“Any time a calf is born is like Christmas morning,” said Quinci Schmidt, who lives in Buffalo about an hour west of the Twin Cities and grew up on a farm near Rogers. “It’s always so exciting and it never gets old.”

Schmidt, 29, has seen — or narrowly missed — these births many times growing up on the dairy farm owned by her parents, John and Staci Scherber, parishioners of Mary, Queen of Peace in Rogers.

Schmidt and her husband, Luke — they married last fall — are parishioners of St. Francis Xavier in Buffalo. It’s a 20-minute drive from their house each day to the Scherber family farm, where Schmidt helps care for the family’s 100 dairy cows. Luke works full-time in Bayport.

Schmidt said moments on the farm, like “the way a cow looked at me that was so sweet,” are ones she savors; they are moments that bring her closer to her faith, and she reminds herself to “let those things … speak every day.”

The Scherber family is among many across the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis who tend livestock and grow crops to feed people worldwide. And the Catholic Church is there, including special formation for seminarians at the St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul and St. Paul-based Catholic Rural Life and its ministerial and advocacy programs (see Page 12).

‘Big, friendly giants’

The Scherber family farm is one of four dairy farms left in Hennepin County, John Scherber said. In addition to caring for the dairy cows, the family grows alfalfa, corn and oats — all are used to feed the cows.

Schmidt described the family’s Holsteins as “big, friendly giants” and “just so innocent.”

“They make life enjoyable, and every day is different,” she said. “You try to keep a routine, but there’s always different projects.” If some equipment breaks down or an animal is not doing well, that becomes the day’s focus, she said.

Daily, Schmidt cares for the cows by feeding them, helping with milking, assisting when calves are born and tracking vital information on a computer in an office in the barn — with most data gathered by a robotic milking system the family has used for about two years.

Dairy farmers work with another life all the time, and help them give birth, Schmidt said. The cows and other animals depend on farmers for food and care, but God gave them life, she said.

She may be a steward caring for each cow, Schmidt said, but God is doing the same for her.

COWS ARE THE BOSS

Quinci Schmidt’s father, John Scherber, said he remembers when he was young his father would use buckets to milk cows two at a time. 

About two years ago, the family added two robotic milking stations in its newer, “free-style barn,” which allows the farm’s 100 Holsteins to walk to a milking station day or night, find a feed mixture at the front of the station and “milk themselves,” he said.   

The back of the station closes when a cow enters, and robotic equipment begins washing and sanitizing the cow’s udders before attaching milking equipment and collecting it in a sterile glass container. 

Data about each cow is transmitted to Schmidt’s office computer in real time, including current weight, amount of food eaten and amount of milk produced. Besides learning exact amounts of milk being produced, Schmidt can also see changes day to day that could indicate a cow is ailing and might need veterinarian care. 

With Schmidt and her father the main farmhands, the robotic system also allows them to operate as a family farm, “so we can do it and not be burnt out,” Schmidt said.

Scherber raised his 10 children to know that the cows “are the boss,” Schmidt said. She remembers, as a child, she and her younger siblings picking up apples in the backyard and throwing them over the fence “because we had some cows in the backyard,” she said. “We would yell, ‘come, boss,’” she said.

She asked her father once why that was the call. Her father told her the cows are the boss. “They’re the ones that are feeding the world,” he said. “They’re the ones that, technically, we’re working for.”

Other dairy farmers feel and act the same way, she said, respecting the animal, always being kind and gentle to the cows and other animals, showing appreciation.

Returning to the farm

Schmidt credits her parents with fostering her faith and providing examples.

She recalled the family “trying to pray the rosary every day after dinner or after milking.” For Advent, the family read “some type of preparation story,” she said. And for Lent, “we would always have some sort of campaign, acts of kindness … and (we) made Lenten resolutions as a family,” she said.

“I definitely think my faith has always made me who I am,” Schmidt said. “It’s part of who you are. It’s always part of my activity, how I make decisions, how I think about a situation,” she said. “It kind of imbues my eyesight,” in seeing a situation.

“God’s there and he is always with me,” she said.

Schmidt is the fourth oldest of 10. Her two oldest brothers, Jerek and Dain, are priests in the Congregation of the Legionaries of Christ. Ordained in Rome in 2019, Father Jerek Scherber ministers in Canada, and Father Dain Scherber, ordained in Rome in 2022, serves in Africa while also continuing studies in Rome, their mother said. Before team sports kicked in for the older children, the family ate meals together and said prayers before and after.

The Scherbers’ oldest children started in a public school but when the oldest was in fifth grade, they switched to Catholic schools.

“I think that really helped inform their minds to start thinking, ‘What does God want from me?’ versus ‘what do I want to do in this world?’ I think they all started thinking, ‘What does God want from me? What is God calling me to do?’” Staci Scherber said.

Schmidt attended Catholic grade school at then-Cedarcrest Academy in Maple Grove (now Ave Maria Academy) and grades 9-12 at Immaculate Conception Academy in Cranston, Rhode Island. She completed three semesters at Mater Ecclesiae College in Greenville, Rhode Island, followed by studying dairy science at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls.

She spent six years discerning consecrated life while at school in Rhode Island. While there, time was set aside for saying the rosary and an hour for meditation was built into the schedule, as was Mass. “Your whole day is (having time), that nothing else matters and you pray,” she said.

“I’ve always tried to be open to whatever God wanted,” Schmidt said. While discerning, God “very distinctly called me to married life,” she said, so she returned to Minnesota. When she came home she saw that her parents’ first responsibilities were first to each other, and to their children.

While growing up, her parents influenced her in making faith a priority, she said, with daily living their faith, how they loved each other and their children, and their joy and their peace in life.

Schmidt said she also learned from her siblings, and wherever she has gone, she has been blessed with “very amazing friends.”

Schmidt worked as a nanny and a receptionist before working full time on the family farm. She enjoys her work now and would like to take over the farm someday, perhaps with one of her brothers.

For Schmidt and her priest-brothers, she said, “we just found that personal relationship with Christ — that he was a person, and he was asking (for) a relationship with each one of us.” For her, the relationship was “coming back home through married life,” she said. For her brothers, it was the priesthood.

Christ asks everyone for a personal relationship, Schmidt said. “And everyone is designed to be holy,” which is different for each person, she said. “For me, it’s through my husband, and for my brothers, it’s through the priesthood. I think it’s just that deep personal love for the person of Christ that motivates them and allows them to see where he’s leading them.”

Finding God in nature

“It’s hard to farm and not have faith, because so much of your life depends on what’s given to you by God,” Schmidt said, including weather and animals. On the farm, there is no time to spend an hour or three to forget everything and pray, Schmidt said.

“But that’s where building that interior life, and making prayer so much of who you are, that it’s just automatic,” she said. “When I wake up and, throughout my day, it’s a ‘God’s there’ and I’m conversing with him or seeing through his eyes. It’s just a part of who you are and that’s what we’re meant to do, I think, in fostering that prayer life,” she said.

Prayer needn’t be words, Schmidt said, but “just lifting your mind and your heart to God in what you’re doing.” God won’t always speak in the chapel or church, Schmidt said. “He’s going to talk to you when your heart is ready. And sometimes that’s in nature.”

Schmidt described allowing “the sound of the crickets to … fill me with peace” and silent winter mornings walking on fresh snow. “It’s so peaceful and it’s letting those simple little moments light up your heart, because that’s God,” she said. “He’s finding ways to speak to you.”

Schmidt said the story in 1 Kings 19:11-13 is like what she has experienced. When Elijah “was trying to talk to God,” Schmidt said, he instead experienced an earthquake, strong winds and fire. But then “it was in a little breeze that God spoke to him,” she said. “That was a moment with the eternal, and just letting those things kind of speak every day and making the conscious decision to not let the mundane just kind of roll over me.”

Schmidt’s mother said she believes the farm helped build the family’s faith life “because you really rely on God.”

“You have to because so much is out of your control,” Staci Scherber said. “It helps you learn to grow in that faith and hope and trust.”

Schmidt’s father said he often prays when he rides the tractor. “You’re just with your own thoughts, you have that quiet time and you’re out in the open field and pray another rosary or just have that time to talk to God,” John Scherber said. “You’re looking at all the nature around you, creation, and it kind of leads you to think of God. You see how much bigger everything is than you.”

Working the land helps build gratitude for the opportunity to do so, he said.

Citing a favorite quote by the character Gandalf in “The Hobbit” — “It is the small, everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay” — Schmidt said that applies to her work in farming.

“I’m not out there serving the poor in whatever country. You’re called to just love God and love the people in your life right now, just by being holy, just by being kind and being humble,” she said. “And it’s those little things, in choosing good every day, that is the act of heroism.”

Those little acts will lead to bigger acts, Schmidt said. “You’ve got to be able to say yes in the small things every single day because that’s the real test. It might be easier to (say) yes when you’re in a heroic moment, but it’s the every single day act that’s leading, that’s forming your heart, and it’s keeping the evil at bay, because it’s that little act of kindness that’s going to change somebody else’s heart or that’s a little win for the day,” she said.

“That’s what God calls us Catholics and Christians to do,” she said, make “little yeses” every day “because that’s what is showing him that we’re using our free will to choose him in the end.”