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Mission Farming and Trusting in God's Providence with Divine Mercy Farm
249 Plays9 months ago
On this episode Mathew had the opportunity to meet with Matt from Divine Mercy Farm - this is a really interesting interview as Divine Mercy Farm is a Mission Farm which operates as a nonprofit. They talk about how Divine Mercy Farms operates, discuss homesteading and much more. You might be interested in seeing the short film featuring Divine Mercy Farms on the Living Dine Mercy show on EWTN - you can find the link to that in the show notes.
Short Film featuring Divine Mercy Farm: Click Here
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Little Way Farm and Homestead Podcast. Little Way Farm and Homestead is a regenerative and educational farm in southeastern Indiana. Motivated by the Catholic faith, we strive to inspire, encourage, and support the development of homesteads and small-scale farms in faith and virtue. I'm Matthew. And I'm Carissa. We're excited for you to join us on the podcast.
Interview with Matt from Divine Mercy Farms
00:00:24
Speaker
On this episode, Matthew had the opportunity to meet with Matt from Divine Mercy Farms. This is a really interesting interview as Divine Mercy Farms is a mission farm which operates as a non-profit. They talk about how Divine Mercy Farms operates, discuss homesteading, and much more. You might be interested in seeing the short film featuring Divine Mercy Farms on the Living Divine Mercy show on EWTN. You can find the link to that in the show notes.
00:00:49
Speaker
Now before we get into the episode, we do want to invite you to consider FIDAY email. We recently switched our farm's email address to FIDAY email, hello at littlewayhomestead.com. FIDAY email represents much of what we hope our partners represent, a commitment to the Catholic faith including the way the business operates.
00:01:06
Speaker
We cannot recommend FIDAY email enough and we hope you choose to switch to FIDAY email whether you're considering a personal email or a business email from whoever your current email provider is today. Be sure to check out the link in the show notes and use the code LITTLEWAY for a discount. Now, let's get into the episode.
Mission and Inspiration of Divine Mercy Farms
00:01:39
Speaker
and Homestead podcast. Extremely excited to have you here and appreciate you taking time Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm humbled to be able to talk.
00:01:52
Speaker
This'll be fun. I want to get started. Uh, just dive right in. Could you just give a little bit of a background around divine mercy farm and what you all are doing up there? Okay. Yeah, sure. Divine mercy farm is a mission farm. We're dedicated to raising food, uh, uh, growing out animals and feeding the poor.
00:02:10
Speaker
That's what we do. The poor, as in those who are, you know, suffering materially, and also the spiritual poor, specifically the religious, certain monks, nuns, those who are living in religious communities who have elected a life of poverty and obedience, and we're happy to feed them because they're praying for all of us.
00:02:32
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. It's in that in and of itself is an angle of small scale farming and home setting, especially amongst Catholics that I don't think actually comes up too often, but it's something that is extremely interesting. In fact, I'll tell you, even just reading and learning a little bit about your farm online has inspired me to consider some additional opportunities or alternatives that we could
00:02:54
Speaker
help to promote or consider across the country because you're absolutely right. There are people who have dedicated their life. They've received a vocation or a calling to a vocation and they've answered that call. And one of the things I think that we can do for them is to help provide them with
00:03:10
Speaker
great nutrient dense and frankly delicious food.
Operations and Educational Initiatives
00:03:14
Speaker
And so it's awesome to see that that's what you're doing. So I wonder how do you know how does that get started or how does someone if they say hey that's that's really interesting and inspiring to me how might I get started doing something like that.
00:03:26
Speaker
Well, that's a great question. I don't even know how we're getting started doing. And I think it's really just a work of the Holy Spirit. I think it's just, we just had this unique vision to feed people, to feed people great food, like you said, nutrient dense, you know, really nutritious food that is hard to get when you are just relying on food banks or you're relying on donations.
00:03:47
Speaker
We wanted to give them farm fresh food and we knew that through my experience of researching the religious orders and the life in certain monasteries, particularly Benedictine monasteries, a lot of them used to have farms. They used to milk cows. They used to have bees. They used to have sheep. And what's happened is it seems like
00:04:06
Speaker
Uh, the upkeep of the farm was a little challenging with keeping all the hours and all the prayers and all the requirements of religious life. And a lot of those farms kind of went to neglect or the older people got too old and the younger people don't know how to farm either one. So it just kinda, it just, I don't know. I think the Holy Spirit inspired us. Um, yeah, I'm definitely sure of that. It was, it was pretty clear, uh, through experiences with learning about the Franciscans and then the Benedictines and then the Carmelites and just seeing their way of life.
00:04:33
Speaker
and seeing that they could, maybe they could use a little help on the side. I know a lot of them have gardens. We know several monasteries that they have their own little gardens. They do their own little vegetable plots, but it's nice to be able to provide them more. Right. And so what all enterprises do you all have on your farm right now?
00:04:51
Speaker
Our focus is on a market garden vegetables. Uh, and we have pastured poultry. We did, um, we've done meat chickens, the broilers. Uh, we have plenty of layers that we cycle in all the time. Uh, we have ducks and geese and turkeys and those things. We have a few pigs. Um, most of them are for, uh, for our family, for our guests
Challenges and Faith in Non-Profit Farming
00:05:13
Speaker
that come to the farm. We have students come all the time. We have families come learning on the farm. So we like to feed them. That's a huge part of our mission.
00:05:21
Speaker
is feeding people, not only those that we give the food to, but those who actually come here and we feed them with, I guess you could say spiritual nourishment, the act of farming and the corporal work of mercy of giving food. And we also feed them through just simply their bellies, good food.
00:05:38
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely necessary. Wow. This is incredibly inspiring. This is a wonderful story already, and I'm excited to explore it even deeper. So a lot of people are probably going to wonder, well, one, we need to make money doing farming. And so this idea of simply giving food away, it might be a little bit interesting to folks in doing so in a manner from a nonprofit.
00:06:02
Speaker
But that is what you all are doing. So you are established as a non-profit, correct? Not like a for-profit business.
00:06:09
Speaker
That's correct. Yeah, it's kind of counter-cultural to grow food and then just give it away and not expect to make any money. And I'll admit that I went through years where I was trying to figure out how can I possibly farm and make money and afford a house and raise a family and even be able to put food on my own table? I mean, it was so insurmountable. I met with a farmer down in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.
00:06:37
Speaker
who has 10 children. And I talked to him about this. I said, I want to do this. You know, I'm, I'm thinking about the CSA model. I really like what you're doing here. And he said, Oh yeah, that's great. But if you don't own the farm, you're going to be struggling like it. That's just, that's just the reality. So it's just, um, so I don't, I don't know where in there we realized that there was, there was no way we were going to be able to do it. We had, we had pretty much no savings. Um, uh,
00:06:59
Speaker
we just never had a lot of money. We never came from a lot of money. We just kind of worked and paid our bills and tried to do the best that we could. Um, and then all of a sudden we realized, well, what if, what if we were, what if we were nonprofit? What if we emulated basically the church, holy mother church, they're, they're a nonprofit. People give them money to do things for them to pray for salvation of souls, for all of the, um, the places of the, the religious live for all of these things. And I thought, well,
00:07:27
Speaker
We have a great example in our own home parish. They're doing amazing stuff. They're starting a school and people are just donating money. And it seems like the Holy Spirit is leading us to wanna start a farm. So let's just see if this works. And we're still wondering every day if it's gonna work. I mean, it's a total act of faith to say, okay, Lord, we're gonna get this many meat chickens this year. And if you want us to raise them, you have to give us the money to raise them, and then we're gonna feed people with it.
00:07:55
Speaker
And it takes a tremendous amount of prayer and discernment to be able to walk this road, but it's totally worth it. Right. That's wonderful. What you've mentioned, I think we, so who, who, what, what does the operation look like? How many people are involved in it? What are there others contributing? What does that look like? Right. So the operation is my wife and I and our nine year old son. That's it.
00:08:18
Speaker
Um, wonder if it's three of us, it's a challenge. Um, it's really mostly me because she, she has taken care of our son and the house and, uh, those things. And I'm the one who's out there every day, but in the summer, it's all three of us kind of working together to, to make this, make this something.
00:08:35
Speaker
Right. So do you have a background in farming or how do you get to this position just historically or professionally? How do you get from not starting the farm to a nonprofit to doing so and giving food away to folks who need it?
Matt's Transition from Academia to Farming
00:08:51
Speaker
Did you grow up doing this? Are you a multi-generational farmer? What does that look like?
00:08:55
Speaker
No, no, not at all. Uh, my, my parents don't know anything about farming. I, it just, it was just a, it was like, um, you know, like Cupid shoots the love arrow and hits you in the heart, right? Like it just hit me when I was in, in, in college that I just loved everything about being outside. And I loved learning how to grow things and I loved animals and I loved the woods and I loved just doing stuff like that. And as I started to learn how to grow things under a mentor,
00:09:21
Speaker
in college that love kind of expanded as i experienced some ranches and some bulls and horses in parts of europe and some vineyards and some farms and some some things in louisiana and uh and then pennsylvania we started farming more regularly we got hooked up with some friends who have a dorothy day catholic worker farm
00:09:42
Speaker
who are close by and we started helping them out. And then it just kind of, it was just like one thing led to another where we said, okay, well, I should back up. My background is actually in literature. I was an English professor before I took the leap to full-time farming. And well, actually God took the leap because I was an English professor who happened to suffer the COVID mandate-ness.
00:10:08
Speaker
So my job was let go. And it was let go right at the time where we knew that the Lord wanted us to start a mission farm to feed the poor. And it was just really, it was a struggle because it's hard to go from making money and having a salary and knowing you have health care and you're going to be able to take care of the bills, all of a sudden not knowing anything.
00:10:31
Speaker
ever again, but I think it's the leap that all Catholics need to start to learn how to make. We need to start detaching from the luxuries of the modern world. If we're really gonna walk into this new kind of living on homesteads and on farms and trying to raise our own animals and trying to really detach from the world itself and the culture at large that is really parasitic on the faith, we have to kind of learn how to just walk away from it one step at a time and kind of trust that the Lord is gonna provide.
00:11:02
Speaker
What recommendation or advice would you give to someone who's looking to get into farming or even begin home setting?
Farming Advice and Learning from Experience
00:11:09
Speaker
And they're maybe wrestling with similar ideas in the world and they're feeling disenfranchised or upset with the way they see things as they are. And they're thinking, hey, I want to go, maybe people will say, I want to go live a simpler life. And I think that's sometimes a little funny because a simpler life when you're going kind of super against the grain and jumping into farming in the modern world isn't really so simple. It's a little complicated.
00:11:31
Speaker
But I understand the idea and the the ideal and I love it so I wonder as someone who is actually doing it is farming sounds like you have a good perspective on it as well what advice or recommendation would you give to someone who wants to get started.
00:11:47
Speaker
That's an excellent question. A lot of people ask me that and I know there are a lot of people who maybe are living in cities or living way outside the country who have this drive. I met a young couple who were passing through our parish on their way to Louisiana and they wanted to start farming. They wanted to do a mission farm just like
00:12:07
Speaker
we're doing and I ask them a very simple question do you have any experience whatsoever growing vegetables or working with animals and the answer was no and I said okay well that's okay because the you know if the Lord gives you the desire it's it could be real my suggestion is to just start small start with what you can do and don't try to get too big don't try to to get your too many animals or too big of a garden because your weeds are gonna get overgrown and you're gonna have to
00:12:36
Speaker
contend with all sorts of sick animals because you're not going to be able to take care of the few that you have. So I think staying small at first, just get your feet wet and see if this makes sense. Help out with other farms that you know. Join with people who are starting a garden. Go over and help the local farmer or the local homesteader and see what it's like to go from seed all the way to eating.
00:13:01
Speaker
What is that process like? And do you have it in you? Because there's a tremendous amount of work. I must make about 100 decisions a day just waking up in the morning and doing chores. I don't even realize that I'm doing it. And I'm not even doing this that long. I have a friend of mine who is an avid organic gardener. He's 80 years old. He's twice my age. And he said to me recently, he goes, you know, Matt, when I stop learning, that's when I'm dead.
00:13:28
Speaker
And he, he's calling me and asking me questions. So it's, I think that's a really good perspective for us to have. And for anybody starting out, you're never going to get to the point where you know, everything you can always learn more. You can always keep your, your ears open and you can always take your time step one step at a time. So I don't know. That's, I think that's how, that's how I would start. I guess that's kind of how I started.
00:13:49
Speaker
I think it's great advice and it's great recommendation as well. One thing about this that we've learned and we've been doing it now for a couple of years is that the amount of questions that continue to pop up really continues as you learn more because there's more nuance that comes up as you move animals around and you work with them and you introduce new breeds and
00:14:09
Speaker
even new genetics into a farm or you introduce new crops and you want to expand those out or try this different business venture or create this market or capitalize on a market or even one thing that I think it's really uncomfortable to people is that there is a big difference between when you begin and you're starting out small and you're consuming maybe what you're producing in your own household and selling a little bit of it potentially to cover costs or just begin kind of that enterprise
00:14:37
Speaker
and the ultimate scalability of what can become. It's a lot different, obviously, driving an entire business venture out of an enterprise than it is just starting out with a couple of that animal or a couple of that crops as well. And I hear that a lot with the garden portion, or I think that's where it comes up a lot, is in gardening, which is actually maybe a little surprising to people, in that managing a small garden is very different than managing a field of that exact same crop.
00:15:06
Speaker
Oh yeah, that's definitely, definitely true. Um, one other thing I would say that I think is really important is to meet your neighbor, neighbor farmers. I think that's really key and talk to people who've been doing this for a long time. Um, and as even people who are not Catholic, it doesn't matter. If people, if there are local people around you who have been doing this for a long time and they're willing to share information with you, it's just, it's just great. And I think all of this really starts with humility. Just be small, keep your head down, listen, learn,
00:15:36
Speaker
and just see if the Lord wants you to do this.
00:15:39
Speaker
Entirely. Absolutely. Well, one thing that I think is really important is that farms, homesteads, especially homesteads, have a good sense and understanding of what they're trying to do. And sometimes this will come up in like a family statement or a mission statement of sorts. And from what I understand, you have a really sharp oriented mission statement and a calling in what you're doing with your farm, calling it even a mission farm.
00:16:06
Speaker
What do you think the importance of having a mission statement is towards leading to potential success of that farm or homestead? Yes, absolutely So I guess I don't where can I start? our mission statement and the idea of a mission statement came because in 2019 I
00:16:28
Speaker
That's a while ago. That's five years ago. We decided we wanted to start a small trade college, a Catholic trade school. And as I was researching this and I was learning about what trade schools were out there, most of which were not Catholic, I think there was only one at the time that came up and it was Harmel Academy, I think in Michigan.
00:16:49
Speaker
I realized that there had to be
Developing and Maintaining a Mission Statement
00:16:51
Speaker
behind this, there had to be a reason why I'm doing this. So I had to be able to justify this to people who were saying, well, nothing like that exists. What difference does it make? There's a trade school right down the road and there's another one down in Philadelphia and there's another one over in Pittsburgh. Why do you need another one? So all of a sudden I started to ask myself, okay, well, that's a great question. Why? Why do I need to do this? What am I doing and why do I need to do it? I'm a writer and I was a professor, so it's normal for me to have to come up with a thesis statement.
00:17:17
Speaker
That's essentially what you're doing when you're writing a mission statement is like, this is this is what I'm doing. But the difference with a mission statement, I think, is that really God has to be the one who writes it. So you have to and it takes a tremendous amount of discernment. So what I have right now, what my wife and I developed,
00:17:34
Speaker
as our mission statement now was basically for three or four years in the making and it was God teaching us over time because you know we come out and we say okay we think this is it and then all of a sudden you you wait a couple of weeks and you pray about it and somebody says something and you realize wait a minute that's not what I'm supposed to do that's not gonna work at all
00:17:52
Speaker
So I think you have to kind of live through that mission statement and it can't just be something you wake up with and you say, okay, this is going to be it forever because it might develop and it might change. And your idea today might really not work tomorrow. And you might find that it's simply a developing, a developing statement. I don't know if that answered your question.
00:18:12
Speaker
It is. It's a great insight into it. I think it's something that might be more important as people get into homesteading and small-scale farming because I think there's a temptation to lose yourself in some ways within the farm itself, meaning that the chores just become overwhelming or the production becomes overwhelming that eventually you go back inside
00:18:31
Speaker
and you start thinking, why am I doing this to begin with? Everything I do is more difficult than it otherwise necessarily has to be. They sell eggs in a grocery store. You don't have to feed the chickens and move the coop and move manure around and do all kinds of other things to care for them. You could just go to the grocery store and get eggs.
00:18:50
Speaker
But there is a reason that we are choosing to do this. And there's a reason why these conversations continue to emerge. And so I think it's important that people set out from the start to create a environment that has a mission or has some degree of a statement that defines what the family is trying to do or what the individual is trying to do so they can always refer back to it and never forget that there is a motivation behind the work and there is a purpose to their work.
00:19:19
Speaker
And hopefully it's to glorify and honor God. Yeah, you have to be able to see your daily work in the light of God. If you don't do that, then farming will overwhelm you. There's no question about it because it's not an easy way to wealth.
00:19:35
Speaker
It's not an easy way to security. It's actually the exact opposite. Farming is about total humility and failure, and there's weather when you don't want it to be, and there's animals dying when you don't want them to die, and there's things happening that you don't want to happen. There's pests, and there's all sorts of fatigue. I got terribly sick last year for about two months over the winter, man. I didn't think I was going to ever farm again. It was terrible.
00:20:05
Speaker
If you don't see every single thing that happens to you in the light of God's plan for you, then you're going to fall apart. You're going to fail. You might as well just, just, just choose a nine to five job that's secure and do the best that you can and raise your family. Cause that's good too. There's that's that. I mean, God may want you to do that. Um, but, but they're there. Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:27
Speaker
Do you have any really exciting testimonies or testimonials from maybe a customer that you've sold food or given food to or donated to or a group that you've worked with that has really encouraged you that you're doing something good? Oh, that's a great question. Yeah, we have a few recently. Just out of nowhere, we find out that a family whose business had a fire
00:20:55
Speaker
And they've been out of work for two years. And one of the people in this family all of a sudden had cancer. So they ran through all their savings, and all of a sudden they had these medical bills they couldn't pay. And it happened right around Thanksgiving. And it just dawned on us, and we go, oh, wait a minute. We have all these turkeys. We have all these vegetables. We're going to give you Thanksgiving dinner.
00:21:17
Speaker
And there was, you know, that has continued to happen where we're just kind of just saying, okay, we're going to do this work every day. We're going to raise this food. We don't always know who it's for, but we're just going to give it away. And people like that come along and it just, that's a good thing. You say, thank you, Lord, for that consolation.
00:21:38
Speaker
That's what we have
Stories of Faith and Divine Intervention
00:21:40
Speaker
been. I just mentioned that to my wife before we jumped on here, not too far before about constellations from God and, you know, encouragements that we get at times that we're doing something good. And it's always wonderful to feel those and to receive those. And yet we know that they don't always come either and that sometimes it's that persistence that's incredibly important.
00:22:01
Speaker
And so I wonder you know how you handle times when those constellations aren't coming as well and you have to maintain that fortitude that you're on a right path and you're responding to God in the way that you believe he's calling you to and that means sometimes that
00:22:16
Speaker
Yeah, you're not feeling too well and yet you still have to go out and milk the cow or you still have to get up and get the seeds planted because they don't play catch up. They just grow as they grow. How do you persevere in times of difficulty like that? Because I'm sure it's something a lot of people do experience, especially after the newness and the novelty of agriculture life starts to wear off.
00:22:37
Speaker
Right, yeah, the honeymoon phase ends. The short answer to that is through God's grace. But the long answer is that we have this wonderful memory of when we acquired the farm that sort of stays in the background that reminds us that God still wants us to do this and that it happened in this way. I was an associate professor of English at a small Catholic college. I was losing my job because
00:23:06
Speaker
I was very Catholic and I was trying to emphasize a Catholic curriculum. Everybody listening will understand the implications and what that means. And I knew that I was going to lose my job at a particular date.
00:23:18
Speaker
And we were also trying to acquire an 18-acre farm that was next door to an already running Divine Mercy ministry in Pleasant Mount, Pennsylvania. So I knew this guy and he said, you know, you can farm this land anytime you want. And I said, well, I got to have a place to live. And we looked at a house that was right next door to his and I said, well, how about that house right there?
00:23:38
Speaker
And he said, OK, well, I'll contact the people who who own it because, you know, it's been kind of empty for a few years. So that was that was in May. And then it took us several months to get through that family because one one one the daughter
00:23:54
Speaker
of the parents who owned the house lived in Florida and the son lived in Alabama. And it was kind of out of sight, out of mind. The house was fallen into neglect. They didn't want to deal with it. And meanwhile, I'm losing my job, but I still qualify for a mortgage, which was amazing. It was like a miracle. And this is before we realized we were going to do a nonprofit farm. So I actually know that's not true. We knew we were doing a nonprofit farm. We just didn't know how we were going to do it anyhow. So it was agonizing and it got to the point where
00:24:23
Speaker
On December 31st, I was going to lose my job and I was ready with the mortgage broker. Everything was all signed. I was literally waiting for the counter signature from the owners of the house and they hesitated two weeks. And this was in Christmas of 2021. So then I lost my job on December 31st. It was still the Christmas time.
00:24:48
Speaker
And we didn't know what we were going to do because I had no job. I didn't apply for any jobs, even though I had a PhD and I had plenty of publications. I just, I just knew that God didn't want me to do that anymore. He wanted me to farm full time. So we, we waited and it was talk about desolation right there. Like we didn't know what was going to happen. We had no prospect whatsoever.
00:25:09
Speaker
And then on the Feast of Epiphany, I got a phone call from a friend of ours who had that ministry who said, hey, Matt, we found somebody who was going to buy that farm for you. And you're going to finally have your Divine Mercy farm.
00:25:25
Speaker
and you're not going to owe a mortgage because he's going to just give it to you. So it goes back to my original point, which is there's no way that I can start a farm if I don't either own the land or I have some kind of money to put into it or another off-farm job in order to fund it to get going. God figured that out for me. So I thought, OK, well, God gave us this farm. He wants us to do this mission. That's pretty clear to me.
00:25:55
Speaker
Every time I hit a snag, anytime I hit a desolation, when I was sick last year for almost two months, I was basically bedridden. I just kept remembering, God put us here. He still has a plan. So no matter what, I just have to keep walking forward, just keep planting the beets, keep weeding the garden, just take care of the chickens, just do whatever I have to today, because today is the only day that I can deal with. After that, God has to figure it out.
00:26:25
Speaker
Wow. Yeah, that's great. Uh, what a powerful and inspiring story. And you know, one of the things that we continue, I think, and I hope to recognize here as a family is that just like we understand, we can't exactly count on every season weather wise to be exactly what we need for what we think our plan is for growth or for the animals that we really have to place our trust in God and learn to work with his will and not our own.
00:26:57
Speaker
Oh yeah, yeah, the surrender novena has become very important for us in that way. Everything that we do has to be filtered through God's will alone. Yeah. Now, one thing that's interesting about you all's farm that I did not know until just before we got on to our interview today is that you all were actually featured on a segment of the Living Divine Mercy channel up on or show up on EWTN talking about Divine Mercy Farm.
Media Features and Storytelling
00:27:26
Speaker
talk us through what that looks like. And I will go ahead and just say that we'll definitely make sure that we get a link to that page on y'all's website, because the videography alone, not to mention the story is absolutely stunning. Yeah, that that the filmmaker was great. He's a wonderful guy. Sistine Films is awesome. And it was a it was kind of a crazy thing, a good friend of mine who actually got us into the whole
00:27:52
Speaker
Divine Mercy thing in the first place in our parish. I used to wear these big Divine Mercy t-shirts and sweatshirts and one day I just went up to him. I said, hey, what's your name? You know, what do you do? He kind of knows this guy who does the films and he invited him out. He says there are some really great things happening in our parish. We have this guy with Divine Mercy Farm up there in Pleasant Mount. We have
00:28:14
Speaker
The school happening we have, there's a guy who makes caskets in our parish. There's this pregnancy center that's happening. We have all these amazing things. So this filmmaker came in to originally film a documentary about our parish. And then he came to our farm and we were only supposed to be a small segment of that. And he ended up filming it and he said, wait a minute, this is a whole segment. I'm going to pitch this to Father Alar and see if they want to throw it in one of their segments of Living Divine Mercy on EWTN.
00:28:40
Speaker
So it just, I didn't know, I didn't know it was going to happen. I just thought, okay. And I, and I was just getting over my illness. It was, it was last May. So I wasn't really strong, but we were just plugging along, limping along, trying to do the best that we could. And he came and he filmed us and it was, it was a bizarre situation. I've never been filmed like that before. Um, so it was, it was, it was a little, it was a little odd. Um, my, my wife doesn't like really being much on camera. So she just told me to handle all of it.
00:29:07
Speaker
which was fine. And of course, I think the star of the film was my son. I think the filmmaker said the same thing. He was like, oh, your son took it all, which is fine with me. I love my boy. And well, yeah, I'm just grateful that it was able to be done. It was unexpected. It's not like I went looking for it. I think that's important. I didn't really know that I had a story that wanted to be heard in that particular way. I'm just trying to live my life and stay small.
00:29:34
Speaker
in my own life and to allow the Lord to sort of do whatever he wants. And it was crazy. I mean, the other crazy thing is that they featured the film on the Living Divine Mercy show, but the topic of the show that our film was featured in was actually on divorce and annulment.
00:29:53
Speaker
which was really bizarre. So afterwards, we're like, man, that was maybe terrible context for our farm. Wouldn't it be great if they could feature it on, you know, Catholic's farming or Catholic's homesteading or something, because it's a great film. So the filmmaker actually is trying to finish the whole documentary on the parish. And I think that's his idea is to rope it into a larger film.
00:30:16
Speaker
with a little bit more of a clear context because our film is about a married couple. It has nothing to do with divorce or annulment. It was kind of a little weird.
00:30:25
Speaker
Sure. Well, it's neat to see and it's wonderful because it not only opens up the opportunity to shine a light on Catholics in home setting and agriculture and small-scale farming and rural life, but it does accent, and I presume maybe this is part of why the topic was the topic in the film, is that it probably highlights a commitment of you all and your family, not just towards one another through the vocation of marriage, you and your wife, but also in your commitment to responding to God and doing whatever it is under the idea of divine mercy.
00:30:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think you're right. I think that's absolutely true.
00:30:59
Speaker
Yeah. What's that? I know you talked a little bit about it, but what's it even, you know, a lot of people are probably wondering, how do I, you know, when I want to build a farm and as a Catholic and I want to run a farm and I want to, you know, try to cultivate a market and sell to folks, but I'm struggling with telling my story. You have a history in writing and you've been featured in a film and we're talking now, what, what does it look like to kind of get an idea of what your story is and how to present that to people?
00:31:27
Speaker
Well, everybody does have a story because God is ultimately writing their story for them. So I think that it really requires a discernment of how God has been working in your life. And I have just been so blessed that
00:31:44
Speaker
I've had moments where I have glimpses of how God has sort of put everything together in what I've done. And I think it just comes from prayer, and it comes from sort of the growing your interior life. And it really, it works at the intercession.
00:32:05
Speaker
Our mission is to feed the poor. So in some ways, we ourselves have to emulate that through spiritual poverty. We have to be detached and we have to be separate from anything superfluous in the world that
00:32:22
Speaker
prevents us from growing in our interior life and growing in holiness. And I think in order to really understand how God is writing your story, you have to start there. You have to go inside. You have to spend time in silence with our Lord. You have to allow Jesus to enter into you and truly be with you. And he'll tell you how to tell that story. I think it has to start there.
00:32:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's, you know, there's definitely a lot to, you know, considering what it is that we're attached to in the world and how it impacts us spiritually and in other manners and learning to develop really a desire even to want to be detached from things in the world.
00:33:10
Speaker
And I think when we do that and as a community and as a people, when we do that, we really open ourselves up to not resist God's will and be willing to embrace it, whatever it is in whatever way that he's calling us to operate or where to go or what to do or really just grow in that deeper love and communion for him and with him.
Catholic Interest in Farming and Guidance
00:33:32
Speaker
Yeah, so I think that
00:33:36
Speaker
Right now, this movement of Catholics wanting to start farms and homesteads is a movement of the Holy Spirit. And I have a feeling that the Lord is going to send that grace of detachment to us if we say yes to his call. Because I'm seeing it happen with so many people and so many friends and this total movement to the country, not like the back to the land movement of the 1960s,
00:34:05
Speaker
And I don't even think not like the 1930s when Dorothy Day and Peter Moran were trying to push people to go back to the land. I really truly think that people are just absolutely fed up with the secular world that has overtaken our lives. And we just want to love God. We want to have good things. We want to honor his creation in our daily lives. And God will give us the detachment in order to do that. I don't even think it's going to be that hard. We just have to say yes.
00:34:33
Speaker
We talk to a lot of people across the country and we hear from people across the country, either through our farm or through this podcast or other work that we do online. And that theme of the Holy Spirit continues to come up. And I have to agree. I don't know any other way to put it. I think there's definitely a reaction against a world that doesn't support the faith necessarily.
00:34:55
Speaker
And I think there's a reaction amongst people wanting to live a life that's just a little bit less consumeristically driven. And I think that there's a lot of people who really want to believe that the work they do is productive and has meaning to it. And a lot of that intersects in the rural life and in agriculture.
00:35:14
Speaker
And it's obvious that there are an enormous amount of people who are absolutely interested in learning how to do this, are interested in all things trade related or agriculture, and they want to build a life, not just for themselves, but for generations of theirs to come. Yeah, definitely. You got it. So I do wonder though, you know, on that same topic,
00:35:37
Speaker
You know, people are interested and I wonder when you know, when people maybe reach out to you or they ask you questions, what are the types of things that people are looking for help with in order to get started? Or what questions do you find come up most often that people are seeking to be answered as they continue to explore this type of lifestyle?
00:35:59
Speaker
That's a great question. There are so many different things that come up. I think people are really surprised that we're raising chickens, for instance. You can go to the big grocery stores and
00:36:15
Speaker
buy a huge pack of chicken for much cheaper than the way we're raising it. So the question is like, why are you doing that? What's the point of raising this chicken? What's the point of raising these vegetables if it requires so much input and so much work? And we already have all these farms out there, they're doing it.
00:36:31
Speaker
Who cares? So that's a perfect opportunity. I think within the Catholic community to try to evangelize this sort of this form of farming that we're trying to do, this desire to rescue God's intention for the natural world, not to have to
00:36:48
Speaker
feed it pharmacological chemicals and throw all sorts of antibiotics at it and put all sorts of fertilizers on it, but that God provided us a way to actually grow these things and to grow them in a way that they sort of sustain themselves if we can steward that.
00:37:07
Speaker
And, and well, just trying to explain that is, is a whole day. And we invite people up all the time when we butcher chickens, we have, we have students come up and families come up and this is basically what we talk about. We talk about the difference between these birds and the things you buy that are raised in, you know, a factory.
00:37:22
Speaker
and why we're doing it this way and why this gives the bird dignity and we love it. We actually love the things that we raise on this farm and we love what we kill. It's a paradox that a lot of people can't quite understand. I've always understood it because I've always been a hunter and so you have to really love the thing you're going to kill in order to actually hunt it well and truly.
00:37:47
Speaker
That's one of the things that we teach them. There are so many questions. A lot of the people in our parish are from the city. So it's great to just get people out to the country to just say, come and see. Just look at what we're doing. We'll have a conversation. We'll figure it out as we go.
00:38:04
Speaker
I think those are good questions and they continue to come up and it's incredibly important that people are willing to answer them. And what we find often is that a lot of people right now are only a step or two ahead, one year ahead, a few months ahead, one animal breed ahead of the next person.
00:38:22
Speaker
And yet they know so much more information that they're able to pass on that I just hope more and more people are willing to be present and speak up and answer questions for others. Because while many of us are trying to establish these farms and these homesteads right now, it's also important to recognize that there is an entire generation of people right behind us.
00:38:44
Speaker
just a year behind us, if not even closer, that have so many questions that they need answered, and we're in a position, even with as little information as we might have or experience at this point, to be able to at least give encouragement or answer some rudimentary questions,
Mentorship and Support for Aspiring Farmers
00:39:00
Speaker
not because we're experts by any means, but because we have just some degree of lived experience and some knowledge that might be able to be passed on to help someone get started, or just simply to encourage them in this way of living.
00:39:13
Speaker
That's right. We have to think generationally. That's a good way of putting it because what we're doing, we have to see ourselves as models for those who are coming after us because we're just simply setting the foundation for those who are going to be able to build upon this. And that's how the church has always looked. The church looks at things in hundreds of years, not just yesterday or last week. And we have to really think if God wants to renew the church, if he wants to bring in
00:39:39
Speaker
this beautiful movement of the Holy Spirit. We have to just do our part every day, and we have to be completely aware that those who are coming after us, and even those who are older than us, but yet they're still trying to learn how to do this. We have to embody those things in what we do, and again, say come and see, let's do this together.
Favorite Farming Activities and Conclusion
00:39:58
Speaker
Right. Absolutely. Well, I've got a few, uh, like a lightning round set of questions to throw at you real quick. I think it might be a little fun for people to hear if that's okay. Sure. All right. So considering, you know, we're heading into growing season, the springtime is upon us. The ground is starting to, uh, you know, the snow is starting to melt a little bit and maybe some, some foliage is starting to pop up out of the ground. I think we saw tulips out here on the farm starting to emerge soon, which is pretty neat.
00:40:28
Speaker
Wow. So as you consider springtime coming, what is your favorite enterprise on the farm to build out? Like if you just had to pick one, what would you want to do? Vegetables. I say that every day. I mean, just last week, I was actually just this week and last week I was working in the greenhouse. We've already got
00:40:45
Speaker
spinach sprouted up there, we've got sea trays planted. And at the same time, I was also trying, we're trying to do a building on the farm so we can have a butchering facility. So I'm kind of, some days I'm spending in there and some days I'm out in the vegetable garden. When I come in after building in the building facility, and I don't mind that work, but my wife can just tell immediately like, that was not a good day. But when I come in from the vegetables, she's like, you're so much happier when you do the vegetables. This is what you're supposed to be doing. Find a builder.
00:41:12
Speaker
So that, I would say that, I mean, we have so many hopes and dreams. Um, I mean, we, we do, we do all the chickens and all the birds and everything, because I think it's easy to give eggs away and it's easy to give vegetables away. It's there is an exemption for giving meat chickens away. Uh, it's challenging when you get to bigger animals. So that kind of has limited us in some capacity. So we're just going to stick with what we can give away. But, um, we have all sorts of plans. We want to get a fence up this year. We don't have a perimeter fence.
00:41:39
Speaker
And we would like to be able to start getting some larger animals to be able to move within that fence. But we have a lot of local farms around here and the local farmers cows get out all the time and they come across the street and knock over mailboxes. So I think a perimeter fence might be in order. It sounds like it might be. Okay. So within the vegetables or within the produce, what's your favorite one to grow? Garlic and leeks.
00:42:05
Speaker
neat. What's your favorite to eat? Garlic and leaks. Fair enough. What is your favorite tool on the farm? Oh, probably a broad fork. Well, it goes right there with the produce. That's for sure. What over the next, uh, over the next year or so, or really through this season, what do you hope to, uh, more so move to perfection from your systems on the farm? Oh, that's a really tough one.
00:42:33
Speaker
Probably green, probably growing in the greenhouse. That's a, that's a, that's a challenge. It's a challenge because sometimes it gets way too hot, but it also gives you a boost. But yeah, that's that I'd like to, I'd like to get better at that. That's great. Well, Matt, this is an awesome conversation. I really appreciate you taking time out to meet with me here. Talk about divine mercy farm. And I really hope people, uh, choose to check out that film segment, learn more about you all. Where can they find you? What's the best way for people to get in touch? Oh, that's easy. Divine mercy farm.com.
00:43:03
Speaker
Well, thanks again for being here. We appreciate it and have a wonderful day. Thank you so much. You too. Thank you for joining us on another episode of the little way farm and homestead podcast. Check out the show notes for more information about this episode and be sure to tune in next week.