West Weber immigrant Italian family farmers helped start the old Utah monastery farm

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

Well before any monks arrived there seventy-five years ago in July 1947, the old Trappist monastery—located in Huntsville in the far eastern side of Weber County in Northern Utah—got a big assist from some friends and fellow farmers on the other side of the county.

The pioneer Utah monks came from Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, which overflowed with monks after World War II and needed new monastic foundations. Gethsemani Abbot Frederic Dunne visited Utah looking at available land three different times in late 1946 and early 1947. Father Wilfrid Giroux, a son of French-Canadian immigrants and the pastor at St. Joseph’s church in nearby Ogden, helped him a lot.

By early April 1947, Fr. Giroux had finalized and announced the plans for the new abbey. May 1947, however, brought sad tidings of Father Giroux’s unexpected death from a heart ailment. He was only age 51. Later that same month, Father Patrick Kennedy was assigned to replace him as pastor in Ogden.

Before he passed away, Father Giroux had helped established an informal network of local Catholic farmers and businesses to assist each other. The Ogden priest asked two young West Weber farmers/brothers/parishioners from that network to help get the monastery farm up and running for the monks. Their names were Anthony (“Tony”) and August (“Gus”) Favero.

The Faveros were part of an Italian farming tradition in West Weber County that began earlier in the century and included wonderful family names like DeGiorgio, Punanzio, Martini, Ropelato, Delpais, Rauzi, D’Agnillo, Anselmi, and Colletti. “A large migration of Italians came to the county in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when many Italian men came as railroad workers; many later became farmers. Their farms produced some of the usual truck garden crops and beef cattle, and [one immigrant] had a specialty of breeding and raising Perchon work horses.” (see Richard C. Roberts and Richard W. Sadler, A History of Weber County published in 1997 by the Utah State Historical Society and Weber County Commission).

In fact, for many years West Weber County was known as “Little Tyrol” because of the influx of Northern Italian farmers in the early 1900s, many who had worked in nearby mines first in order to save up the money to buy their farms. (See Kenneth Scambray’s Italian Immigration in the American West: 1870-1940. The Faveros were one of these mine-to-farm Italian families.

The Favero Brothers’ father Antonio, and their mother Amabele, both were born in Italy. Antonio farmed in West Weber’s Taylor District for 37 years. His sons took over the farm in 1939 after Antonio died. A few years later in 1947, thanks to Father Giroux, Tony and Gus started managing the Huntsville farm for the monks.

In June 1947, the Ogden Standard-Examiner reported about the emerging monastic farm operations. The newspaper said that contractors were building temporary Quonset hut quarters, but they would not be ready in time for the monks’ arrival, so wooden buildings previously used to house WWII prisoners of war had been hauled to the site. The newspaper said the monks initially planned to arrive in time for the first alfalfa cutting, but the lack of suitable quarters had delayed their arrival, meaning the Trappists would join in the second cut.

While Gus Favero lived in West Weber and commuted to the Ogden Valley as needed, Tony Favero and his family stayed in a house in Huntsville at the main monastery gate about ¾ mile away from where the monks lived. Tony and Gus also moved their entire dairy herd to Huntsville—Favero Holsteins started what would become the famous and award-winning monastery dairy. In the early days, the pioneer monks milked the Favero cows and hauled drinking water from Tony’s house every day to their wooden barracks.

An anonymous journal written by one of the monks chronicles the early days of the monastery. The journal mentions Tony often, for example describing their joint hay operations: “The first crop sold was about 150 tons at $20 a ton. Tony gets half of this and since we had no baler for the first crop we had to pay a man about $6.00 a ton to do this. Not much left for us. But it will be better the next time.”

Not everything went smoothly, of course. One monk kept tipping over a tractor that the Faveros were teaching him to use. When they asked him why he kept tipping over, the monk suggested it must be God’s will. Although the brothers were devoted Catholics—and much-devoted to the monks—Gus assured the young monk in no uncertain terms that repeatedly tipping an expensive tractor absolutely was not a matter of divine providence.

The monastery work was not just a business venture for the Favero brothers, it was a labor of love. Gus’ son Tom Favero still operates the family farm in West Weber, where they now grow alfalfa and provide high quality hay to the Hogle Zoo and a number of celebrity barns and equestrian operations. Tom vividly recalls how his childhood included regular visits to their home from the monastery’s Brother Felix McHale, who never turned you down if you offered a bit of Crown Royal whisky for his coffee.

Moreover, the anonymous monk journal notes: “For the last two weeks we have had our own washing machine. Our Rev. Father being in Ogden one day stopped in to look at some. He then wrote our Rev. Father at Gethsemani for permission to buy it. He said no but to wait for he would send us a big one. Tony Favero was with Rev. Fr. at Ogden and when he found out we could not buy it he bought it himself for $114 and gave it to us. It arrived unannounced. Rev. Fr. said to Tony, ‘I did not buy this, how did it get here?’ Tony shrugged his shoulders. Rev. Fr., ‘What’s at the bottom of this? How did it get here? Who is paying for it?’ Tony hung his head, put his hands in his pockets, and traced figures in the dust with the toe of his right shoe. ‘Well you see, Father,’ he began hesitatingly, ‘I knew you needed it so badly so I just bought it for you.’ He is just like that, Tony is.”

Tony and Gus helped with the monastery farm for five years. Gus got married in 1948 with Tony as his best man. Eventually, Tony left Utah to pursue other agricultural opportunities in Southern Idaho and sold his dairy cows to the monks. Gus brought his half of the herd back to the Favero family farm in West Weber, which ran a dairy until about 1962.

The Favero family stayed in touch with the monks and visited the abbey often. Several monks attended and sang at Tony’s 2002 funeral. Gus’ son Tom continued to offer business advice to the monks over the years before the monastery closed and also has worked with some neighboring farmers—the McFarlands—who now are tilling the old monastery fields.

There is a wonderful agricultural symmetry spanning the seventy-five year life of the Huntsville monastery. West Weber farmers helped start the abbey’s farm operations in 1947. Today, West Weber farmers are helping to keep it all going—lovely and indispensable bookends for a unique time and place in Utah’s history.

*Mike O’Brien (author website here: https://michaelpobrien.com/) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (https://www.amazon.com/Monastery-Mornings-Unusual-Boyhood-Saints/dp/1640606491), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press in August 2021.