Google AI summarizes it like this:

For me, identifying dips vs. cul-de-sacs is found in the data. “Does the math, math?”

For our farm dead ends have included:

• Farmers markets / popups / road side vending (we don’t live close enough to a major, consistent market to make the math work)
• Crops that sit in the field a long time (too much can go wrong and we can’t compete on price with the grocery store)
• 24-weeks of a CSA (competes with farm-to-school, team exhaustion)

None of those were bad things. The math just didn’t work and was never going to, so we had to push them aside to focus our energy on things that will work.

That leaves the rest of the stuff we’re currently pushing uphill.

• Taking our nursery year-round
• Long-term soil building
• Figuring out how to monetize our goats
• Wash/Pack/Cold storage — now that the grant money has dried up how are we going to fund that?

The trick with “The Dip” is that pushing a rock up a freaking mountain all the time gets tiring and annoying if you don’t make enough progress. Too little progress and you want to quit.

This fall and winter we’ve gotten tired and many times stopped to ask ourselves, “Why don’t we just quit the vegetable side of our business altogether, focus on a part-time nursery, grow some flowers, and get jobs?”

That’s the problem with being a mission-based person, isn’t it? We’ve said that our mission with the farm is to increase access to locally grown foods. When we ran the food pantry we saw that in the raw. We can’t escape reality— this area needs more fresh food, if we can build a system for that, we’ll be fine AND meet a very real need.

It’s a funny thing to start seeds and sign leases to expand your vegetable operation while also wondering if you can even sustain a vegetable operation for another year.

It’s a funny thing to think about applying to jobs and narrowing the business down to just the nursery and flowers while also talking to people about taking on much more land to grow way more vegetables.

That’s “The Dip”. Self-doubt, contemplating quitting, wondering if you’ll ever get this danged rock to the top of the hill– that’s all part of perseverance.

Look, I hate hiking uphill. I hate it.

But just like I’ve long said to people who are thinking about quitting boring, safe jobs to pursue their passion, “You’ll never experience the thrill of free fall until you jump out of the plane” I also know that as much as I hate hiking uphill there’s nothing quite as awesome as getting to the top, extending your tired, flopping arms to the sky and knowing you did something you didn’t think you could do.

Yes, we’re exhausted this time of year. Long nights, short days, lots to do– it’s not easy to stay motivated, especially when the local vibe is so negative right now. Then I turn the TV on to disassociate from that and the negativity on my TV isn’t any better.

So here I am.

Suns up fatty.

Time to feed some animals, plant some veggies, sow some seeds, and push that stupid rock.

The summit is somewhere out there. I’ll only get there if I keep pushing.

This is original content from Adam McLane. © adam mclane

I grew up with gas forced heat furnaces. You go to the thermostat, you set a temperature, you buy a new filter every couple of months, that’s heat.

So when we moved here our house came with minisplits in every room, an ancient gravity based propane furnace, and a big old fireplace.

And we froze. Yes, the mini splits generate heat but it’s horribly inefficient. And we had a blizzard where we lost power for nearly 2 weeks. The old propane heaters under the house? I couldn’t figure it out. Maybe it works great but I have no idea how to even turn it on. There’s a series of levers and knobs, it’s just not as simple as a normal furnace.

Again, we froze in 2023.

So, after some hand wringing, Kristen convinced me to invest in a wood stove– which is how most people in our area heat their homes.

This is our 2nd full winter with it and I’ve learned to really like it. I like how it heats our house… it puts off a ton of heat and we just run the ceiling fans in our living room to move the warm air throughout the house.

Here’s what I like about our wood stove:

1. You get to play with fire. All the time.
2. It’s environmentally sound. Our stove is really, really efficient. When it’s running properly its catalytic combuster is actually burning most of the emmisions. It’s pretty cool.
3. We live in a heavily wooded area. Not only is wood abundant, it’s basically free. This winter we’re heating our home with a couple of weekends of cutting and splitting wood, maybe 5 gallons of gas, 3-4 chains to be sharpened, and our time. Just on our 2 properties there’s so much wood we can heat our home for YEARS for free while also making our homes safer from wildfire.
4. It’s a nice form of heat. Gas forced heat and electric mini splits dry out the air– the wood stove does dry out the space but not nearly as severely.

Here’s what I don’t about our wood stove

1. It does take some effort. Calling the propane company is easier, for sure. We are regularly cutting, splitting, and stacking wood. Then we move it up near the house. It’s not effortless.
2. You can’t program a thermostat. Our lives revolve around being home. But if we worked away from the house or traveled, coming home to a cold house wouldn’t be great.
3. The learning curve. Ultimately, managing the stove is a skill and our skills are coming along but… sometimes we get the house way too hot!

This is original content from Adam McLane. © adam mclane

A Quick Caveat

I want to be clear about what I’m talking about and what I’m NOT talking about.

In college athletics men’s football and basketball are revenue sports, they are supposed to make money, whereas the rest of the athletics departments non-revenue sports aren’t really what I’m talking about. Baseball, softball, soccer, volleyball, golf, etc… those sports are non-revenue. They are financed as a by-product of the football team primarily.

This post is about revenue sports only.

Goodbye Illusions of Amateurism

The NIL and transfer portal era has meant athletes are now low-level professional free agents.

It’s no longer about recruiting 18 year olds to come play in an exchange for a free or reduced cost of education. It’s now about attracting the most talented athletes with perks and money to get them to play for your school– one season or half season at a time. Schools are barely pretending these kids ever attend a class. Do some of them? Sure. Do the top ones? Not really— maybe some online classes, just enough to make it look like they are students.

The NCAA has given up control of the so-called Power 4 schools, they are now allowed to self-regulate.

Without having to sit out a season or lose eligibility everyone is now a free agent all of the time. It’s not like a rigorous academic schedule is holding anyone back… they just bounce around from paycheck to paycheck, trying to bolster their hopes of hitting it big.

So what’s happening is it’s become a game between rich alumni fan bases– whoever fuels the most money fields the best team and wins.

You just have to look at college football to see that in action in real time. Perennial doorstop, Indiana University, with a ravenous basketball alumni base where they literally reseat Assembly Hall each season based on who donated the most THIS CURRENT YEAR (as opposed to most, who seat based on lifetime giving) suddenly has the best team of transfers in college football. How did that happen? Money. Lots and lots of money.

This is fueled by three factors.

1. Ridiculous media rights deals by NewsCorp (Fox Sports) and Disney (Disney/ESPN/ABC). Earlier this year the SEC announced that they’d distributed $800 million to its 16 member schools.
2. Sports betting. All of a sudden it’s cool to gamble on sports. How much money is changing hands? Just look around a stadium and you’ll see betting apps advertising– in some states you can place a bet on every play in the game, individual player performance, etc. The money is flowing in gambling right now and it’s having unintended consequences.
3. Bragging rights between rich fan bases. You might not care who wins this years college football playoff but there’s a lot of money invested in getting teams into the playoff and winning it. Like bajillions of dollars invested in programs as well as gambling.
4. Just in the past few weeks let’s look at the impact unchecked money/power is having on college campuses. Remember, these are COLLEGES, not semi-pro teams. Colleges where you’re supposed to be getting an education to be a teacher or engineer or nurse. So many coaches were fired as soon as their team wasn’t going to make the ESPN “playoff.” But don’t worry about those coaches, top coaches like Brian Kelly are getting $50 million paydays to get fired at LSU, where the average professor makes $125,000. That jackass got paid 400 times that to not work or teach a dang thing. Yeah, college football is out of control. Wasn’t this supposed to be about academics? Imagine being a professor fighting for some research dollars only to see that some clown is getting $50 million to not show up.
5. Some schools like the University of Michigan burn through coaches for ethical reasons, the last one (allegedly) for getting his 20-something year old employee & mistress pregnant, paying for her to have an abortion, then when confronted about it and fired (allegedly) breaking into her home and threatening suicide before getting arrested. The previous one? He’s in the NFL now because he got banned from college sports for a while. For a school that prides itself about the “Michigan Man” this should be a new low. But money talks so they don’t care.
6. Multiple NBA prospects and current players are headed “back to college” to play THIS SEASON as teams make their bid for the NCAA tournament. Now 18 year olds are supposed to compete against players who have been drafted by the NBA and chose to come back to “amateur” sports? Let’s just admit that college athletics is minor leagues sports, ok?
7. Disney/ESPN/ABC decided not to invite Notre Dame (owned by NBC/Peacock) to its pretend national championship tournament. Remember, it’s not a sanctioned championship… it’s literally just for TV. Consequently, the semi-pro-athletes at Notre Dame decided they didn’t want to play in a bowl game– because nearly all of the bowl games are owned by, guess who, Disney/ESPN/ABC.
8. As the football season winds down the transfer portal season winds up. All of these free agents want more and more money to go play for your favorite college team– not for any academic reason at all– but to get paid to play while they showcase themselves for the NFL– well, at least a couple of seasons in the NFL before they bounce back to college as a 28 year old.
9. Let’s not forget that the NCAA allowed some crazy rules when it comes to eligibility during the COVID years. There are players who are getting 6th and 7th years of eligibility. These guys will never make it at the top pro level but they bounce around from place to place in the minor leagues.

This is what college athletics has become, the minor leagues for football and basketball.

It’s always kind of been that way. Let’s not pretend like players weren’t paid for decades through an unofficial system of cash envelopes, shadow summer jobs, and the parents getting sweet deals on cars and houses.

So what’s the problem? Everyone is enjoying themselves and there’s a lot of money changing hands? What’s wrong with that?

The problem is that minor league sports are boring.

And while it’s exciting for the teams whose alumni are footing the bill to be at the top, the other 100 or so Division 1 schools just can’t keep up or compete.

Do you really want to pay hundreds of dollars to watch young college basketball team get drilled by players getting paid a million bucks to wear an Arizona uniform for 4 months?

It’s boring. And eventually that level of boredom leads to less people forking over to feed the ever-increasing-hungry monster.

All of that means that mid-level schools are starting to ask big, important questions like “Why do we even have these teams anymore if the players aren’t going to class or graduating, the coaches are treated like gods, and the alumni are constantly hit up for cash for athletics to the detriment of academics?” “Isn’t this more embarrassing than fun?”

More and more schools are teetering on the edge of moving out of the top division of college athletics.

Maybe it’s not hitting the tipping point in 2026 but the tipping point is coming when lots of these lesser-funded schools will just decide to stop being the whipping boy of Disney and NewsCorp semi-pro teams.

The justification all along has been about school or community pride and marketing your school to a broad audience.

But the question these schools must face, sooner rather than later, is if it’s worth it?

Do they want their college name to be a brand owned by a shoe company and media rights deal? Do they want to be minor leagues? Do they want to exist to get their asses handed to them by NBA dropouts?

Or do they want to focus on the real reason they exist– academics?

Sooner or later state legislatures are going to make that decision for them.

If you’re a fan of a big, powerful, Disney or NewsCorp fueled team, you probably aren’t seeing it.

But ask a fan of a G5 or below school and you’ll hear all about it.

Most of those schools get $1 million to $5 million in media rights money per year. How can they compete with $40 million – $50 million?

They can’t.

So they won’t for much longer.

This is original content from Adam McLane. © adam mclane

It’s the lack of guardrails that is concerning.

I don’t care if AI is giving me better search results or drafting some email content or even helps with customer service chats or meal planning or whatever.

AI is really cool. It does offer some great advantages. But we’re going to need some guidelines and laws governing what we can and cannot do with it.

We need to set true ethical limits while the technology continues to improve. You can’t ever expect a machine to truly think like a human. Ultimately, every computing decision is a 0 or a 1… it’s binary. Humans, especially when it comes to ethics, do not compute things so simply. We just don’t work like that and the implications of thinking like that are disastrous.

You can’t let an AI driven car kill its passengers and have a CEO come out and say, “Wow, yeah we’re going to learn from that and adjust our models.” Human life isn’t a video game.

The best technology will never and should not be allowed to ultimately replace the authority of humans.

Also, consider this: What we’re seeing today is just the commercial side of the equation– 10-15 years behind what’s being developed and deployed within the intelligence community. What we’re getting is merely the declassified and “safe” versions… so, considering we know the impact of human-powered troll farms on elections and political influence… what else is out there in the machine-driven world?

This is original content from Adam McLane. © adam mclane

This year the presbytery sold off my childhood summer camp.

Yesterday was the final celebration of that work, culminating 60 years of welcoming kids from all over northern Indiana for a week of crafts, games, swimming, and hand-churned ice cream.

Obviously, I didn’t get to go but I was added to a chat group and kept up a little with the happenings, who was going and who wasn’t, that kind of thing.

Geneva Center was the highlight of my life each summer from about 5th grade and into high school. Sure, lots of other things happened through the year but in my mind that week of camp was what mattered most. I had my friends at home and then I had camp friends.

Many times I tried to make camp friends into “real friends” but it was always too awkward and a life lesson that time and place often form relationships that don’t endure but are true friendship.

There’s a theory in religious circles that adults who move into the clergy or church leadership are subconsciously trying to recreate an intense religious experience they experienced in the past.

That’s probably true for me to a certain extent, as well. I know I was always trying to get people to that moment— consciously or not— of an intense religious experience because I knew it had the possibility to shape a life.

Likewise, within the church ecosystem there are lots of ancillary businesses— camps, mission trips, retreat centers, school bible clubs— pretty much the entire youth ministry world— designed to help you recreate that mountaintop moment.

A lot of good and bad things happen in church world because of this subconscious desire to relive that moment.

This subconscious search drives a lot. And as time goes on you realize you’ll never quite get that same high but you keep trying.

It’s a high you can’t quite replicate for yourself but you kinda hope that something you might spark that moment for a young person, thereby launching another person on the quest of their own, going into leadership or seminary or whatever sojourn it takes to try to recreate their campfire moment for them.

For non-religious types this same type of thing might be your annual camping trip or even a cruise. Nothing will ever be like “that one time” but every year you try to recreate it and drag other people along in your attempt. This is captured in movies and television shows about traveling, nostalgic flicks always seem to be trying to take you back to “the moment”.

When I think about Geneva Center of course I think about the fun. Belly flop contests in the pool, canoe trips down the river, and the thrill of holding the girls hand. Did you know I juggle? A skill I learned at camp.

But I also think about the adults who were my counselors. I still remember their affirmations, (appropriate) affection for me, the way they accepted me and included me. Maybe I don’t remember their names but I definitely remember how they made me feel.

When I think about my time as a pastor I hope I was that for a few others.

But I also think of that time as the highlight of my religious life, a place where I was accepted for who I truly was.

Before making a detour into evangelicalism, I was spoiled with the idealism of a small, loving community in the “liberal” PCUSA. I thought and still think having a female pastor was normal, thinking of God as neither male or female wasn’t an intellectual leap for me, the idea that God is big enough for all of us to have our own ideas on what they might be like.

Hitting the teenage years I ended up going a different direction with my church life. I was attracted to bigger youth groups, ones that were more serious about Bible study and more self-disciplined. But who also have a much smaller definition of God, an ever-shrinking one if we are honest.

I don’t regret that turn towards evangelicalism but I think I now realize it was a detour away from where I felt at home the most.

And I’m ok with that. It wasn’t a bad detour. Life is a journey after all, full of detours and side quests, triumphs and failures.

It’s hard when things you love, even if they are just distant memories, come to an end. It floods you with waves of thankfulness and even a bit of guilt, not that I had any power to change the course of history but maybe I should have stayed more involved in GC somehow?

As you might imagine, I’m not handling loss right now particularly well. Whether it’s a chicken on the farm or sending a fair goat to the butcher or, in this case, a camp I’d not visited in 30+ years closing, finality is hard as it gets loaded in the washing machine of emotions in my head every grief-filled day.

Thank you for the memories, Geneva Center. You were living proof that idealism and a few acres could change lives. You did mine. And I hope I’m living out what I learned there every day, Rooted in Love.

This is original content from Adam McLane. © adam mclane