The Monks' Garden
In 1904 Abbot Peter Engel OSB appointed a newly professed monk by the name of Brother Leo Charles Bettendorf OSB to become the Abbey's gardener. Brother Leo functioned as such until he retired in 1950 due to failing health and old age. A succession of monks succeeded Brother Leo including Brothers Charles Kirchner OSB, Martin Rath OSB, and Urban Pieper OSB, who retired as gardener in 2006.
Saint John's Abbey agribusiness at its peak had 250 acres under cultivation for rye, barley, and oats until the 1930's when corn and alfalfa were also grown. Potatoes were planted and yielded about 6000 bushels in a favorable year. A 'truck garden' of nearly ten acres yielded a great variety of vegetables such as celery, lettuce, onions, carrots, cabbage, and melons. Rising labor costs, commercial mass production and refrigerated transport combined to make uneconomical such large-scale local production.
In recent years, however, the growth of the "Farm to Table" movement has led the monks to resume and expand growing produce locally. Consequently, half a dozen monks volunteer to put a substantial portion of a reduced garden plot back into production. In the summer of 2006 various produce were cultivated including tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, kohlrabi, sweet corn, snap peas, green onions, bell peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, cantaloupe and water melons, rhubarb, yellow and green beans, yellow squash, golden and red beets, buttercup, butternut, acorn, and spaghetti squash, raspberries, Peruvian purple potatoes, various herbs and fennel.
In addition to the produce an assortment of flowers grown in the garden is used for the artistic enrichment in the church and refectory as well as for the creation of dried pressed note cards available for purchase on campus and online.
Orchard, Vineyard, and the Apiary
In the early 1900's Fr. John Katzner OSB, hybridized the "Alpha Grape" by combining the Minnesota wild grape with a concord variety to provide both increased size and the hardiness to survive Minnesota winters. A stand of those original grapes still grows on the pergola in the monastery gardens. Throughout the campus are remnants of three surviving "apple/pear" trees from this period as well. A large and formal orchard was cultivated south of the cemetery. About 50 trees are still in cultivation after a winter "sun scald" decimated many in the 1980's. Lack of workers, lesser quality apples, and the market availability of many varieties have prevented expansion of the orchard in recent years.
Mr. John Elton, our Master Gardener and Landscape Manager, sparked the resurgence of vineyard and grape production in 2005. Ten varieties of grapes in the current garden plot suggest his effort is thriving. The grapes will be used to make wine, jelly, and juice. In the same plot are trellises for hops that could be used in brewing beer.
Apiaries were at their strongest in the 1940's and 1950's with over 100 hives busy at honey production. Lack of workers, diseases in bees, over-wintering issues, and the ready availability of reasonably priced varieties of honey mean that currently there is no managed apiary on the Saint John's campus. A result of no apiary is the lack of bees' wax for making candles for use in church. Candle wax is now purchased elsewhere in the state of Minnesota.
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