The video follows Shawn and Beth Doherty, residents of a monastery farm, as they walk the viewer through a typical day. They begin at 5:30 am, timing milking to align with the daily Mass, and discuss how the liturgical schedule structures farm work. The milking routine yields about 10 lb (≈1 gal) of milk per session, which is skimmed and used for cheese making. Beth shows the cheese cave, explaining temperature (≈62 °F) and humidity (≈75 %) conditions, weekly rind‑rubbing, and the limited shelf‑life of their artisanal cheeses. The root cellar, built on a south‑facing slope, stores last year’s potatoes that will feed the family until new harvest. They also display a summer kitchen, a smokehouse, and a maple‑syrup setup. A buckwheat cover crop is cultivated to feed chickens; the discussion covers timing of seed set, the role of the crop in soil cooling, and the chickens’ diet of fermented wheat, dairy waste, and occasional butchering. Throughout, the narrator (Speaker D) reflects on the spiritual dimension, linking the rhythm of Mass to the farm’s routine as a “taste of the glory” of heaven, emphasizing the sanctuary found in disciplined daily work. The video blends practical farm‑management details with contemplative commentary on purpose, routine, and gratitude.
Chapters
Good morning.
Good morning.
What time is it and why do you like to start at this time?
5:30 and we start because we backtrack from when daily mass is. So we know when daily mass is and then we say, okay, well then what time do we need to milk in order to have all the buckets finished, in order to have the milk skimmed.
This is a day in the life of the Dohertys. I lived like them for a day, and it was wonderful. The night before, we talked about the Mass. I didn't grow up Catholic. This is new to me. I'm just keeping an open mind. And Shawn shared with me that Mass, this daily gathering in the church building, is— it's only a fraction of a taste of the glory, really, of perhaps what heaven will be like. The night before this day, what got us really excited is when we made that connection of this— there is something special about and in a human desire to connect to something more, to connect to something divine, and even to connect with it daily, whether you want to or not. And that's what the masses come for them. Also, it's perhaps why they're okay or so drawn to a daily routine on the farm. And it's probably why I am when I'm out there working on the farm, and day in and day out, in a way, that's my sanctuary. And there's something to be said about doing something on good days and and bad days, having a schedule and a routine that is higher and above oneself. There's something really rich in that.
I noticed you didn't put any snacks in her stanchion. Is that right?
No, no, she doesn't need that. Uh, in the winter we'll sometimes put hay in there, but we never put grain or anything like that in there. She, she happy to come in to have the pressure of the milk taken off. So we don't have to put anything in there.
How much you get?
10.
10 what? 10 pounds, which is a little over a gallon.
Yep, that's right.
Like Shawn connected the little taste of the glory with the mass of heaven, perhaps farming— this is what it's really like. It's only a taste of the glory because we never arrive. We have all these goals. We have all these ideas. We never make it. There's always a mistake. There's always a failure. There's always one more thing to do. And what we really need to do is take a deep breath, take a step back, and just enjoy the ride. This is what I'm getting out of my visit with them is that's the glory. That's the taste of the glory. And that's what we really need to be satisfied. And who knows? Maybe we're going to get to, uh, homestead in heaven. I don't know. The journey is the destination.
This breaks all the rules of root cellars because it is on a south-facing slope. It's not all that tightly bermed, but it works anyway.
Come on, you can come see it.
So these potatoes are from last year.
It'll—
they'll keep us fed with potatoes from now till the end of July when we have new potatoes. And then the pigs will eat all the rest.
Yeah, I'm here.
Mango wurzels. These are—
you guys eat potatoes at every meal?
That's right. So this is a mango. It's a small mango, but it's a mango wurzel, a big feed beet. They'll actually get to be about 5, 6 times this big. This is our summer kitchen. Oh cool, you can see because you don't have air conditioning, right?
Right.
Do you come out here and cook in the summer? Yep. Oh, this is for preservation and stuff.
This is for cat, right? And then like the guys hung a, hung a pig up here not that many weeks ago to cool before they cut it.
You got your brooder, right?
This is where the cheese cave is in here.
Okay, this is just another basement. Look at this. You're proud of this?
Oh yeah, very. Wow. You were asking about rinds on cheese, so they just naturally go from this to this. And what you're doing is managing the surface of the cheese so that the mold— don't ask me why, but you want to rub it down when it starts to make fuzz like this. So I just come through. This is a very, very finicky scientific thing. You have to be extremely careful about germs, right? So this, um, I think I washed my hands recently, so this is probably all right. And I'm just rubbing down the molds.
And how often do you come down and rub down the molds?
Uh, well, in theory, I would do this every week.
Week.
In practice, if I forget— how much cheese do we eat? Um, like a cheese like this, we'd go through really fast.
This was—
this tiny one was because not all the curds would fit in this cheese, so I made a little one. But nice, a cheese like this is going to last us, um, a couple of weeks. Depends on how many people are there and how much cheese they eat.
You have 62 degrees in here, right? And 75% humidity. Is that about right for cheese?
Um, it's actually high. Temperature. Yeah, you'll read, you know, like 55 degrees, kind of optimal, which is like what is the temperature of the ground 6 feet down, about 55 degrees.
We got a smokehouse.
Yeah.
And then we got a playhouse. And what's this, maple syrup?
Yes.
Kitchen.
Yeah.
Okay, you're gonna feed the chickens with this buckwheat. So has it gone to seed? Are they going to be eating the seed or they're going to be eating the greens? So this buckwheat is acting as a cover crop.
There was a Canada thistle problem in this bed anyway, so that's part of why these got elected for this.
So if you guys want to—
we plant the buckwheat in this as soon as it's warm enough and let it grow like this. Yeah, we're gonna lift.
There you go. There you go, Beck.
You got it.
Okay, you want it further on or is that okay?
Okay, there you go.
So this is growing— this is the first growing of the buckwheat, right?
So this is our cover crop that was planted in may. You can see on the buckwheat down here whether it's setting seed yet or not. And Anna's pointing out it isn't setting seed yet because none of these flowers down here are black.
Are you purposely hitting it before it sets seed?
No, normally we'd put them out here when it's setting seed, and it's a little late this year, but we'll just— moving them up here, right?
Yeah, you're putting it here today when we put the chickens in here, right?
We could wait to put the chickens on, and we may do that because what we want— when the— as the tractor moves across, it's going to knock this crop down, and the chickens are going to scratch in it, tear it up, poop It'll kill the plants that are here dead, but if this has set seed before we do this process, the seed will— what the chickens don't eat will sift down to the dirt. The dirt stays cool because the knocked over plants are shading it, and so the first rain we get, all of that buckwheat is going to germinate.
Do you have to feed your chickens when they're in here?
Yeah, so we feed our chickens fermented or sprouted wheat and dairy waste, sometimes butchering.
Just wheat? Just wheat, just straight up wheat and your dairy waste and this.
That's right. And they do fine, and they do just fine.
Sean, you're gonna have the strongest hands in this county. 2 times a day, my man.
He already did. Look at his hands, they're about twice as big as a normal hand.
The journey is the destination, so I'm searching hard and I'm finding better ways to enjoy that process.
Shawn, you ever get sick of milking every day?
Uh, I don't think sick of it. It's a little bit, it's a little bit like going Easter egg hunting or hunting for eggs. You never know quite what you're going to get, how much you're going to get, and there's the excitement of that. There are definitely times when it gets too hot.
What do you do on the real hot days to stay motivated?
When you're doing a farm job, you know it lasts this long because that's what needs to happen. The dishes have to be cleaned, the milk has to be strained, so it can't just go on and on and on. So I think that's what is your— you focus a little bit on the end that I know it will be over soon.
We keep on grinding daily. In the end, the farm is getting better and it's getting more glorious. So we need to stop and enjoy that little taste or we miss it all. Thank you, Shawn and Beth.
