St. Isidore

 

On Clay Hollow Road twenty minutes across the Mississippi River from Dubuque you’ll find the 5 cows, 17 chickens, and 6 humans that make up the St. Isidore Catholic Worker Farm community. 

Alumni of the New Hope CW Farm married couple Eric and Brenna and “the family” of Mary Kay, Peter, Micah and Claire are now in their 7th year on this piece of land where they live into the ideals of Peter Maurin’s “green revolution”, eating what they grow and growing what they eat. They describe themselves as a "Christian community on the land, integrating sustainable agriculture, communal prayer, simple living, hospitality, educational workshops, and active nonviolence." 

Every morning of the Isidorians’ work week (Monday through Friday) begins at 8:30 in their chapel (which is really their barn). I suppose it isn’t accurate to say that the day begins for everyone then, on the farm chores start early in the morning. Often by the time we’d gather the cow had already been milked, the chickens tended, the children ushered out the door for the summer school bus, and gallons of water schlepped up the hill to the cow pasture (a task I readily plugged into as the new, less skilled person).  

 

Most mornings prayer consists of the day’s reading from scripture and sometimes a reflection followed by 15ish minutes of silence and then a time to bring special prayer intentions to the group. Dora the farm dog always makes sure to join in prayer time.  The quiet of morning prayer can be quite moving. At the Los Angeles Catholic Worker it sometimes felt like I could never escape the constant hum (sometimes roar!) of the freeway, at St. Isidore there is constant bird song. While their chatter sometimes brought the morning a little earlier than I’d normally plan (they’d start chirping at about 4:30 AM on the solstice!) along with a gentle harmony of the occasion creaks of the barn their chirping acts as the perfect soundtrack to prayer on the farm.  

Friday morning prayer time looks a little different than other mornings, focusing specificaaly on time for reconciliation and affirmations. Silent time is taken at the begining to reflect on the week followed by a time to offer apologies for any mis-steps affecting individuals or the community and then a time to ask for an apology if anyone has felt any slights that haven’t already been addressed. Affirmation time comes next, when folks can appreciate the hard work or achievements of their fellow CWs from the previous week. It all concludes with sharing a physical embrace as a sign of peace before having the usual brief morning meeting.  

 

At St. Isidore there aren’t too often official community meeting times. Instead time is taken each day after prayer to coordinate schedules and figure out the tasks for the day. This “no long meetings” suggestion was given to one of the Isidorians by a more elder CW and while I’m not sure it would work for many larger communities it certainly does for them. The practical necesities of having kids and the daily need to assess the needs of the land seem to even make it a strength. 

So “What’s going on today?” were usually the first words after the conclusion of prayer. “There’s a soccer game tonight.” “Can I get help moving the cows from paddock 1 to paddock 4?” “Is it still supposed to rain tonight? If not we need to water the onions at sundown.” “I have work today so I’ll be off the farm from 9:30 to 4:30.”  And so off we’d go to our work. Sometimes this was as collective; we are all going to go weed because the beans or squash are in really bad shape or jumping in the truck to go cut down trees on a friend’s land for fire wood. Sometimes work was more individual: Peter to sythe, Brenna to make chesse and yogurt, Theo to chop wood, Eric and Mary Kay to their respective paid jobs, etc.  

 

The morning’s work would go until noon when we'd have a lunch/siesta break time until 2:30. Folks spent these couple hours as they wanted or needed: answering emails, reading, napping, etc. Ten work again until 5 or so

An Agrinomic University  

Peter Maurin’s vision for the Catholic Worker farm was as a place where both practical skills and, as CWers like to call it, clarification of thought could happen. On my visit I got some of both, first during their growing roots program and then learning some of their dairy homesteading techniques.   

-growing roots-  

Each summer St. Isidore hosts this weekish long workshop. The mornings are spent in lectures and discussion and the afternoon doing practical farm labor. This year’s topic was Decolonization, Land Regeneration, & Spiritual Ecology.  

So many topics were covered: 

-The history of the land we were on, the home of the Ho-Chunk and Winnebego people today referred to as driftless region. 

-The history of land theft and genocide of North American indigenous peoples. 

 -What harm has befallen the land because of the loss of its historic and traditional caretakers? 

-How does the language we use affect our understanding of non-human life? 

- Though not the primary targets of colonialism,  what has colonization meant to the loss of our culture as colonizers? Loss of family history, authentic spirituality, etc. 

-Re-examining our understanding of conservation and wilderness including within often beloved concepts such as national parks. It is assumed that these places need to be protected from people generally but in reality the pre-colonization people lived as active participants in their landscape but without the exploitative relationship that has existed under colonization. 

-What does prarie and oak savana restoration look like in this part of the world? 

-The benefits to the land and its non-human inhabitants such restoration would have. St. Isidore’s Eric is a huge Oak tree nerd and loves to tell everyone about how much life they support.  

The week was bookended by two moving experiences, a sweat offered under the guideance of St. Isidore’s friend MICHICAN and a trip to Effigy Mounds national monument.  

 -sweat lodge-

Before the sweat could begin the structure had to be built asked before we could even start that materials had to be procured. This was itself our first lesson in the disaster of colonization on traditional life ways. Sure it might not be illigeal anymore for native folks to practice traditional religious ceremony but the institution of private property has made it increasingly difficult. 

Specifically for our situation we need fresh cedar for medicine and young willow branches to build the frame for the lodge, resources given freely from the earth but now inaccessible behind “No Tresspassing” signs. Even to procure them from public lands is illegal.   

When supplies were finally with difficulty eventually located and gathered construction could begin. Utmost precision was expected at every point along the way. Building materials were to be respected and to be walked around rather than stepped over. Orientation of the structure was to be precisely based on the 4 cardinal directions with the door facing east. Every joint tied in a precise way in precise orientation to the earth and sky.  

 

In order to heat the rocks to be used in the ceremony (about the size of small cantelopes) a huge fire was stoked as construction got closer to completion. Glowing red,  these rocks would be carried into the lodge carefully with a pair of deer antlers at appointed times where different medicines would be added to them for the ceremony.  

The whole process happened on “Native time.” This was a lesson of patience for not only the attendees but some of our St. Isidore hosts who had anticipated being done by 7 PM. The hours-long ceremony did not even start before close to that time. 

Not everyone participated in the ceremony itself (myself included) but for all who did it was a moving experience.  

-Effigy Mounds-  

 

The final day of our week was a field trip to the sacred place of effigy mounds. Located on a bluff overlooking the Great River (Mississippi) these waste high mounds made in the shape of bears, bison, and birds were constructed with dirt hauled up from the river bed and oriented in a precise manner to align with the summer solstice.  

Our guide was David Barlin Lyles, the only official in the entirety of the United States working on enforcement of the Native Americans Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), a 1990 law that forces all institutions that receive federal funding to return artifacts and human remains to the indiginous peoples of the area from which they were taken. In his previous position as a law enforcement officer at Effigy Mounds Barlin Lyles was responsible for locating and returning a large number of human remains stolen by a racist former director of the national monument. (Check out the 'Bears, Birds,  and Bones' episode from the Criminal podcast).  

On our assent we learned about the history and nature of the land and solemnly observed where the road we walked merged with the historic and still visible “military trail” where the native peoples of the area were forcibly marched on their way west to reservations. This trail pased right near the mounds, perhaps an intentional “fuck you” from the army to the folks who’s land was being taken.  

-learning dairy-

-milking- 

Flora is the milking cow at Isidore. Trailing behind her, gently smacking her rump with a chord or dolly with the occasion call of “HUP!”, every morning Peter or Brenna wrangle her into her milking stall, hook up her wall attached leash and tie her tail in preparation for milking.  

 

Once in position her teets are wiped with warm soapy water. Not only are we hoping to get any dirt or other filth, this warmth mimics that of a calf’s and signals to her body it is time to release milk. Then a few squirts from each teat are wasted onto the ground in order to remove any dirt that might be in the canal and to make sure the cow hasn’t developed mastitis before starting the actual milking.  

Brenna was my instructor. She herself was taught during a year spent living at a convent where the sisters ran a larger operations milking twice a day. The Isidorians only milk in the morning since it satisfies their needs but its possible and common to milk again in the evening for a combined total of almost twice the milk.   

She taught me the “full hand” method where a fist is made one finger at a time from top to bottom squeezing it out. Peter uses the “stripping” method where the teat is grabbed between the thumb and pointer finger and then pulled down top to bottom.  

It took me a few days of practice but after about 3 or 4 my coordination improved and it started to feel like I was really getting it done. I was even compitent enough to cover for Brenna and Peter on a day they were both gone towards the end of my stay.  After milking is completed the liquid is filtered and transphered from the metal milking bucket to a plastic one with a lid and put into the fridge where the milk and the cream start to seperate. In the evening or the next morning the cream has to carefully skimmed off the top and is then put into its own quart sized jar before the milk is poured and stored. Flora gives 2 ½ or 3 gallons on an average day!  

-butter, ice cream, whipped cream-

While I usually drink my coffee black the fresh cream is so good I had to add a healthy portion every morning while at St. Isidore but only a small share is used for java doctoring at the farm. The rest is made into butter and occasionally as a treat into Ice Cream or whipped cream.  The process for all three are similar in that the cream has to be whipped for some amount of time.  

 

Cream destined for butter is put into a large jar with a special lid with a mechanical stirrer attached. The machine does all the work of churning to separate the butter from the buttermilk which is then discarded.  There’s always plenty of butter around and even more in the freezer for the winter months when the cows produce less or even no milk.  

Whipped cream is the easiet way to process the cream. It literally just gets whipped using a hand cranked whipper. They don’t add a bunch of sugar like you’ll find in most super market whipped creams but it makes a great topping for the fresh fruit they grow (strawberries and mulberries were ripe during my visit!) or on top of a rhubarb cake.  

The best was the hand cranked ice cream! Sugar, milk, farm fresh eggs, and vanilla are added to the cream, placed inside the cylindor of their special ice cream making device and turned for 20 minutes or so surrounded by rock salt and ice until you can feel it thickening up.  

 

-cheese and yogurt-

The milk for its part is used in the common ways (drunk, used on cereal, baking, etc.) but is also processed into cheese (feta and panere being the most common) and yogurt.  

All cheese making shares the common need to seperate the curds from the whey. For panere this is simple: heat the milk until close to boiling and then add acid, traditionally lemon or lime but in Isidore’s case vinegar is used. Feta has a few more steps where precise temperatures are measured before rennet and a specific feta culture is added. They do cheese curds too from time to time. That process looks more like feta but with a different culture and some extra steps. 

Yogurt is maybe even easier. The milk is heated to 180 to kill any bacteria and then cooled back down to 110 before being poured into quart sized jars containing an ice cube of a previous batch of yogurt. The warm milk is then placed in a cooler surrounded by warm water overnight to culture. You can use a similar process and store bought yogurt to make your own at home much cheaper than buying it at the store.   

-around the driftless-

I went on a few other adventures in my time at St. Isidore.  I explored Dubuque one day. Starting with lunch at the rescue mission and checking out their amazing garden (tended by CW friend Rachel) I them just walked a good length of the town taking in the sights. In certain places the elevations reminded me of LA.  

Eric and Brenna took me on a couple outings too.   We checked out the Dickeyville Grotto in the nearby town of Dickeyville. A site to see it was made in the post WWI period by the town priest using found and donated materials including broken glass, petrified wood, and shells all mixed with concrete. It was a little more patriotic than the average Catholic Worker generally goes for and Christopher Columbus’s display was actually larger than Jesus’s.  After the grotto we caught the ferry across the Mississippi river. This was a first for Eric and Brenna too! We were heading to White Pine Grove State Forest to meet up with former Isidore intern Alison and her son Misha.  

I also got to see the Sinsinawa Mound where Eric works creating ecological programs on behalf of the Sisters there. They celebrate the changing seasons and I was there for the summer solstice. We prayed, had a small fire, and spent time wandering the beautiful grounds with a couple dozen other celebrants.  

If you're ever in Dubuque make sure to check out Jubeck's brewery. The St. Isidore folks were founding members of their community supported brewery (like a CSA but for beer!). 

 

Photos from St. Isidore farm