Quinci Schmidt is a self-described “huge cow person,” having grown up on her family’s dairy farm near Rogers. Chores weren’t always fun as a child, she said, but as she got older, she realized she “really loves this lifestyle.”
“You’re growing up thinking about somebody else first, and that would kind of go into everything else in your life,” Schmidt said.
Today she works full time with her dad on the family farm. She does more of the herd management, working with the cows, and her dad focuses more on growing crops and other business aspects, she said. Schmidt recently joined “Practicing Catholic” radio show producer Kayla Mayer to describe life on the family farm and the role and impact of faith in her life and work.
Life on a dairy farm while witnessing her parents’ faith, marriage and relationship with God shaped who she is today, Schmidt said, including her faith life. “It’s almost impossible to be a farmer and not have faith because so much of your life depends on what’s given to you,” she said. Farm visitors might comment about the family’s “great yield of corn this year,” but “I really didn’t do anything,” she said. Rather, the family was blessed with the soil, the rain “that’s given to us,” she said.
“It’s not something that we’re in control over,” she said. Even with the farm animals, “you do what you can to care for them … but then God’s going to do the rest. So, I think growing up on the farm … and with my parents, it just … goes hand in hand with the faith, being connected to God in everything that I do.”
That dependency on God taught her to be open to his presence in her life and helped foster Schmidt’s “deep, personal relationship with him,” she said. “Everything I do is connected to him.”
Everything is a blessing, Schmidt said. “Everything’s given from him.” Sometimes it’s easy to get discouraged from a rough year, she said, “but it’s always having that faith and that trust that God’s going to provide” because this is what he calls farmers to be and do, she said. And that’s what helps motivate her faith, she said.
“The faith helps me to farm, but then the farm also aids my faith,” Schmidt said.
Before Schmidt married and returned to the family farm, she had considered a vocation in consecrated life. During discernment, she spent “blocks of prayer time in the chapel, visiting Christ in the Eucharist,” she said. On the farm, Schmidt said, she fosters “that interior life” and connects with God throughout the day.
“I love just feeling God’s presence when you’re outside and the wind is blowing or even just when I’m with the cows,” she said. Being an animal, his creature, they praise God “just by existing,” Schmidt said. “We have free will, so sometimes we choose not to praise God in what we do, but an animal always is praising God.”
To hear more of Schmidt’s faith and farm life stories, listen to this episode of “Practicing Catholic,” which debuts at 9 p.m. Nov. 24 on Relevant Radio 1330 AM and repeats at 1 p.m. Nov. 25 and 2 p.m. Nov. 26.
Produced by Relevant Radio and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the latest show also includes an interview with Archbishop Bernard Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis, who discusses the Advent season; and Kendra Tierney from Catholic All Year, who describes the importance of Advent and how we can make this year’s the best ever.
Listen to interviews after they have aired at PracticingCatholicShow.com or choose a streaming platform at anchor.fm/practicing-catholic-show.
