Catholic Worker Farm Communities Gather to Celebrate, Learn, and Reflect

Jerry Windley-Daoust contributed reporting to this story.

People from about ten different Catholic Worker farms from across the Midwest gathered for the biennial Catholic Worker Farm Gathering in Platteville, Wisconsin, last weekend. The weather was cold and windy, but participants warmed things up with singing, dancing, discussion, prayer, and even a hog roast, courtesy of Lincoln Morris-Winter, who roasted a hog for the final lunch together on Sunday to send everyone off.

This is the sixth Catholic Worker Farm gathering since their initiation in 2011. The St. Isidore Farm community near Cuba City, Wisconsin, hosted the gathering. The community is made up of Eric Anglada and Brenna Cussen-Anglada­ and Mary Kay McDermott and Peter Yoches with their two children. The community members are veteran hosts. They hosted the second gathering in 2013 at New Hope Farm outside Dubuque, Iowa, and again in 2017, shortly after they founded St. Isidore Farm in 2016. This year’s was the first in five years–the gatherings were suspended since 2019 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It was just amazing to come together after five years,” said Anglada in a phone call. “We shared laughs, fellowship, and food––a reconnecting of friendship and shared bonds—it was great to just rekindle those connections through this network of the Catholic Worker Movement.”

A nearby church hosted the communal gathering where participants talked, sang, and prepared meals. About 40 people from ten Catholic Worker farms participated this year, Anglada said. That number included some new communities: the St. Louis Catholic Worker and The Great Turning Catholic Worker (an urban farm in Madison, Wisconsin), both located in urban areas, as well as Ozark Foothills Catholic Worker Farm (Catawissa, Missouri) opened by Ellen and Shane Hughes, and Little Platte Catholic Worker, which is working on acquiring land near Prescott, Wisconsin.

Other farming Catholic Worker communities attending included Anathoth Community Farm (Luck, Wisconsin), White Rose Catholic Worker Farm (La Plata, Missouri), and Common Home Farm (Bloomington, Indiana).

Betsy Keenan of Strangers and Guests Catholic Worker Farm (Maloy, Iowa) said attendance was lower than in past years. On the other hand, she was cheered to see more “novice” Catholic Worker farmers who are just getting going with their operations. Even better, they have what they need to get started.

Although this is the fifth year Shane and Ellen Hughes have been working their eight acres of land, it was only this year that they began to identify what they were doing as part of the Catholic Worker Movement. The couple met at the Appalachian Catholic Worker (Spencer, West Virginia) in 2008 and over the past year felt the call to draw closer to those Catholic Worker roots. They did a tour of Catholic Worker farms this year to learn and build connections.

“We were welcomed with open arms,” Ellen Hughes said in an email. “We left the weekend feeling filled with grace and rejuvenated energy to continue our vital work in our place.”

Dancing, singing, and small-group conversations helped everyone get to know one another. And, of course, there were roundtable discussions.

Keenan attended a roundtable on seed saving given by Alice McGary of Mustard Seed Community Farm (Ames, Iowa). McGary gave an overview of the practice, handed out fact sheets, described where to get good information, and gave away some of the seeds she had saved.

Besides describing the benefits of seed saving such as saving money and ensuring the availability seeds, McGary also described her deeper motivations behind the practice. “She likes to be involved in the natural process of generation and selection that provides for adaptability and survival,” Keenan said.

Another roundtable focused on parenting in the Catholic Worker. The discussion had an intergenerational quality, Keenan said, because several of the participants were older mothers or grandmothers.

“So, we could talk about what we tried and how that worked out,” she said. “And of course, every kid is different, so there’s no way you can just say, ‘This is what you do.’ But we could say how it worked for us….

“What we came down to with the family parenting thing is, you need community. You have to have community to continue, to have security at all doing the work.”

Other roundtable topics included technology for farms, the economic aspects of Catholic Worker farms, death and burial, and the ongoing crisis (and conflict-induced famine) in Gaza.

One theme of the weekend, Keenan said, was the difficulty people are having finding worshipping communities they can connect with. Even worse, several have had such bad experiences that they have felt the need to step away.

“These are people for whom liturgy has been inspirational and, you know, fulfilling,” she said. “And then to be at a place where they say, ‘I don’t know if i can keep engaging with this,’ that’s very depressing.”

Paul Freid of Lake City (Minnesota) Catholic Worker agreed that there was a lot of talk about difficulties with local churches—including, in one case, a priest making racist remarks at the pulpit.

“He was like, ‘This is going to sound racist, but it isn’t,’ but of course, it was,” Freid said, recalling another participant’s experience.

Similarly, the rural religious monasteries that some Catholic Workers had connected with are either in decline or intentionally disbanding and selling their land.

By contrast, Freid said there was “some great song and great prayer.” Mary Kay McDermott of St. Isidore Catholic Worker led the community in what she called “stacking songs.”

“It was beautiful,” Freid said. “And then we had a wild church prayer service on Sunday.”

The roundtable discussion that stood out most for Freid was one that dealt with some more philosophical questions about identity.

“People are really interested in thinking about what it means to be a Catholic Worker farm?” he said. “What do we stand for? And what are we about?

“You know, we’re not just an organic farm, and we’re not a liberal farm, we’re not a homestead where it’s just like, ‘Hey, let’s make life good for us.

“One thing that stood out that makes us different is we’re trying to somehow be on the margin. So that can be in different ways, right? Living with people on the margins through hospitality, living on the margins by living under the taxable income level. So, there’s a desire to engage with the margins…that was something that we kind of all agreed on.”

Another challenge that came up, Freid said, was the need to engage more with local communities “about what we’re doing, and why we’re doing it.”

That conversation only scratched the surface, Freid said, and there was a desire to continue talking about the issue at the next farm gathering in two years.

While the date and location haven’t been set yet, Freid said there was an “83 percent chance” it would be at his own home, the Lake City Catholic Worker. If all goes as planned, that gathering will be in the spring of 2026.