Some sad news from the monks at New Melleray:

The Trappist monks of New Melleray Abbey have always worked the land to provide for themselves. All that will end today, as their cherished farming equipment is hauled away by new owners.

New Melleray Abbey Farm, which once was worked by and sustained 150 monks, is no more. The farming equipment and supplies will be auctioned off, their organic Angus beef has been sold and the cropland has been rented out. The farming operation has fallen victim to depressed market conditions for both traditional crops and organic products, while the abbey’s monks are now too few in number and too old to do heavy farm work.

“This will be bittersweet for us, losing a 160-year tradition, which has served us well,” said Abbot Brendan Freeman, leader of the 35 monks and brothers who live and pray in near silence at the monastery. The monks have gradually eased out of hands-on farming work (their average age is now 70), and for 15 years they have paid laymen to do the farm labor.

“In their heyday in the 1960s, the monks raised corn, soybeans, cows, hogs and sheep, but the farming situation has changed so drastically
auction information

All the farming equipment used by New Melleray Abbey Farm in agricultural operations will go on the auction block beginning at 11 a.m. today at the barn and silo site west of the monastery complex off Monastery Road.

The Trappist monks are selling their tractors, balers, planters, combines, trucks, feeders and about 100 related items.
with profits dwindling so badly, and through attrition their numbers have gone down dramatically,” explained Dave Ruden, who has managed the abbey farm for 11 years. The monks own 2,000 acres of cropland and 1,200 timbered acres.

Each of the 17 Trappist monasteries in the United States follows the monastic dictum of “ora et labora” (pray and work), Freeman said.

“We are self-supporting and don’t live on donations. All through history, we’ve been farmers,” he said.

For New Melleray, farming began in 1849, when Bishop Mathias Loras gave 600 acres of rolling prairie and woodland southwest of Dubuque to a tiny band of Irish monks who quickly bought another 600 acres for $1.25 per acre.

“It really was a glorified family farm with cattle, hogs, dairy cows, chickens and produce for the monks themselves,” Freeman said. The monks made a healthy profit during the Civil War, supplying beef and pork to Union troops. They herded their cattle and hogs across the frozen Mississippi River to a Galena, Ill. packing house.

“But if we’re selling all of our equipment, we won’t be farming again,” Freeman said.

Read more.