God’s Divine Providence: A Testimony
By Isaiah Fifer
As a twenty-two year old man I often get asked: “How did you become Catholic?” and “How did you start working with a homestead community?” The short answer is God’s Divine Providence. I’ve been asked to share the long answer too, which is a simple discovery of Catholicism and Our Lady’s Ranch and the fruits that have come from them.
We’ve all been posed with the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Which then becomes, “What do you want to do for a living?” I’ve had many jobs over the years over a wide variety of fields and throughout it all two thing have rung crystal clear:
I want to be a father “when I grow up”
I do not want to be stuck in an office to make my living
God has placed an incredibly strong desire in my heart to spend the majority of my time outside with my future kids, which is why I believe he brought me to Our Lady’s Ranch. I’ve found that there is no better place to fulfill these two deep desires.
My journey began in 2016 with the craziness of the presidential election. At that time, I was an un-catechized high-schooler with no spiritual direction, yet I knew at a very deep level that something was wrong. For the first time, I was recognizing the ugly, progressive culture I was embroiled in at a very personal level and began asking: “who is against this main stream culture?” Through God's Grace and many hours thinking and researching, I was brought to the rich history of the Catholic Church and the rock solid theology it provided.
I immediately fell in love with the Catholic Mass; it was so different than any other Christian service that I attended because I truly felt like I was entering a holy place. I began to develop a connection with the Almighty God by attending Mass on Sundays and praying in the best way that I knew.
As things progressed in my life, I was becoming more and more interested in farming, homesteading, and animal husbandry. It’s funny to look back on the emails I was sending out into the void of craigslist because, even then, God was setting me up for my position here at OLR. This is an excerpt from an email I sent to a property owner in November 2019, almost two full years before I moved my trailer onto Our Lady’s Ranch:
“My ideal situation would be to live in an RV on someone’s country property. In exchange for groundskeeping, I would like to receive partial or full rent coverage. I love gardening, taking care of animals, hiking, cooking, art, and music…”
I was so desperate to find this ideal lifestyle that I asked everyone (while working as a waiter) if they knew of anyone who could use a ranch hand. In my desperation, I even drove out personally to random farms to ask if they needed help in any way. Eventually, I stumbled across a room for rent in the Grass Valley, CA countryside that was only fifteen minutes away from the local Catholic Church. As much as I enjoyed the beautiful simplicity at that farmhouse, I still couldn’t find any farming work, so I did what any Generation Z kid would have done and googled “farms near me.” I should have just asked at that local parish because the first thing that popped up was Family Friendly Farms, a company owned by a large Catholic family that went to the same church that I did!
I quickly sent an email requesting a meeting — and a meeting I got. Immediately upon my arrival I was blown away by the beauty and size of the land because it was exactly what I’d been envisioning the past few years! I was greeted by Phil Zeiter and a few of his kids, and we jumped right into discussing philosophy, today's culture and the remedies offered by God through an agrarian lifestyle. The whole time that I was in that little rented room, I had only been fifteen minutes away from my dreams that entire time! God’s timing truly is perfect: Not long after that initial meeting with Mr. Zeiter, I bought a trailer and moved onto Our Lady’s Ranch to live an agrarian way of life filled with prayer, work, play, and emotional growth.
While every day here at the ranch has been peaceful, the agrarian lifestyle definitely isn’t dull. Whether I am milking a cow, chasing a chicken, digging a hole, or praying the Rosary, there is always something to be done. I’ve been here over a year now and during that time I have continually grown in faith while developing the practical skills necessary for the outdoor lifestyle I always wanted to share with my future family. I am on a continual quest towards the dream I first realized back in high school. God has brought me this far in attaining my goals and I can’t wait to see what else he has planned!
May God be with us all!
Isaiah Fifer
Ranch Manger at OLR
