As a farmer in Madonna House, how did you absorb Catherine Doherty’s vision of farming?

Catherine herself taught me. In my early years at the farm, she shared her ideas about farming with us. She also met with us to work out plans for the summer, and helped us when we ran into difficulties.

One evening when she was visiting us at the farm, we told her that there was an infestation of worms in the cabbage patch. She suggested we look it up in the books.

I had lots of these books by my bed, and so we went up to the dormitory. There, sitting on the beds, she, David May (now Fr. David May) and I searched for answers together. This is a delightful memory. It was such an intimate time with her. She was really involved in our work.

Catherine’s book, Apostolic Farming, was my guide and teacher. I found that the more I tried to live the vision described in that book, the more interesting and life-giving farm work became.

It’s so important to have a clear vision of what you are trying to accomplish. Because of the amount of work involved in farming, it’s so easy to become discouraged.

I learned about people—mainly how to work with them. We had to work closely together. It’s not my farm. It’s not even Madonna House’s farm.

We have been given a vision that is beyond ourselves, and we have the responsibility to live that vision. There are always many decisions to be made and many practical details to work out in implementing it.

One of my delights was getting to know our neighbors—from near and far—people who are farming, and encouraging them to find God in their farming life. They were encouraged by us because they saw that, for us, farming was a spiritual responsibility.

Another joy was introducing the guests at Madonna House, many of whom had never experienced gardening, cattle, sheep, or forestry, to country life. It was a delight to see them come alive in parts of their being through contact with crops and animals. Those who worked on the farm for a time also experienced satisfaction in learning discipline and in committing themselves to it.

A third joy was our little chapel—the fact that we prayed together three times a day for the land, for those who worked with us, and for the whole world.

I also experienced delight in the vegetable gardens, my first love, and in the last year, the chickens. I had fun with the chickens.

I discovered that the more literally I followed Catherine’s specific ideas, the deeper my experience of farming and the more interesting. Catherine had wanted our chickens to be out of the barns and in pasture.

It was wonderful searching for and finding a way of doing that, of letting the chickens find their own food rather than feeding them food that had to be bought.

Then when I was incubating and hatching some chicken eggs, I put them in my cabin where it was warm. They chirp as soon as they break open their shells. What a thrill at 2 a.m. the first time I first heard their tiny chirp, chirp, chirp.

And the horses! Catherine pushed us to get them and work with them. We had no knowledge of how to do this. but we got some and had to learn how to train and work them. We learned from our neighbors and also took some classes.

It wasn’t just a substitution of horses for tractors. It was a wholly other thing; everything was different. With horses you have less control and a different kind of control than you have with machinery. It was hard to learn, and it required commitment and patience. This was very good for us.

Part of Catherine’s vision was her desire to have good, pure, simple food for those who came to Madonna House. Her idea was that all of us living here would be restored through eating it, and the farmers would be restored through the work of growing it.

One appeal of gardening and part of the way it restores is that it is a quiet activity. Catherine saw that this contemplative aspect of working the land was being destroyed by the mechanization of the farm.

In some ways, we farm like people used to farm, but not completely.

In some ways, it’s easier now than it was then, because you have access to a lot of information.

On the other hand, the era that saw farming as the ideal life for a family is gone. Simple farming remains extremely difficult for those who haven’t grown up with it. People really need a vision of it. And now, the increasing number of government regulations is making it even more difficult.

Apostolic farming isn’t exactly the same as organic farming either—though we do it organically to a large extent.

We use whatever techniques work within the framework of our vision, but apostolic farming is not a technique. It’s a spiritual vision that loses its heart if you make a technique out of it.

And it’s more than being ecologically correct. It’s about God and a love for the land and for the people who work it.

At Madonna House, it’s a way of living our commitment to Christ in the marketplace of the world—in this case, "the marketplace" of farming. We do it simply and with reverence, and we nurture the earth and the animals. We see nature, which we experience through farming, as part of God’s loving care for us. Apostolic farming is deeply connected to God.

Yes, there’s a kind of foolishness about our farm. The world isn’t interested in getting its food the way we do. When we look at the world as it is today, Catherine’s vision of farming seems like a vanished dream.

But its very foolishness is a witness to the Good News of Jesus Christ. We are farming for the sake of God and of feeding people, not for the sake of money.

It still remains important: that in one small corner of the world, we are living as best we can a vision of farming that most of the world doesn’t. We’re doing this for the Madonna House family and for the world.