One Year at Halcyon

Three days from now will mark one year since I moved into Halcyon Ranch.

I can still remember that first night. I sat in almost exactly the same spot where I’m sitting this morning, looking across 27 acres outside Stephenville, Texas, and watched my first sunset here. I took a picture and posted it to Instagram. There have been a lot of sunsets since then, but I remember that one pretty clearly.

The place felt like an opportunity. It felt like a new beginning and a reset. Mostly, it felt like a blank canvas. There were three horses on the property, Pepper, Alamo, and Fancy, although technically they weren’t mine yet. I was caring for them for the previous owners. There were barns, pastures, tanks, miles of fence line, and even parts of the property I hadn’t really seen because I couldn’t easily get to them. Somewhere in the middle of all that possibility, there was definitely a moment of, holy shit, I bought a ranch.

Buying Halcyon was a bigger bet than most people probably realized. Maybe even me. It came during a period of tremendous transition in my life, and it represented one of the largest personal and financial risks I had taken in a long time. Plenty of people probably thought I was a little crazy for pulling the ripcord on the life I knew and choosing this one.

But I saw what this place could become.

That’s why I named it Halcyon. The name comes from the ancient symbol of calm after the storm. When I created the ranch, I wrote that peace isn’t passive. It is something you fight for, claim, and protect. Halcyon was meant to represent a commitment to growth, wellness, purpose, resilience, and family.

Those were good words a year ago. After living with them for a year, I understand them a hell of a lot better.

Year One

I took two weeks off after closing because I wanted to learn the property. I walked it, worked on it, cleaned, organized, and tried to establish a baseline for how I wanted the place to operate. I’m really glad I did because one of the first things the ranch taught me is that there aren’t many days off. Something always needs attention. A fence line needs clearing. The round pen needs mowing. A stall needs cleaning. Brush needs burning. Something needs checking in the back pasture. An animal needs something. You finish one job and usually discover the next one while you’re doing it.

The work is also harder than I probably appreciated. I lived in Texas my entire life except for ten years in the Chicagoland area, but damn, you forget how hot it really gets. There have been plenty of days when I work outside in sprints, come inside to cool down, change clothes, and head back out. Three-shower days are a real thing around here. Other days bring completely different challenges, but the animals still need to be cared for and the property still needs attention. The ranch doesn’t really care what else is on my calendar.

That consistency may be the biggest lesson of Year One. Owning a ranch hasn’t made my life easier. In plenty of ways, it has made it considerably harder. But it has made my life fuller, and there is a difference. There is something incredibly satisfying about ending a day tired, looking across the property, and knowing exactly what you accomplished.

It is hard work, but it is worthy work.

Making the Land Work

Looking around today, some of the things I’m most proud of aren’t necessarily things someone would notice driving past the property. Much of Year One has simply been about making the land workable and making tomorrow’s work a little easier.

There were areas of the property I hadn’t really explored when I bought it because you couldn’t easily get to them. I cleared fence lines so I can now inspect the perimeter of the property. I spent a tremendous amount of time preparing the back pasture and improving the infrastructure needed to support a real cattle operation. Today, I can get around the entire property and understand what is happening on the land in a way I simply couldn’t a year ago.

That work also led to a partnership with Sendero de Dios Cattle Company that I’m incredibly excited about as I look toward 2027. I originally thought I would build the cattle operation myself, but I met someone through the local cattle community who I thought could be a great partner. I reached out, we started talking, and it turned into something better than the original plan.

The cabin has become something too. I always thought it could eventually generate income, but getting it on that trajectory happened faster than I expected. My youngest son moving down here became a catalyst for doing the work, and today a young couple lives there and seems to be doing great. Realistically, the cabin probably won’t begin paying for itself until 2028, but after Year One, it’s headed in the right direction.

The main house changed too. For the first several months, I joked that it felt like I lived in an Airbnb. The house came furnished, and while it was comfortable, it didn’t really feel like mine. Over the year, I’ve slowly changed that. I’ve brought in things that fit me while intentionally keeping pieces of the property’s history. The previous rancher's desk is still here, and that matters to me because I don’t believe stewardship means arriving somewhere and erasing everything that came before you. Other people cared for this land before I did. Other people built things here. My responsibility is to respect that foundation while moving the place forward.

One of my favorite moments of the entire year came when the previous owner sat in my kitchen. He told me he was proud of how I had taken care of the property, and then he signed over the AQHA papers for Pepper, Alamo, and Fancy.

These weren’t simply three horses that happened to come with a ranch. He had raised them from birth. Pepper is 23, Alamo is 26, and Fancy is 28, and their pedigrees carry generations of Quarter Horse history, ranch bloodlines, and working-horse genetics. He had spent decades with these horses and more than thirty years ranching. Handing those papers across the table wasn’t insignificant for him, and it certainly wasn’t insignificant for me.

In some ways, that moment meant more than almost anything I built this year. Someone who understood this land and those animals far better than I did believed I had earned the responsibility of taking care of part of what he had built.

That’s stewardship.

I Got a Guy

I also learned pretty quickly that I can’t do all of this myself. When I arrived in Stephenville, my network in the cattle and equine world was pretty damn small. A year later, it is considerably larger.

I’ve met people who know cattle, horses, fencing, land, equipment, and a hundred other things I’m still learning. I’ve tried to find good people, listen to them, and bring them into what I’m trying to build here. It hasn’t always been the cheapest approach, but it has usually been the right one.

After one year in Stephenville, I can finally say something every ranch owner needs to be able to say: I got a guy.

Actually, I’ve got several of them now. Those relationships are as much a part of what I’ve built this year as any fence or pasture improvement.

Learning the Pace

Not every lesson has been easy. There have been some financially stressful moments this year. Nothing catastrophic, but there were definitely times when I pushed things closer to the edge than I needed to because I could see what I wanted to build and wanted to get there faster.

That’s one of the dangers of being a builder. You can see the finished version long before it exists. I’ve spent most of my career moving quickly, making decisions, and figuring things out along the way. Those instincts have served me pretty well here too, but the ranch has taught me that vision and urgency aren’t the same thing.

I can see where I want Halcyon to be three or five years from now. Once I see something clearly, my natural tendency is to start building it immediately. But not everything has to happen in Year One. Some things need a season. Some things need another year. Some things need to wait until they make financial sense.

The land isn’t going anywhere. There is time.

Why I Really Bought It

One thing people may not completely understand about Halcyon is that I never bought it simply because I wanted to own a ranch. I bought it because I believed this place could become an asset for my family for generations.

The cabin may eventually produce income, but that was never its only purpose. Someday I hope it’s full of grandkids. I want kids fishing these tanks. I want the boys bringing their families here. I want holidays, weekends, barbecue, horses, cattle, and a porch full of people I care about.

When the boys first came here last December, I’m not sure they completely understood what I saw. I’m not sure my parents did the first time they visited. I’m not sure my brother did either. That’s understandable. I could see the finished painting when everyone else was still looking at a mostly blank canvas.

A year later, there’s finally enough paint on it that other people can begin to see it too. My youngest has now lived here for six months. The boys have spent meaningful time here together. My parents have been here. My brother has been here. Friends have visited. And people can see something else that probably matters more than anything I’ve built.

I’m happy here.

The Reset

Halcyon has changed me considerably more than I’ve changed these 27 acres. There is a lot of solitude out here. Even with my son living on the property, he’s in college and building his own life. I spend a tremendous amount of time alone working outside, and that gives you a lot of time with your thoughts. Maybe more than you’d like sometimes.

But it has also given me space to reflect on who I am, where I’ve been, and what I want the next chapter to look like. The ranch has become a catalyst for things I didn’t completely anticipate. I’ve built several small but increasingly viable lines of business. I started Halcyon Headwinds and have shared this place and the lessons coming from it with hundreds of people. I’ve leaned back into music. I’ve written songs. I’ve played live again. I’ve built new relationships. I’ve gotten stronger physically.

Most importantly, I’ve learned to trust myself differently.

I’ve spent most of my career being pretty good at trusting my instincts professionally. Give me an organization, a business problem, or something that needs to be built, and I’ve generally been willing to make the call. I’ve historically been less confident trusting myself with some of the big decisions in my personal life.

Halcyon changed that.

There have absolutely been moments this year when I’ve thought it would be considerably easier to sell the place, take the equity, buy a Sprinter van, throw Starlink on the roof, and drive around the country without worrying about whether a fence needs fixing. That life still sounds pretty good some days.

But I’d miss this.

Because the lesson wasn’t that every decision I made was right. The lesson was that I could trust myself enough to make them.

Live Where Your Boots Are

I still have a lot I want to do here. By the fifth anniversary in 2030, I’ll be 58. I hope the businesses are humming along. They don’t need to be enormous. They just need to be healthy and operate the right way. Maybe there will be a Halcyon Headwinds book sitting on the shelf. Maybe I’ll have finally gotten over myself and recorded some music. The performance horse operation should be underway. The cattle business will have had several years to mature.

And I’d love a bigger porch. This porch has become such a character in the Halcyon story that eventually I’d like to expand it into a real outdoor living space, with a place to barbecue and plenty of room for family and friends.

But the thing I hope most is that none of this gets so big that it stops being fun. I’ve spent a career around organizations obsessed with scale. Halcyon has helped me appreciate something different: stewardship over scale, quality over quantity, and meaningful work done well.

The previous owner is 85 now. I think about that sometimes. If I’m fortunate enough to be here at 85, I want to have built the infrastructure that allows me to still enjoy this place. And if someday I’m the older guy sitting across the kitchen table from someone else, deciding whether they’re the right person to carry it forward, I hope I’ve taken care of it well enough to hand them something better than what I received.

Maybe Halcyon eventually becomes a bigger ranch somewhere else. Maybe the cattle or horse operations grow. Maybe it stays right here on these same 27 acres. I don’t know, because somewhere during this first year I’ve realized that Halcyon isn’t entirely a place.

It’s a headspace.

It’s the belief that you can go through a storm and build something peaceful on the other side. That peace doesn’t mean the absence of hard work, risk, loneliness, or uncertainty. Sometimes peace comes from choosing those things intentionally because they’re attached to something worth building.

A year ago, I sat on this porch watching my first sunset at Halcyon Ranch. This morning, I’m sitting in almost exactly the same spot with a cup of coffee. There’s a deer feeder in front of me that wasn’t there then, surrounded by a fence I built. Deer wander through regularly. I can see cattle in the distance. Sully is running around a property that he knows is home. There are three horses here that are mine now, my youngest is gone back in college and playing baseball again, businesses are beginning to work, relationships that didn’t exist a year ago, songs that hadn’t been written, and 27 acres that look considerably different than they did during that first sunset.

There is also an enormous amount left to do, and that’s okay.

A year ago, Halcyon was the name I gave this place because I needed to believe there could be calm after a storm. A year later, I understand the name differently. Peace isn’t passive. You build it. You protect it. You take care of it, just like anything else worth having.

There will be plenty of time to build whatever comes next.

For now, I’m trying to get a little better at living where my boots are.