Why did I leave engineering to pursue farming?

I get asked this question a lot… “Why did you leave the engineering life to pursue farming?” That’s a very good question. After more than 3 years of full time farming, I’m not so sure I left the engineering life. I’m a very creative person… always have been. Growing up, I loved to build things. My dad is a mechanic, and I was turning wrenches with him ever since I can remember. I started tinkering with go-karts in my pre-teen years. Then moved on to building bicycles with motors and making lawnmowers go 45mph. Then to street legal dune buggies and homemade boat motors. This passion to design, build, and create naturally led me to the mechanical engineering field. 

I went to LeTourneau University for 4 years and graduated with suma cum laud graduation honors with a degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology. I was the powertrain lead for the LETU SAE Mini Baja Team the last two years I was there. We built two baja cars… the second one took 5th place against universities from all over the world. We had the big name universities sweating about loosing their first place records.

I went on to work for John Deere as a weld manufacturing engineer. I started in their engineering development program. It was a “try it before you buy it” program where John Deere could make sure you were a good fit before hiring you into a permanent full time position. It was a two year program. They hired me on full time in 1.5 years. 

I am very talented with my hands. I’m essentially a highly skilled blue collar worker with an engineering degree. I have a very good eye of making the theory world match reality. I was one of the youngest engineers at John Deere, yet I made very few mistakes in all the hundreds of tooling projects I completed.

They gave me the Ergonomics Process Owner position on top of my weld manufacturing engineering duties… it’s all about fitting the work to the worker. All the manufacturing engineering projects had to be reviewed and approved by me before being implemented. It was a very politically challenging role critiquing engineers much older than myself on their projects.

I also presented in front of hundreds of people in all employee meetings, and led teams to global John Deere ergonomic competitions. They moved me from continuously improving current production weld tooling to designing and implementing new tooling for new projects. I also got to design and implement a lot of robot weld tooling. I was one of their best manufacturing engineers. And I loved every bit of it.

But then I felt God changing the desires of my heart.

I got diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer at the age of 25. People that get illnesses like this seem to always think it has something to do with their food. I was no different, and I tried growing a garden, and raising chickens, goats, and some calves. I failed at it miserably starting out. But I didn’t give up. I began studying and praying for wisdom with God’s world. I stumbled across regenerative agriculture and fell in love with it. I changed my hobby farming practices to test out my new knowledge. I saw immediate improvements and could see the potential.

Every time I passed an open door in John Deere’s manufacturing plant and saw the beautiful sugarcane fields surrounding it, the sun shining, and the wind blowing, my heart would yearn to be out there. This went on heavily for about a year. My wife and I were seriously considering me going into full time farming. I was praying and asking God when He wanted me to do this.

The morning I prayed that, I went into John Deere and opened my email. In my inbox was a severance package from John Deere headquarters… they would pay me to leave. All kinds of people across the plant got the same package.

I couldn’t believe it! My wife and I felt that was a pretty clear open door into farming. My bosses were trying to get me to stay, but God called me out to His land to work for Him. All my coworkers thought I was crazy… I thought I was crazy.

But I took my parachute and jumped with a big leap of faith and moved with my wife and kids to Ohio to start a farming business on my Grandparents 200 acres. 

My plans didn’t happen the way I thought they would. I failed miserably at farming again but now with the responsibility of providing for my family with this farming business. God didn’t bring me there for me to be a business man, but to be a student again.

I went to work for my cousin on his 200 head cattle farm for about 1.5 years learning the ins and outs of the cattle business. I nearly died 20 times farming in Ohio… those hills were dangerous. God protected me every second of every day.

At the end of 2021, God led us back home to Texas. I’ve seen all the seasons come and go in the northern mountainous climate as well as the east Texas climate. It’s something being outside all day everyday for over three solid years.

You feel the cold fronts come in… the sun rising and setting… the flowers bloom and wither… the wild animals raising their young… the wild edibles appear and disappear… the trees get their leaves and then loose them.

It’s breathtaking and beautiful. I had the privilege of farming land where people have not conventionally farmed. I’ve seen what wild natural ecosystems are like and how healthy and productive they are. When I look at our conventional farming practices and the land they are done on, I get a pit in my stomach. All of my senses say something is not right.

I’ve seen what poor nutrition does to animals as well as my own body.

I nearly died from cancer, and after seeing the effects of nutrition in raising livestock, I have no doubt that nutrition is the number one cause for the majority of health issues plaguing our society. I have this deep desire to farm the way God designed this world so that I can produce healthy food for people.

My desire is to heal God’s land, with God’s animals, for God’s people.

I am a very smart and talented person, but farming is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. When you jump out of society and you’re out with the birds, bees, and sycamore trees trying to figure out how to use this stuff to make a living, you figure out you don’t know a thing. Metal is pretty predictable… living beings, ecosystems, and weather are not so predictable. What works in one area, may or may not work in another area.

God’s creation is so complex… All this life and death, seasons coming and going, and seeing all of nature’s stages has opened my eyes to how big God is and how complex and beautiful His creation is. I have learned a ton since farming full time, but I feel like I’m barely scratching the surface on truly understanding what God has created.

I’m not so sure I left the engineering life… I just went to work for the Engineer of the Universe.

I have not made much money yet as a farmer… but I have drastically grown in my faith, and I know for a fact God is real. I’m on a constant emotional roller coaster… one day I feel like I’m one of the poorest people in the world… the next day I feel like I’m the richest person in the world. God has been teaching me a lot about money. The Bible says I cannot serve both God and money. Money is just a bunch of trading chips so people can live easier together in society. Other than that, it means absolutely nothing if you don’t have another person to trade with.

Everything is meaningless without God and each other. God is the ultimate treasure in life. So why did I leave the engineering life?

Because God called me to be a farmer for you.