Arrows and Acres

Arrows and Acres

Arrows & Acres Podcast Hosted by Daniel & Allison Hartman A podcast for Christian parents who are done raising children who can't function, and ready to raise adults who fear God, carry their own weight, and change the world. Most families are just surviving. Arrows & Acres is for the ones who want something more. Daniel and Allison Hartman are a husband and wife raising a large family on Florida's Gulf Coast — homeschooling, homesteading, running a family business, and doing all of it on purpose. This podcast is the conversation they're having at the kitchen table, in the truck, and at the end of a long day — and now they're pulling up a chair for you. They're not here to motivate you. They're here to challenge you. Every episode cuts into the real stuff: what it actually takes to raise children who become capable, godly adults. How to protect your family's attention in a world designed to steal it. What biblical manhood and womanhood look like when you strip away the cultural noise. How to build something together as a family — a business, a homestead, a legacy — without handing your life over to debt or a schedule someone else controls. What it means to disciple your children not just in faith, but in work, in character, and in calling. How to find — and be — the kind of community that actually sharpens you. What courtship, marriage, and family culture look like when you refuse to let the world define them for you. Screens and devices. College alternatives. Vocational discipleship. Fatherhood and motherhood. Homeschooling. Farmers markets and family enterprises. Homesteading. Hard conversations about culture, faith, and what we're actually building. Arrows & Acres goes wherever intentional family life takes it — because that territory is vast, and most of it hasn't been mapped. Daniel and Allison don't have it all figured out. But they've made a decision: they will not drift. They will not outsource the most important work they'll ever do. And they believe you've made the same decision — or you're close to making it. This is Arrows & Acres. We are not building an audience. We are building a movement. New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

  1. Sep 2

    Starting Late: It's Never Too Late to Change Course (Ep 22)

    The most common message I get from moms is some version of the same question: "Allison, what do we do? Our child is already fifteen. We've already made all the mistakes. Is it too late?" It is not too late. Joel 2:25 says, "So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten." God is in the business of restoration. That is not a metaphor for people who started early. It is a promise for parents who are right where you are. In this episode, Daniel and I sit down with Randy Schrum and talk through what it actually looks like to change course when your children are older. Not the inspiration of it. The practical steps. What to do when God shows you a better way and your teenagers have been living a different normal for years. How to not blow up your family while you're trying to call them higher. How to replace what you take away instead of just stripping things out and wondering why you're getting pushback. And why the family meeting you keep putting off is probably the most disarming thing you could do right now. We talk through something we came to understand the hard way: rules without relationship produce either rebellion or a performance you don't actually want. Repentance, a real conversation at the table, and a community of families going the same direction, those things change the culture of your home faster than any rule you post on the wall. We also talk about Gulf Coast Family Camp in this episode, because one of the most powerful things that happens there is watching families who thought they were too far behind realize they are not alone and not too late. Teenagers who thought their parents were out of their minds discovering a whole room full of young people who are living proof the standard works. If you have been afraid the window has closed, it hasn't. Go listen. And share this one with every parent who needs to hear it.

  2. Aug 12

    How to Build a Strong Family: Insights from the Stewart Family (Ep 19)

    Recorded on location at Gulf Coast Family Camp with Ben and Nilli Stewart, the family Daniel and Allison run the camp ministry alongside. Ben pastored for 21 years, coaches businesses for a living, and owns six of them. Nilli was diagnosed with leukemia at 19, back when she and Ben were still dating. The doctors gave her a four percent chance of living and told her children were unlikely. Nine children and 26 years of marriage later, they run family camps and purity retreats out of a ranch property in the Ozarks. This one is the most practical hour on the feed. Ben and Nilli open the entire operating system of their home: the family mission statement they hammered out over three days and revisit every year, the four bird framework they use to name what each person carries instead of getting frustrated with them, the annual vision retreat, the monthly goal reset, the 25 minute Saturday family meeting, and the fifteen minutes right after it that belongs to one child at a time so every child gets a real one on one about every nine weeks. Homeschool Monday through Thursday. Friday is a family work day and no client gets scheduled. Saturday is rest. Then it turns. Ben says the thing most Christian parents will flinch at: he does not need his children to obey him. He needs them to obey the Lord. He apologized to his son Zion for getting that backward. Control produces rebellion. Pointing children to Christ keeps their heart. "Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6 NKJV Come sit under teaching like this in person. Registration for Gulf Coast Family Camp is open at GulfCoastFamilyCamp.com Go deeper with the tribe inside The Forge: skool.com/the-forge-community/about

  3. Aug 5

    The Continual Drip: What Control Is Costing Your Marriage, with Serene Allison (Ep 18)

    Marriages rarely fall apart in one loud moment. They erode. Quietly. One sigh, one silent treatment, one "are you sure that's right, darling" at a time. Allison recorded this one in the middle of Gulf Coast Family Camp with Serene Allison, co-founder of Trim Healthy Mama, her close friend and her co-grandmother by marriage. Serene has been married almost thirty years, and she says it took the first ten to stop being her husband's conscience and the next ten to stop trying to be his Holy Spirit. It started with a verse she could not get out of her head. Proverbs describes the contentious woman as "a continual dripping on a very rainy day." Serene read that for years and decided it did not apply to her. She was not a yeller. She was not dramatic. She was a helper. Then she looked harder at what a drip actually does. It does not flood a house in an afternoon. It erodes concrete over time. In this conversation: Why the small things are the dangerous things, the sigh, the silence, the quiet second-guess, and why most wives are tearing down the house with their own hands without ever knowing it. Behind the scenes control, which Serene calls control dressed up in a Sunday best hat. Organizing the children to organize their father. Hiding the corn chips. Managing a grown man's health, his schedule, and his reputation, and calling it help. Three pop quizzes in a single week. A friend's fiftieth birthday her husband decided to skip. Resurrection Sunday, muddy work boots, and the excuses she did not make for him. A laundry basket, a dark walk to an out building, and the silent treatment she had already planned in her head. Respect as a gift rather than a wage. Serene makes the case that a wife can honor the office of husband the way a citizen honors the office of president, before the man has done anything to earn it, and that respect is the currency a man runs on. The wife as thermostat, not thermometer. She does not react to the temperature of the home. She sets it. Why the years after the children leave are the reward and not the cliff, and what has to be built now for that season to be a honeymoon instead of a stranger sitting across the table. This is not soft counsel. Serene's whole argument is that the only person a wife can change is herself, and that the list of things needing work belongs on her own paper, not her husband's. "The wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands." Proverbs 14:1, NKJV. Recorded live at Gulf Coast Family Camp in Panama City Beach. Camp runs three times a year, and it is where conversations like this one happen all week long. GulfCoastFamilyCamp.com

  4. Jul 22

    The Chore for Life: Ditch the Chart, Raise an Adult (Ep 16)

    Only about 1 in 4 children today have regular chores. Prior generations would not recognize that number, and neither does the research. One of the longest running studies on adult success ever conducted found two predictors that outrank GPA, income, and talent: loving relationships and doing chores as a child. In this episode, Daniel and Allison open up how their home of 13 actually runs. No sticker charts, no rotating lists. Every child owns a chore for life, from the three-year-old gathering eggs to the fourteen-year-old planning groceries and managing the family schedule. Inside this episode: - The chore for life system, and why every chart they tried failed - Age-by-age ownership: what a three-year-old, a nine-year-old, and a fourteen-year-old should be running - Why "it's not my chore" is a heart problem, not a scheduling problem - How older children train younger ones to take over, and why that's how their daughters could get married without the house missing a step - The buy-in principle: children who are part of the work don't walk away from the family at 18 "Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6 NKJV Chores are not a punishment. They are a training ground for stewardship, diligence, and adulthood. This is how you raise adults, not children. Subscribe on your favorite podcast channel, and join the newsletter at ArrowsAndAcres.com to be alerted when the next episode drops.

5
out of 5
8 Ratings

About

Arrows & Acres Podcast Hosted by Daniel & Allison Hartman A podcast for Christian parents who are done raising children who can't function, and ready to raise adults who fear God, carry their own weight, and change the world. Most families are just surviving. Arrows & Acres is for the ones who want something more. Daniel and Allison Hartman are a husband and wife raising a large family on Florida's Gulf Coast — homeschooling, homesteading, running a family business, and doing all of it on purpose. This podcast is the conversation they're having at the kitchen table, in the truck, and at the end of a long day — and now they're pulling up a chair for you. They're not here to motivate you. They're here to challenge you. Every episode cuts into the real stuff: what it actually takes to raise children who become capable, godly adults. How to protect your family's attention in a world designed to steal it. What biblical manhood and womanhood look like when you strip away the cultural noise. How to build something together as a family — a business, a homestead, a legacy — without handing your life over to debt or a schedule someone else controls. What it means to disciple your children not just in faith, but in work, in character, and in calling. How to find — and be — the kind of community that actually sharpens you. What courtship, marriage, and family culture look like when you refuse to let the world define them for you. Screens and devices. College alternatives. Vocational discipleship. Fatherhood and motherhood. Homeschooling. Farmers markets and family enterprises. Homesteading. Hard conversations about culture, faith, and what we're actually building. Arrows & Acres goes wherever intentional family life takes it — because that territory is vast, and most of it hasn't been mapped. Daniel and Allison don't have it all figured out. But they've made a decision: they will not drift. They will not outsource the most important work they'll ever do. And they believe you've made the same decision — or you're close to making it. This is Arrows & Acres. We are not building an audience. We are building a movement. New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

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