Jason Lord is a servant leader with a genuine heart for people. Also an Air Force veteran, Jason brings discipline, perseverance, and an extraordinary work ethic to nearly everything he puts his hands to.

If Tamika is often dreaming about what something could become, Jason is frequently the one figuring out how we are actually going to make it happen.

He is the logical and logistical brain behind many of our endeavors — the planner, problem-solver, builder, troubleshooter, and steady presence who has an incredible ability to take an idea and work through the practical steps required to bring it to life.

But beneath Jason’s practical nature is the heart of a shepherd.

He has a genuine gift for shepherding and hospitality. Caring for people comes naturally to him, and one of the primary ways he expresses that care is through food.

With an Associate of Applied Science in Culinary Arts and a Bachelor of Science in Food Service Management, Jason has spent years developing the skills behind the culinary experiences he creates for the people he loves. For him, preparing food is about much more than putting a meal on the table. It is an expression of hospitality, generosity, creativity, and care.

A meal prepared by Jason has a way of becoming an experience.

It creates a table around which people can gather, connect, laugh, tell stories, feel welcomed, and be nourished.

That is ministry too.

Jason’s professional and educational background in industrial engineering also serves him remarkably well on the homestead. His ability to understand systems, processes, logistics, tools, and practical problem-solving makes him the person who can usually figure out how to get something built, repaired, organized, improved, or simply done.

And then there are the animals.

Jason has developed a deep love for raising livestock and butchery, embracing the responsibility involved in caring well for animals and understanding more fully where our food comes from. His interests reflect one of the central values of our homestead: becoming active participants in the process of producing, preparing, and stewarding the food that nourishes our family.

When he slows down from all of that work, Jason also enjoys pottery — another opportunity to work with his hands, create something useful and beautiful, and participate in a process that requires patience.

In many ways, Jason embodies what we hope our homestead will represent:

Work hard.
Welcome people well.
Feed them generously.
Care for what God has entrusted to you.
And leave things better than you found them.

Better Together

Our gifts are different, and that is part of the beauty of our story.

Tamika is drawn toward nurturing, teaching, encouraging, creating, wellness, and helping people discover greater wholeness.

Jason brings shepherding, hospitality, culinary skill, systems thinking, problem-solving, craftsmanship, and an incredible capacity to turn vision into action.

Where one of us dreams, the other often begins figuring out the logistics.

Where one nurtures through conversation and encouragement, the other may nurture through a meal.

Where one sees possibility, the other begins building the framework.

And sometimes we switch roles entirely.

Together, we are learning that God did not give us identical gifts. He gave us complementary ones.

Our homestead gives those gifts room to work together.

Our Heart for Homesteading

We do not consider ourselves experts who have arrived.

We are students.

We are learning to grow food.

Learning to raise livestock.

Learning to preserve a harvest.

Learning traditional skills.

Learning to build and repair.

Learning to prepare food from what we have raised and grown.

Learning to waste less.

Learning to steward more.

Learning to slow down enough to recognize the abundance already around us.

And learning to trust God through every season.

There is something beautifully humbling about homesteading because so much of it reminds us that we are not ultimately in control.

We can prepare the soil.

We can plant the seed.

We can water.

We can tend.

But we cannot command life to spring forth.

God gives the increase.

That principle reaches far beyond our garden. It shapes the way we think about marriage, parenting, ministry, health, hospitality, community, and discipleship.

We want to be faithful cultivators of whatever God places in our hands.