy of the land what it is and why You might feel a certain way about it or how it relates to our our current world. Does that sound fair? Sure. Yeah, I mean it was you know the the chapters. I think I think they're all titled, you know from From this to that And you know, for example And and from from this to that meaning This where we currently live. I mean that we we took sort of the predominant Economic model of most families, especially in the united states, which is the suburban model And the the fund and people and then and then there is the homestead So what is the difference of is this just instead of selfies with You know cute little puppies. We take selfies with blueberry bushes. You know, I mean, what's really the difference And the fundamental difference is the I mean the first difference is that the suburban home is a consuming unit So You make money. It's like we we have needs, right? We have bodies that need to be fed We have that need shelter. We have you know, we need homes These are these are material needs that drive our actions, right and the way The the predominant economic model that most of us live in now is the suburban model, which is we go somewhere to make money And we come home to consume those resources. So The home doesn't make anything You make stuff outside the home and you consume those things inside the home. The home is just a place of consumption Whereas the the homestead the home becomes a place of production Not a hundred percent production and there's that's where the book helps you. Hopefully helps you draw the line What do you really need and to produce and and and we do propose that It's actually the the natural state of the home and the family unit is to not just be together But to do something together and that overwhelmingly in history The the the family has done much better when it does something together Not just coordinate its calendars for everyone's individual activities But to actually do a shared work together and the shared work is the work of the family. So what does that work? Well, it's to feed each other. I mean, that's the that's the simplest reason To homestead is to take care of one another within your home. So it sort of actually removes a lot of choices of how are we going to spend our time and our money and actually We're going to we're going to do it by taking care of one another materially Um, you know physical actionable things we're going to do so All those chapters from here to there Is your most of us if we're in the suburb You know, they say a fish doesn't know it's in water, right? We're being formed By the water that's around we don't we don't even know it and a lot of people have a desire to live They want to homestead. I think every family Has like an agrarian moment. Maybe we should live on a farm. Wouldn't everything be simpler and better if we just went outside and got the eggs and broccoli was growing out of trees and That's funny for anyone who knows how broccoli is grown And We have that moment, but actually what that takes is is a conversion. So the chapters are, you know, as an example, we love We're a hyper mobile society and we love it. We got to keep our options open. I can I can get up and leave at any moment Which really doesn't work well if you're thinking about homesteading. It doesn't work well for the land For your family for your community. I mean, even the way we talk about community We say we got a we got a plug into a community And it's just fun. We have this technological lens. So a community you A plug you plug it in to draw power that you need and then you unplug it There's nothing living or permanent about it. It's by definition a temporary draw From a community whereas the community that is formed around living from and with and close to the land is much more like roots Whereas if you remove it it causes harm To the root to the soil structure around the root to the to the other organisms that depended on the root So there's this limiting factor of being rooted and So there's another example of a conversion. We don't want to be limited. Well, you probably don't want a homestead It's extremely limiting. It's not a plug. You don't get to plug in and draw power. You actually root down and To where you presume upon, you know, even dying where you're living, which a lot of us we even think of our Our homes where we live as a as an investment, right? We're going to live here until We don't and then we'll flip it and we'll buy something bigger Because it's bigger or because it's worth more versus staying in the family home because We've got 20 years of soil fertility in the garden and I can't leave that. I got I mean, I've been working on that, you know so yeah, it's we're try very hard not to Pile on people that feel the stresses and the tension of living in like the predominant suburban model Like not just like blatantly criticizing something that a lot of us probably can't and won't leave While at the same time Saying all right, if you if you feel this there are ways that you can Root down even in that but that the homestead if you do if you are inclined that there is a way to do it you could do it But it's going to require a conversion And you start in the introduction just by kind of defining some terms Where homestead comes from the old english word. Yeah, I believe it's hamstead, right? And it's It's just the place where the home is. I mean, that's the simplest um in in america we have that the Language is stuck with us pretty well because of the homestead acts. I mean this nation was really built and settled Um by homesteaders. I mean and those people were not. I mean despite accusations. I mean historically We know that there's like gold rushes, right? But Those empty gold mines are not places of beautiful civilization that we just picture america as a as a gold mine When when you picture small town You know Very legitimately villages going out. I mean these are people that came here to put their home there And they intended to stay there And that's what makes a homestead is that the the home is actually the center And the purpose of what they're doing there excuse And the reason we didn't use the word farm is I mean for farm for most people is actually is an occupation It's a job Um and that's fair. I mean that's a good it's a good work And obviously there's a connection between living from the land and farming Um, but you know having a farm today Does not necessarily mean that the home is the center of your economic activity Whereas for the homestead the purpose is predominantly for the sake of the home itself. So you're Um, Is we you know, we like to say you're you're eating what you can sell instead of selling what you can eat I mean, that's the purpose And the meaningful work that you're doing as a family is meaningful and substantial It doesn't mean it doesn't have to be your primary income Um, and in the united states it was it was actually somewhat rare We think of it now as either either you're farming or you have a real job, right like a But actually the homesteader for Ever has had you can you know multiple jobs I mean those people that are doing a job on the computer in the modern economy And homesteading you absolutely you can that that's not In contradiction necessarily with having or doing homesteading So a lot of people feel attention between those two and they they are tense they work on different Wave lengths different different bandwidths what have you but The homestead is a place where the home is at the the center of it And what makes a catholic homestead is that there's a catholic family in that It seems for a lot of people. It's actually their spiritual life is the although its homesteading is very practical You know, you're going to grow tomatoes to feed your family The real reason that most people want to do it is actually inspired by their faith I want to be closer Because this work of the tomato is going to bring me closer to My family my the land I live on and therefore in the ultimate end is god god himself is the reason i'm homesteading Yeah, the line that stuck with me in your introduction connecting life working in nature and life in god That concept is very much driven home throughout the book Why don't we just start in the first chapter you mentioned they're labeled from one place to another But it starts with back to the homestead and that concept of going back that Alan Carlson someone that you you've read a lot and has written a lot about the subject talks about going back Right. Well, that's attention. I think we I dealt with that right in the beginning Which people will say well, you can't go back in time and the belief behind that is that the loss of Of land-based agrarian Ways of life that that us losing that and not having that as a predominant cultural force or economic force um is because of free un un un un hampered or unencumbered Economic progress that we have progressed Away from the need to toil on the land. This is sort of the underlying accusation That to homestead is sort of to romanticize something That our forefathers conquered So they almost think of it as like going like the egyptians go. Why are you going to go back to egypt? Why are you going to go back to the slavery of the homestead? Why are you complaining about Your your your newfound freedom? I think that's the undercurrent and that's just it's just simply not true And alan carlson who I rely on a lot. He's a brilliant american scholar Of of our history that the suburbanization of the united states particularly was um Was a product of not natural organic economic growth or progress But you know policy and and businesses intending to move the united states from a A nation of households to you know a country with a lot of houses right because Housing policy is affected by our family like what we think the family is affects how the housing part so you know just small things out in the book that we want to bring out is like You know there was a time where the loans given for mortgages would have rewarded a multi-generational Home that was also a workshop So you would have two or three generations in a home and this is this historically all over the world This is I mean this is still true in many places and happily so not it's not it's not You know bad. It's it's multiple generations where the home itself was also a workshop and everyone worked together and Um, and they were near one another, you know much like probably st. Joseph's workshop would have been with our lord and our lady and and um the policy of the united states actually They the the housing authorities stopped giving loans intentionally to homes that were multi-generational and had workspace in them Because they wanted houses Not not households that were economically active They wanted houses and this makes sense. I mean it made me suffice for it Uh, the result is that we you know, it's the suburbanization that we would like more houses that that are in the consumer based economy Because in the consumer based economy, you're out making money. There's there's tax base. There's money being spent There's sales taxes. There's income taxes There's more homes getting there's economic activity, right? And there's sometimes that's hard to argue with but at the same time there's You know divorce is good for our economy Right more houses more christmases more cars more insurance policies more lawyers pay like divorce is good so If our economic policies and and underlying beliefs are actually harming the family are we free to question them? The answer is of course That the family does well and the the other um person I really you know I'm grateful for is uh, you know robert nissbet and um some of the classical conservative writers that they pointed out that When the family lost its functionality its functional bonds Um, it becomes much more difficult to hold it together when it stops working together It starts falling apart pretty easily um I believe the phrase you use in the book was they move from institution to companionship Right, right. So is it we say we say it all the time the family Is the center uh, it's the what I mean, how do we put it? It's the foundation of society The the family is the center of society the family is The you know the foundation of all these things except when our kids grow up and they walk out the front door No, it's not It's not the center of our life. Um It's something we as as catholics have to fight to make the center of real life because it's not this We're not rewarded In our society in our culture. In fact more and more we're punished The more we insist on the family being the center of everything Um, that you know that might even be at this point defined as some sort of strange prejudice um So in the chapter can we go back? To the land the the main argument that we want to make is When someone has the impulse and the desire to homestead It is not because they want to play dress up like the little house books Or that they want to go back in time and escape The prod they don't want to go back to egypt, right? They're not that's not what's happening They don't want to go back to just toil for its own sake and maybe we have had wonderful economic growth and And and technological growth even but can that be applied to the good of the family? You know and the answer is yes, it can when someone wants to homestead They're not going back in time They're going back to a philosophical principle or a natural principle that the natural state and the natural place of the family Is the homestead and the natural activity of the family is to work for the good of the whole and direct production and provision for that family in that The the side effect of that is all the wonderful things that we sort of hope for which is being together and working together And and having meaningful work together You pointed out Yeah, the line in there or or the the thought is the family actually when it's there predominantly when the the purpose of the family unit is to Be his companionship To just be there for one another and support one another in their endeavors I'll you know, and it even sounds good. I'll support you in whatever you choose and whatever you do Is actually very different from any understanding of the family that anyone would have had prior to our time, which is You you take care of one another. It's not just that you support Whatever that other person does Or that you you know, I mean that can be financial or emotional Like I'll just give you money to do whatever makes you feel good or I'll make sure that you Have a rewarding career, you know, these are all the purposes we end which kind of sees everyone in the family as a companion That's temporarily united until They're successful, right? I mean until you reach like we presume upon If you're successful, you leave home Whereas the normal healthy family unit that we actually all long for when we talk about Wanting to have a village and wanting to be have close connection and can and multiple generations in tradition. Well We can't we can't have that if The family is only an incubator for You know people that are just radically pursuing their own success Apart from the good of the family The idea of a work-life Balance versus integration I think goes into that as well and uh one of the quotes I pulled out of the first chapter here is That liturgy the land was written to quote point out that this life of integration of work land family leisure and home Should be approached with a truly catholic lens as well That is continually reinforced throughout the book. Mm-hmm. Yeah You know it. I don't even have to repeat you Chapter two from division of labor to integrated work So again that idea of instead of everyone having a job that applies to them individually It all connects in some way With the homestead. Sure. I mean the the division of labor is how we have You know produce the amazing amount of production that we do now just stuff We just we're really good at making You know creating things and systems and and that I don't mean just our trinkets that are a waste of money But I mean also the the amazing engineering Um that we've done the the specialization and and medical there's all sorts of really good things Um, but the the fundamental thing is that the division of labor into Um, you know by definition The person who who does the work You know, let's just take father's review. We leave the home To give Our labor, you know to another unit of some sort another economic force another, you know thing company group Um, and that might be very good. And there's some of us that ought to do that Um, but a lot of times the result is dad comes home and the family gets the worst of them I'm exhausted. I'm done. I've kind of given my and you want to It's like you one of like that two hours at the end of the night before bedtime and the rosary Hopefully like you're trying to like be a good dad. You're like, I'm exhausted and this got me, you know, it's hard Um, so we try to balance it out with doing, you know, and so we're at a desk all day So we might go get a gym membership because we're not moving and then Well, now my kids that now they need sports so they can get moving and then well, we're all kind of separated So let's make sure we coordinate up, you know a family movie night. Well, we can't do that because you know Johnny joined the youth group and and I was like, okay, so we're we're constantly sort of spiraling outward and dividing outward So that we feel our these are all good needs. The problem is when you when you lay out all the things we do It's really hard to go. Well, that one's not a good thing. I mean, they're all good. Generally I mean say for sin and excess in disorder Um, most of the things that we want to do that pull us apart as a family. They're all good things school work leisure uh fitness Like all these things are good the spiritual life even Um, you know, someone's going on in this retreat and that which in that, you know, uh, we're even divided You know our generations, you know, dad's at the men's group kids at the youth group moms at the mom's group, right? it's just like we're just coordinating all these things and um, yeah the the idea the philosophy of the homestead or sort of not even a philosophy as if we've chosen it the reality that happens on the homestead is if if um That those all those good things are a centrifugal force meaning the more the better you are at them the further It pulls you from the family as the center of your life As an example say you're an excellent athlete Um, the better of athlete you're going to be the probably the further from home You're going to go all the way until you get traded Right into the next city and you're a pro like I mean if you come to the end of your excellent athletics It is away from home. Now. I'm not saying no one can do that. I'm not saying it's bad I'm just saying the reality is You're on the travel team and you're and your money and your time is now spent pulled away from home And you come home to rest and to eat and to put your trophies on the wall And um, that's just the nature of kind of a lot of modern life. It's centrifugal Whereas the work of a homestead is is centripetal, right? So the opposite it actually forces you back to the center because it must be done Now that sounds really great. I mean a lot of the book is actually You know say you say you want to do that, but your whole family doesn't want to do that Well, you can't pull everyone in and everyone's resentful and now I don't want to plant tomatoes and I don't care about your goats and you know mom's mushrooms in the woods are rotten anyway and But if we can integrate our family right towards that work If we have that work that's shared especially as they as they're young and we're formed in that culture It brings us together and all those things become integrated meaning We're not dividing them all up To try to give a you know, everyone their due but we're By the natural work and rhythm of the home were actually pulled together into god And you move to that next step in the next chapter the rhythm you just touched on the natural rhythm. Yeah, I mean, um Clocks were originally invented by monks So that they could know exactly when they're supposed to be praying I I presume there was some sort of disagreement amongst some monks on whether or not it was time for prime or not, you know It's not time for terse. Don't get terse with me. You know, um, that's a super nerdy captain. If anyway So The monks invented time to pray Do any of us feel like we use our clocks? You know to are there are our clocks dominating us so that we remember to pray or are they Just bringing sort of imposing this formula on our on our life You know day in and day out and the reality is our entire Days are are are completely orchestrated by an industrialized understanding of time, which is We're putting people in the factory. We want to squeeze out as much work as possible, which maybe got a little excessive Okay, so let's give them another Sabbath day Right because we're already off on Sunday. Factories. We're making them work six days a week You know, hey god said six days you have to labor, right? But industrialization was so severe on the family that we actually culturally have now accepted two Sabbaths, right? Saturday and sunday or of course now we've let sports go on both of those days Um, but saturday becomes another sat that industrialism was so grueling on the family life that we had to add a day To the weekend, which god god gave us one day, right? So we've had to and then during the day nine to five That's when the sun's up and and we do all these funny things about you know Taking an hour off the front of the day and putting it on the beginning and thinking that somehow changes the amount of hours in the day But we're really we're just ruled by this clock and it and it's exhausting And the rhythm of the homestead is different. You just you cannot Speed up the clock on a growing fruit tree. You cannot do these things You you all the sudden are stuck and limited By the rhythms and reality of nature, right as god intended Um, and this goes really well with the liturgy of the church I mean we So we as a family we we try but you know that the hymns of the of the divine office for example the traditional hymns of them They follow the sun, you know as the sun has now that the sun has risen let us suppliance ask of god And you know and so on and so on and then uh in the middle of the day And it talks about now well now the sun's up It's kind of beaten down on us and our and we're kind of wound up and our passions are going and then at the end of The day it's the sun is setting and one day our life will too, right? So the the liturgy sort actually follows nature much better The the hunger of lint Right, that's actually on the you know the season of lint is you know a lot of us go Oh, it's springtime. It feels so happy like the easter lilies are blooming, but on a homestead It's actually it's beautiful, but it's the hunger months. It's known as the hunger months at least in the region where I homestead because You're starting to get some things out of the ground Maybe some lettuces and you can you can eat dandelions if you're real hungry But your storehouse is running out and you don't have much food and you're waiting Now when Easter comes and the grass starts growing and that's when you know the dairy cows the butter turns yellow Butter, you know milk is butters not always yellow I don't know if we explain that in the book butters not always yet. It's only yellow when you're when they're eating growing grass So springtime comes and and so the the logic in the liturgy of the land itself and the work that revolves around that land It just escapes the drudgery of the time clock it just crushes the clock or we could think it really sanctifies the clock where It was a hella bellock who said uh when noon is angel this time the clock is right, you know that The day can be marked again by prayer It's not to say that we don't have jobs and work Even if we have to leave for that work I mean a lot of people can be at home and work from home now or have multiple You know, I know I know some homesteaders are just part-time college professors and they have seasons of that work, you know But the predominant season of their house is actually the land in the seasons itself and they've sort of escaped The the clock of course my my children uh Or it's like it's saturday. I'm like we're on a farm man six days. You have to labor just like god said Cows have to milk. What do you want me to do turn them off? I'm sure they love that. Ah, they've yeah, it's growing on them So you move from the natural rhythms there to Maybe even zooming out from artificial to natural is the title of the next chapter and How basic arts are directly connected to the simple life of family and home? I found it really interesting just hearing the explanations of culture and How you how you went into that how that is associated to with the life of of the liturgy, right? So all of us would I mean right now. We're dominated by a AI right artificial intelligence The world the word artificial has come to me It weirds. I'm sorry Artificial means to us different things now. Some of us think it just means fake like not authentic But the root of the word is, you know, like artifact. It's just made by man. I mean, that's just the reality is that it's made by man Um The natural world left to itself is not what god intended Right, if he didn't want man to do anything with the natural world, he wouldn't have created man He intends for us to do something with nature and that makes it by definition artificial, right? A fire in the hearth is not natural. There's nothing natural about it's artificial Um, but it is artificial in a way that preserves and works with the natural reality, right of nature itself Um, so a lot of us when we want to homestead, we are trying to escape what is artificial because If you're surrounded by the artificial The problem with being surrounded with things that only man has made is that you do not learn from things that god has made Directly, so there's a reason our lords He does use parables of you know, uh, stewards and in Of land and the states and things but he very often is a great agricultural or natural, right seeds on hard soil and You know fig trees and all these things pruning of the grapevines When we go to the homestead one of the things we are Returning to is a life where we actually can sense and experience the reality of nature itself The problem If we are in a world completely surrounded by the artificial is that we can lose sight of god much more and we all know this This isn't some Major insight in the but we already know this so so then what do we do where can we learn from these things? It's like it's just it's right outside. I mean these lessons are there To be learned and then you take the next step from Artificial to natural to artificial economy to natural economy, right? So Man is an economic, you know, we have economic realities and I don't mean like in the marxist sense like we're all economics but Absolutely, I cannot mean the the father Is you know as st. Paul says a man that doesn't take care of his family is worse than an unbeliever Well, what do you mean taking care of them giving them emotional support? Or food My kids prefer food. Yeah, my kids prefer food too. I mean they like the emotional support, but they really if they're hungry They want the food So we do have these these are natural needs and the way god made the world is it's wonderful The things we need for our body they come out of the the soil Like they grow from the ground So it's wonderful and miraculous is the manna from heaven It's also it's it's always miraculous that these or it's seeming miraculous that these things come out of the ground. I mean, it's just I don't know right now We're uh, you know, we're it's springtime when we're recording this and we just planted all this new asparagus And we just planted it and it's six inches high already And we we planted it with compost that we made in the last, you know Two years and and it's growing all these natural processes are going and it's it's mind blowing to me that This is the order of the world that things are just come up from nature with our tending now that asparagus didn't pop up Naturally, so that's still an act of human culture. So there's something artificial about my asparagus bed It does I didn't stumble across it in the woods Right my homestead though what I'm doing instead of like, you know, just being pure hunter gather I've made the home the center of reality. So I want that asparagus right next to the house So when I want to eat it I can go get it, right? So that's what the homestead is doing So then we realize but I can't there's only so much food I can grow but my neighbor is growing other things So I we have milk cows. We have a good number of milk cows and my neighbor's a butcher So we exchange the services of butchering and he exchanges and they get milk So that's natural economy. This doesn't mean just people think oh like bartering. Yeah, that's cool That's how we're gonna solve all the money problems is bartering thing. Okay. I bartering is great But money is a helpful tool as well. So we to make that exchange we can Have the vet that's and that's artificial economy So we go into some detail there but because st. Thomas Aquinas has some pretty severe warnings For a society where people are no longer connected at all to the natural economy So we're still talking natural and artificial that the artificial economy is where instead of growing something or making something or serving something directly And then either from the actual product or service or to the customer That you become what he calls a tradesman a trader Whereas you purchase you buy and sell you purchase something lower and and sell it for higher and he calls that by artificial economy meaning There's nothing natural in that process. You have taken the tool of money But you're now making money from money instead of money from And with the exchange of things directly And he says the danger of that is the society will be completely broken apart because When we're not connected to these natural things, we're not connected to these ends We forget the purpose of them and then wealth becomes Once you start making money from money, there's never enough Whereas you can you can come to the end of just how many cans of corn you can really can You know or we freeze our corn, but there's only so many of these that you come to the end You know when you make chairs you sort of know when the chair is done But if you just trade in chairs or Spatulas or whatever like whatever it is you're flipping And you lose that connection the danger is is the sin of avarice right the sin of there's just never enough and you're never satisfied Um, and he Aquinas agrees with Aristotle on this that this is a huge danger If civil society really believes or society at all Really believes that the family is the center of society then they they recognize the great danger if we reward and think Only about making money from money that we actually stop thinking about the things that matter and We lose our family and so the both so Aquinas and Aristotle agree that the the remedy For an economy like ours, which is just obsessed with GDP like we love GDP doesn't matter families are falling apart Like GDP is our number um In other countries have similar metrics. That is how they measure the health of their country That the the remedy for that is the family economy That how is this actually affecting the health of the family which Brings into it, you know all sorts of spiritual consider. How's it how the health of the family does not mean are they fed? Are they sheltered? Are they alive? Because we have a lot of very wealthy and very very miserable Um people that are living sort of fortice of hell and their isolation and their loneliness and their and their vice and their sins And that's Aquinas would say yeah, that's what you get when you have a completely artificial economy Not connected to the purpose Of economy which is the meet the original meaning of the greek word which is household management So if you're disconnected from that natural The natural needs and the natural filling of the needs of your family The danger of sin is exponential because all of a sudden you're in a world not made by god, but made completely by man Yeah, it's fascinating how you go into that and you move on from wages to productive property. You really break it down Anywhere to somewhere is another title where you're talking about you touched on it earlier about the family farm and how that Really used to mean at least or maybe it still does multi generational and Putting in roots as opposed to plugging into the community you go into that as well We could talk about this for hours. I know but I wanted to maybe skip forward a little bit as You you break down the book and you you kind of return from where you started suburbia To the homestead and then independence to interdependence. I was wondering if you could just touch on that concept Yeah, well, I guess we we begin the book with the the the overwhelming sort of accusation or flippant Like whatever is you're just trying to go back to something that we've progressed beyond Which is not true But the next one is well, you just want to isolate yourself from people And you want to be far away from people and That that is the one I will challenge forcefully Because we live Closer to people than we ever have is the the amount of people we live. Um, you know in suburban Dwelling like these neighborhoods you see them if you've been on a plane and just oh my gosh We're just all over not to mention in the cities where we're literally on top of one another We're closer to one another we've ever been but we're the loneliest people Ever as well. So Who's really isolating themselves and this again goes back to the structure of the family that The structure of culture and society all together when you have an organic natural Family an organic natural society meaning they're rooted in these sort of The natural good work of man that god gave us, right? This is the work of the land is the is the primordial call of That god gave us I mean that he's presuming that no not everyone has you know Not not everyone has to be doing this, but yeah many are called to do that. I mean that this is our normal This is normal that we can almost presume upon it um The reality of the why is why are we so lonely when we're near so many people It's actually because our or one of the reasons is that Our bonds with one another are based completely on our free choice and our intentionality and our will to To choose and be with one another Because it's good to be companions for companionship and support and For lack of better words there's those soft needs. They're important needs, but what I mean is they're not the hard needs of helping one another and serving one another and feeding one another and Rescuing one another and you know people all the time say well Man, I would love to have barn raisings. Wouldn't that just they love the idea of the barn raising You know the amish because the amish because we see it I mean they the the amish who live sort of you know stuck in time 300 years ago They still have barn raisings and we look at them and go that is good Why don't we have barn raisings? Like that well because we have insurance I mean my barn I had a barn burned out. Why don't we have a barn raising because you don't know how And I have insurance Right, that's why we're not doing a barn raising So the suburban model creates Isolation because we don't need one another. We're only there because of personal choice and economic social economic Compatibility there's not multiple generations It tends to be grouping up of a lot of like nuclear families relatively of similar household income and makeup and culture And they go to the same school and stuff They're not bound by things like tradition religion culture kin Like all the things that we like and we think we like but we don't that's not what binds them together It's just mortgage rates were good and we all sort of bought in this area and it was close to a good school And it's near my job and They're not it's not built on The family tradition where we came from where like it's not built on any of these things and We try to make the choice that we're all close together. So Robin williams said, you know loneliness is not being away from people. It's being around people that make you feel lonely So that Compared to the homestead whereas I you know there are days I mean just I don't want to overemphasize it. But you know just last week at springtime here and we're Where we we own a tractor Cooperatively with another homesteader and we were bringing that tractor back and we were walking back and we caught one neighbor Who was working on their garden and we Which was surprising because he hasn't had a garden in a long time And it's you know, we probably time to work that garden up and we walk up and my other neighbor's out fixing a Lean to and he's giving me this dresser and we walk at home And we're we're working on the blueberry patch and somebody comes by and And and we're connected with all these people very practical necessary ways Like we actually have grown in this tiny little pocket that I've like sort of dedicated myself to and It's because we actually need one another Yeah, we it's not because we chose one another not because we're like one another Um, not because we like one another, right? It's just we're just there together And we we've grown to need one another in the community that's growing from that is Is really beautiful and I realize that's actually really hard to do if it depends completely on Your choice so when people say you're moving to the homestead to get away from people I'm like well first of all not all homesteads have to be in the country Second of all people in the country have souls too. So it's still a living breathing real Part of society that we and to be free on and I find that people that work with their hands and work with the land and working craft that they actually Quite easily have very robust and serious and good And even holy community whereas it's much tougher when you don't really need one another Wise words for sure. Um Before we wrap up talking about this book. We have to get to What I see is part two. Yeah, I think you guys even yeah that it is discerning ideas and enterprises and you you go through a bunch of different situations and you even rate you Put numbers to how difficult things can be and that's right. See this all sounds uh esoteric and lofty We try to get practical. That's uh, I want to thank my co-author Tommy um thomas van horn Um, he he's a beekeeper and he's just he's a good. He's just good with those kind of things, but what we did Was we took all right say everything we've talked about in this interview sounds great and you're excited and you're going to start the homestead Okay, slow down Um, we took the metrics that are sort of the reality of your life, which is Are your kids on board? It's your wife on board. What's your competency? Do you know how to use tools? Uh, what's your income? Do you have a lot of student debt? Do you need to just get back to work and stop dreaming? you know and and we put those those discernments where you can kind of You know go through these together sort of ask these questions And we kind of gave you four boxes You're probably going to fit on one of these box, you know The full-time homesteader the backyard hobby gardener, you know the sideline supplementer Maybe you're getting a little more serious and then like, you know mom's got a garden in the backyard Yeah, kind of so there's four. I don't know if I got those right, but there's four categories You're probably going to fit into one of them um, and and this is you know, if you if you grew up and like you know Playing sports are absolute part of your identity and you wanted to share that tradition with your kids and Like you probably shouldn't live 45 minutes of soccer practice, right? I mean you're and you need to like just realistically as you're discerning that because you're going to try to do something Good for the family like homesteading and you're going to hurt the family Um, because you're just you're actually you've actually just intensified the suburban life And given yourself more work to do when you get home from running around all day Um, and then the second part of the sort of the metric section is that we went through all the things All right, so what am I going to do? I'm going to get bees a milk cow pigs You know hogs, which are all like pigs but bigger What am I going to do? and we measured all of those based on Family economics so not whether you can make money from them. Although we did value barter value, right? So You know potatoes are not worth much bartering because they're cheaper at the grocery store but raw milk or honey has high value so we we Measure these things based on a household economy like the economic impact, which not just doesn't make money But what does it do for the home and what does it demand from you? What's the infrastructure? What's the learning curve like can you do this and should you do this Instead of because most homesteaders us included they show up and they buy they just get going way too fast way too much And they fail within two years So after all the philosophy and the conversion we do get down to the the very brass tacks of What's a reasonable expectation for what you need what you have? What's what's your reality? You know as far as land ownership you need to lease lands. You need just you know, borrow some of your neighbor's backyard and and And then what are you actually going to be doing that's going to allow your family to sort of live within those boxes that are reasonable So we think of this book not as like there's enough things out there to get you excited and enthused about farming and homesteading We didn't want to get people excited and then not Have the reality so we wanted them excited because of the truth Behind it, and then we want to make sure that they're actually Discerning so the big word is not enthusiasm for us, but just helping people discern You know can they should they will they and what are they going to do those kind of questions? Well, it's a fascinating look at First of all just the education and philosophy behind the liturgy of the land And then you get those very practical you get down to it There at the end in a lot of ways to me. It's it's really full multifaceted look At homesteading Where we are in modern society with it as well great congratulations, ma'am Thanks, ma'am. It's the liturgy of the land. He's jason craig. Thanks for checking out this author interview here at tan books