Fifth-generation farm family to host Rural Life Sunday

By Barb Umberger The Catholic Spirit

“We have a beautiful park in our backyard every day, which not everyone has,” said Amy Leonard, who with her husband, Tim, and family will welcome attendees June 25 to Rural Life Sunday, an annual event celebrated for about 60 years in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Archbishop Bernard Hebda will celebrate Mass at 1:30 p.m. on the Leonard family farm near Norwood Young America, followed by lunch for all participating and children’s games and activities, including the chance to see farm animals.

The altar will be in “a beautiful setting” on the farm, Amy said. In the event of inclement weather, Mass will be in a large shed on the property, where the wedding of one of Amy and Tim’s sons was held. Rural Life Sunday celebrates and affirms, in a public way, the rural way of life. Many people are working together “to make it a beautiful Mass and a day of fellowship,” Amy said. The family hopes to greet everyone there and wants them “to enjoy their time here and the Mass and just rural life,” she said, that they can be thankful “for all the beauty that we have in our county, our city, on our farm.”

The Leonards operate a dairy farm, milking 45 cows, with another 50 head of young stock. The farm is home to about 20 chickens, four rabbits, barn cats, an Australian blue heeler dog — and one sheep. They own 81 acres and rent 120, growing corn, soybeans and alfalfa.

The Leonards have hosted other events at the farm over the years — visits from preschool and high school classes, and various University of Minnesota Extension agricultural outreach events — but Amy expects Rural Life Sunday will be the largest. St. Joseph in Waconia — of which the Leonards are members — is this year’s host parish for the event.

Besides the setting’s beauty and the farm animals, attendees can get a sense of history. Amy and Tim are the fifth generation in Amy’s family to own and operate the farm, and their daughter,

The Leonard farm has been in the family for 152 years. Amy Leonard’s great-great-grandfather homesteaded the property in 1871.

Amy and Tim Leonard are in their 32nd year of farming the land. “We bought the farm from my parents, so it’s been handed down on the woman’s side of the family for the last three generations,” Amy said.

Their daughter, Christine, said she and her parents are working through a transition for her to take over the farm. Many people believe that a farm “just gets handed down from one generation to the next,” Christine said, “but this is my parents’ retirement, essentially,” so they are working on ways for her to start buying the farm. She recently attended a conference focused on farm transitions, which she said can be stressful for families because “there’s a lot of personal matters involved, a lot of money and equity … and a lot of families can struggle through that.” But one conference attendee recalled his father saying, “When we look at all of this stuff, all the messy part of it, really, this is all God’s land, and we’re just the ones that get to take care of it.”

Christine, 29, hopes to be the sixth. Christine, one of four children, returned home five years ago to work full-time with her parents. She plans to take over the farm once her parents, both 63, retire.

Christine’s two brothers David, 33, and Brian, 35, are married with children, and her sister, Emily, 23, is completing a master’s degree focused on dairy cattle research: specifically, ways to maintain animal health, Christine said. Amy’s mother, Elaine Buesgens, 88, was born on the Leonard farm and now lives next door. Buesgens said she enjoyed farm life because there are “so many new things to see each day and to appreciate that you have no control over.”

“You realize that God has to help you grow things and live,” Buesgens said. “Even if you feed livestock healthy, you still need God’s help (for them) to stay healthy.”

Buesgens said her family has “turned to prayer many times” over the years.

“I can remember, as a little girl, when (a) thunderstorm came, my mother and dad, we all knelt down in the kitchen by a chair and prayed all the while the storm was going on, so everything would be safe,” she said. The family prayed the rosary to keep buildings, animals and crops safe from damage. “Often, we’d go to the kitchen and pray,” she said, “for sure with hail.”

Asked about the relationship between faith and farming, Tim said “you plant the seed, and you see the bounties of God’s creation as it grows.” That’s also true of the birth of a calf, he said, raising it for two years and seeing it grow into a milk cow.

“We get to see God all the time, in where we live and … the pace of how we live and the animals that we work with,” Christine said. “It forces us to slow down. And sometimes when you have a tough day, there’s always beauty around you, too, so you can look at the good and always see that. And I think we’re … excited to be able to share the beauty that we get to experience and, hopefully, everyone else feels God the same way we do on the farm.”

Christine said it would be “really hard” to be a farmer without faith. “We put seeds in the ground every spring … and we do everything we can, but at a certain point in time, it’s out of our control,” she said. Praying provides “something to lean on in times when things seem a little bit more difficult.”

Christine said one of her father’s favorite sayings is “never pray for sun or pray for rain, only for good weather.”

PLEASE TURN TO RURAL LIFE SUNDAY ON PAGE 10

Christine said she still has much to learn about farming. “I couldn’t do it all by myself yet, that’s for sure,” she said. Her father will continue to do the field work, “all the tractor work” and other tasks as long as he can, she said. Her mother takes care of the calves.

Her grandfather “was in the barn” until he was 75, she said.

Christine’s goal is to keep farming at the home farm “and figure out … how we can make that work.”

“I’m the sixth generation and, hopefully, there’s a seventh and an eighth and a ninth and a 10th, too,” she said.

Guests are asked to bring lawn chairs to the June 25 event, which starts with Mass at 1:30 p.m. Freewill offerings will be accepted for lunch.

Directions to the Leonard farm

Address: 13315 106th St., Norwood Young America.

From the east: Take Highway 212 west, turn right (north) on County Road 51, then left onto 106th St. or take Highway 5 west, turn left (south) onto County Road 51, then right onto 106th St.

From the west: Take Highway 5 east, turn right (south) on County Road 51, then right onto 106th St.