Farm and Land
You like cows? We got ‘em! You are welcome at Loretto Motherhouse to enjoy our 800 acres of Kentucky paradise and tour our farm and land, where cows and agriculture co-exist with the life of the Loretto Community. Learn more about our farm and land.
We seek to live humbly on land made good by its Creator. We accept the privilege to live in responsible relationship with the land and with all of life. We commit ourselves to being shaped by the beauty and harmony of God’s Universe. Three goals guide the work of the Motherhouse through its Farm and…
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Strip Grazing For our grass-fed and finished beef cattle production we need superb quality forages to keep our animals growing. The most successful forages we have found have been summer and winter annuals which are planted each year and grow for 1 growing season. Here you see our calves grazing a winter annual mixture of…
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Working with Gravity Cattle need more water in their diet than any other single component. Therefore, it is extremely important to have it available in ample supply and in good quality. As we are continually improving the farm, we are fencing the cattle out of surface water (ponds, creeks, streams) and installing water tanks. The…
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Local Farmers Bringing local farmers onto our land for field days with multiple agriculture specialists from the University of Kentucky and other places is one component of our education efforts. As you can see, even our calves are part of the educational experience! Agriculture Students Other field day visitors are the local agriculture students. Not…
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Controlled Burning Part of our Conservation Reserve acres are planted in native warm season grasses that thrive in the summer months, providing great habitat for many types of wildlife and storing carbon from the atmosphere in the soil! Unfortunately, the grasses thrive so well that they will smother themselves to death unless accumulated thatch is…
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Some months after my arrival at the Motherhouse in 2002, Sister Anthony Mary Sartorius, who was the Motherhouse Service Coordinator, asked me to write about the many events which take place here, much like the annals which each convent used to keep. I decided to record the present happenings and end the monthly piece with…
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The food supply for monarch butterflies received a boost at the Motherhouse in May with the planting of 4 acres of milkweed and other plants favored by pollinators. Last fall, Infirmary physician Dr. Lida Oxnard brought a mesh cage with a dozen monarch caterpillars to the Motherhouse so that we could enjoy watching the metamorphosis…
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There’s something new at the Motherhouse. Anthony Mary Sartorius is getting to retire at last after two-and-a-half terms as service coordinator. After extensive searching for a person to take on that job, Michael Bickett has been hired. He begins as the new coordinator July 15 and is the first man to hold this important job.…
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If you drive to Bardstown, Ky., on Route 49 from Loretto, you will see a high, cone-shaped hill rising from the surrounding trees near the hamlet of Holy Cross. Everyone calls it Rohan’s Knob. Upon seeing it, you will know that you are in the Knobs ecologic subregion. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,…
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By Christine Boss St. Mary’s Academy selected several girls to participate in a trip from Denver to the Loretto Motherhouse over spring break. It was the first time that the AP (Advanced Placement) environmental science students had an opportunity to travel to the Motherhouse. The trip’s intent was for us to learn more about the…
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Did you know that our Loretto Motherhouse farm is an ecosystem? Remember that an ecosystem is made up of living and non-living things that interact and exchange energy. A farm ecosystem differs from a forest or a lake ecosystem in that humans control many of the interactions on the farm. Cattle play an important role…
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We have read about ecosystems. But what are ecosystem services? The notion was popularized by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report in 2005, and it is often used in forest management and planning. Ecosystem services imply those benefits that come from the functioning of ecosystems. These services are generally divided into three categories: provisioning services such…
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