What’s happened, three years after my book “Monastery Mornings,” to the Utah Trappist monks and their lovely old abbey?

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

In the Fall of 2021, I published a book about growing up at a now-closed Trappist monastery in rural Northern Utah. Telling that wonderful story has been a great and fulfilling personal adventure. 

Whenever I discuss Monastery Mornings, however, someone inevitably asks the most common question people have about the book: What has happened to the Utah monks and their land?

The short answer? A lot! 

The longer answer starts with the monks themselves, of course. After all, I wrote Monastery Mornings so people would remember these good and kind men. 

When the Abbey of the Holy Trinity near Huntsville, Utah, closed in 2017, 29 Trappists already were buried in the quaint monastery cemetery, in graves marked by simple white crosses. (See here for a profile of all the Utah monks.) Those blessed monks—including some of the original abbey founders—still rest there.

The chant of birdsong gently serenades them within a cathedral of surrounding mountains and trees. Elk, sandhill cranes, owls, bobcats, and herds of wild turkeys come by often to visit the peaceful site.

There were a dozen Utah monks alive when the Huntsville monastery closed. Three transferred to other monasteries in the United States. Now only one of them—Brother David Baumbach of Genesee Abbey in New York—survives. 

One other monk temporarily assigned to Utah as superior—Father Brendan Freeman—returned to his New Melleray Abbey in Iowa. Now in his late 80s, his brothers eventually again chose him as their leader.

The remaining eight monks all became a part of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, the monastery which started Holy Trinity Abbey right after World War II. Those eight monks moved together to St. Joseph’s Villa, a retirement home and care center in Salt Lake City. 

It was an unusual arrangement, and likely was a compassionate nod from Gethsemani Abbey to the deep ties between the Trappists and their Utah home. Most monks “retire” within their own abbey walls or reside in their monastery infirmary.

Although unusual, the Villa arrangement was a boon to those of us who knew and loved the Utah monks. We could continue visiting them and help care for them during their years of decline. And we did.

Three of these “Villa monks”—Father Malachy Flaherty, Brother Nicholas Prinster, and Brother David McManus—passed away before I published Monastery Mornings. They all were laid to rest at the lovely abbey cemetery in Huntsville.

I was able to sign and give a copy of my book, however, to the five Utah monks who were alive in 2021. Four of them even joined our mutual friend Bill White and me for a private book launch lunch in August 2021 at their favorite place, the Ruby River Steakhouse in Salt Lake City.

After that memorable lunch, Father Patrick Boyle kindly posed for me with a copy of Monastery Mornings in his hands. (See the photo illustrating this blog article.)

I’m glad we did not wait any longer to publish. Shortly after that book launch lunch in August 2021, three of the four monks who attended—Father Leander Dosch, Father Alan Hohl, and Father Patrick—graduated to Heaven. One more Villa monk (Father Casimir Bernas) died in August 2024.

That leaves Father David Altman, the former Holy Trinity Abbey accountant and abbot who now is 86 years old, as the last Utah monk standing. Like we did when the other Utah Villa monks were alive, we still take Father David to visit his old monastery home from time to time.

I am hoping that the abbey land that he knew so well just might have a future that is as intriguing and interesting as its past. 

When the pioneer Trappist monks first arrived in Utah from Kentucky on July 10, 1947, their leader surveyed the Ogden Valley property and its scenic surroundings. He then proclaimed, “I think this place is near to Heaven, and it should be our endeavor to make it more so.” 

The monks spent the next seven decades doing just that. With lots of sweat and prayers, they built a little bit of Heaven on earth.

Sadly, the abbey closed in August 2017. There were too many old monks there and not enough young ones to sustain the operations. As Father Patrick liked to say when people asked him why the abbey no longer sold its famous monk creamed honey, “We ran out of monks, not bees!”

The monks decided to sell their beloved property, but they hoped their land would be preserved as open, and they prayed that their fine agricultural legacy might somehow continue. Happily, that’s what has happened so far.

The monks sold the land to a dear friend—a local resident and water lawyer named Bill White. A few years earlier, Bill and his wife Alane had preserved some of their beautiful ranch land in neighboring Summit County.

The Whites promised to do the same thing with the monastery land. After many years of effort, uncertainty, and even some financial risk, the Whites have finalized a conservation easement for the abbey property.

Thanks to the Whites and their partners at Summit Land Conservancy and the Ogden Valley Land Trust, the monastery land today is still open farmland, instead of a golf course or a subdivision. 

The Whites also have preserved (and lovingly tend to) the abbey cemetery. They’ve restored some of the abbey farm outbuildings and even hired a local artist to paint a monk on one of the old barn exterior walls.

What could not be saved, however, was the unique Quonset hut monastery building. The monks built it in 1948 as a temporary structure, to be used for only about ten years until a new abbey cloister could be built. Instead, it lasted (and the monks used it) for seven decades. 

By 2019, however, the old Quonset hut abbey was deteriorating rapidly. It was full of asbestos and vandals were defacing it. It needed millions of dollars of work. Bill tried to give it away to anyone who would agree to restore it, but there were no takers. 

The building was razed and replaced with landscaping. Bill kept the old abbey bells and plans to place them in a small reflection chapel he hopes to build on site someday, close to the cemetery.

With the abbey land largely spared from inappropriate development, Bill turned to the problem of how to continue the monastery’s agricultural traditions, hardly a profitable venture in these days of corporate farms. After trying several approaches, Bill seems to have found one that just may work.

He’s hired some sixth-generation family farmers from West Weber County—named Ken and Jamila McFarland—to manage the abbey farm. It’s a wonderful throwback option, because West Weber farmers helped the monks start the ranch back in 1947.

Having farmed successfully in Northern Utah for so long, the McFarlands know how to grow things there. They’ve planted and harvested organic wheat, onions, alfalfa, pumpkins, and other crops on the monks’ land.

The McFarlands call the old abbey property the “Historic Monastery Farm” and continue the spirit of the monks whenever possible. For example, the monks named their fields after Catholic saints. Although devout Latter-day Saints, the McFarlands use the same field names today.

Bill White has built a rustic red barn for his new farmers near the old monastery entrance. The McFarlands have planted a delightful pumpkin patch right next to it. 

In late summer and early fall each year, large crowds gather at the old abbey for Saturday farmers markets and autumn festivals. A local bakery has recreated the monks’ famous and delicious wheat bread recipe and sells it within a few steps of the old abbey bookstore where I first tasted it.

The local Catholic community helps keep the spirit of the monks alive too. St. Florence parish in Huntsville has placed memorial tribute markers, including the names and images of many of the monks, throughout the small church and social hall.

So, just three years after I published Monastery Mornings, we are down to our last Utah monk. He and his Trappist brothers in Heaven, however, are loved and remembered on many fronts by many people. And not just by those who knew them.

Thanks to the efforts of so many, such as those described above, a new audience and another generation is hearing about the good and kind men who once built a monastery in the middle of the picturesque Ogden Valley and loved their neighbors as themselves.

As a result, I dare to dream this audacious dream…

Someday, maybe a half century from now and long after I am gone, two people are strolling down the old Huntsville abbey road on the monastery farm.

One holds a worn and well-read copy of Monastery Mornings.

They look up from time to time. Growing crops sway. Butterflies adorned in what seem like small white robes flutter in a soft late summer breeze. 

And then one of the walkers smiles and says to the other, “Tell me more about those Trappist monks who used to live here…”

*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022.