Every Thursday, the boys come out to McKerracher Family Farm to work the earth. They get their hands dirty. They pull crops, weed the beds, and haul the buckets, and they learn some character in the doing. Thursday is Stewardship Formation Day, and it is not a field trip or a chore chart. It is a standing day when boys are handed real work on a real farm and expected to do it well.
The work is the point. The crops are real, the weeds are real, the buckets get heavy, and none of it is a simulation. Boys who show up week after week come to know the ground they are working and the people they are working beside, and that is where the character comes from.
Labor and prayer
The inspiration is Neo-Benedictine. It points to the Benedictines, whose old rule bound prayer to labor, ora et labora, and treated the working of the ground and the life of the mind as two halves of one life rather than a trade-off between them. That is the wager here. A boy can work the earth with his hands and carry big ideas in his head at the same time, and the one feeds the other.
- The work is real.
Real crops, real weeds, real weight in the bucket. Nothing here pretends to be work.
- The hands and the mind belong together.
We work the ground and we talk about big things while we do it. Neither one gets left at the gate.
- Show up.
The day is Thursday. You come whether or not you feel like it, and the feeling tends to follow the showing up.
- The work comes first, the bonus comes after.
A boy earns his bonus by doing good work well. The bonus is a token for that, never the reason for it.
How a boy comes up
Every boy here is a steward in formation. He does not arrive a full steward and he does not stay a beginner. There are three stations, and he comes up through them by showing the Rule in how he works, not by logging hours.
The newcomer’s station. A postulant is finding out where everything is and how the work is done, usually close beside an older boy, getting the feel of the Rule and the ground. Most boys spend their first several Thursdays here.
Comes up to Novice by showing up steadily, learning the Rule, and handling the basic work without being walked through it.
The regular’s station. A novice knows the Rule and the work, comes back week after week, and can be handed a bed and a bucket and trusted to do it right with nobody standing over him. He has earned the run of the place.
Comes up to Oblate by taking the Rule as his own and beginning to look after the boys behind him.
The committed station. An oblate carries the standard. He looks after the postulants, keeps the work honest, and holds some of the responsibility for how the day goes. The word is old: an oblate was a layman, often a boy, who bound himself to a monastery’s rule while living out in the world. That is the whole idea here, a boy who takes the farm’s Rule with him when he leaves it.
What the boys earn
The boys come as stewards in formation, not as hired hands. What they take home is a bonus, a token for good work well done, not a wage and not a paycheck. The point is the work and what it forms in them, not the money. The rates below are simply how those bonuses are figured.
Harvest · by the pound
By the bucket · five gallon
From the ground
Joining the work of the hands with the life of the mind at the foundations of life.
Bring your boy out to the farm
The Formation runs by appointment. If you would like your son to take a place among the stewards, start here. Acceptance comes first, and payment follows only if we take him on.
Membership is monthly, and it runs on means. You pick the tier you can carry. Those who pay more carry those who pay less, and it goes to gas, food, and the extra care and attention of the McKerrachers. Every boy gets the same day, whatever his family pays.
You enter a card now to hold your place. You are not charged unless we accept your family. If we do, your first monthly membership begins then.