Meet Oxbow Farm CW!

Although Oxbow Farm (Parkton, Maryland) has been operating in the Catholic Worker tradition since October 2020, it only recently opted to post a listing on the CatholicWorker.org community directory. Named after an oxbow curve in the stream on their property, the farm’s mission is to offer fresh produce, hospitality, and ecological education to anyone experiencing material or spiritual poverty.

“We manage our land as a practice of integral ecology, where community members can learn the satisfying work of farming and enjoy the fruits of their labor,” the community writes in its new listing. “As a community, we pray daily, practice the works of mercy, and strive to be a place of peace for people in need to experience healing through the rhythms of farm life. We’re also theology nerds and we love to help people through existential crises whenever we can.”

The farm, located 30 miles north of Baltimore, operates a small sliding-scale Community Supported Agriculture program, donates produce to local food pantries, and brings produce to a farmer’s market located in a Baltimore food desert (Baltimore is about 30 miles south of the farm.)

The farm is also involved in the care farming movement. “The farm also hosts Marpe Community Health, a care farm that grows medicinal herbs and provides on-farm healing opportunities, co-founded by a counselor and a naturopathic doctor,” the community says.

The Catholic Worker Roundtable newsletter sent some questions the farm to Julie. Here’s how she responded, by email:

Tell us a little about yourselves.

John is a returned Peace Corps volunteer and teaches economics at Loyola University, Maryland. Julie has an MS in agroecology and is currently working on an MTS at Loyola. We’re both huge nerds and love a good philosophy/theology conversation, we’re also very connected with our local parish. Our first daughter, Frances Noel, died shortly after birth in 2022; we have a one-year-old son, Thomas, and a third baby due in April. 

Why is it important to you to be part of the Catholic Worker tradition as opposed to just being an organic farm out on your own?

John and I were very encouraged by visiting Willa and Brennan at Viva House when we were discerning married life and starting a Catholic Worker farm together. We also have loved reaching out to visit other CWs whenever we’re traveling, people in the CW movement really feel like family. When we started the farm, we weren’t sure how the mission would develop. Our more “normal” organic farm friends think we’re crazy for taking in the variety of characters that we do, and our friends in the care farming movement tend to be registered non-profits with specific target populations, and proper funding and facilities and whatnot. We feel called to offer hospitality for and with whoever shows up, and over time, we’ve settled into a space that really seems to fall within the constellation of the many different types of Catholic Workers out there.

What you find most difficult or challenging or joyful about your work?

The hardest thing for me personally is staying motivated (as an introvert) to keep up with visit requests and maintain the energy needed to discern whether the person is a good fit with the other people who happen to be here at the time, and whether it’s a time of year when we’ll have the bandwith to deal with with potential situations that might arise. Farming is chaotic, raising kids is chaotic, and hosting a wide variety of strangers is chaotic, but it’s awesome when those three things somehow end up resonating. We try to say “yes” as often as we can because it feels like God is orchestrating the timing of everything: the people that show up seem like they need to be here, and they often have a lot to offer to the farm and to each other in surprising ways. 

One example of a rewarding story is from when we were hosting a young single mom during farmer’s market season. She’s such a strong person and was excited and motivated to participate as much farm work as she could withe her 11-month old. I was pregnant with our son and getting a good idea of what farming with a baby might look like next season. At one point she opened up and very understandably had a breakdown from the stress of shelter life and having nobody to share the burden of childcare with. It was during the fast-paced morning harvest for our afternoon farmer’s market. One of our two awesome interns that year watched her baby so she could get some alone time in the woods, our other intern and volunteers helped finish the harvest, and we made it to the market just fine. This is the kind of work that we really can’t do without community.

Are you part of a Catholic Worker community? Let us profile you! Send inquiries to hello@catholicworker.org.