Making an investment in future priests

One of Brenda Maus’ favorite quotes is by business mogul, Warren Buffett. “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” It means the success and peace you enjoy today is often the direct result of the patience and hard work someone put in years prior.
 
Brenda and her husband, Gary, never planted many trees on their farm just outside of Golva, located in western North Dakota, because the soil isn’t conducive to it. But the “trees” they planted recently were in the form of a major donation to the Seminarian Scholarship Fund managed by the Catholic Foundation of Western North Dakota.
 
Gary and Brenda were married in 1974 and began living and working on Gary’s family farm right away. It was their dream to farm and raise cattle, but it was a bit of a rough start.
 
“We were broke, couldn’t even buy groceries,” Brenda shared.
 
Gary didn’t want to ask for help from welfare programs. “We’ll make it on our own,” was a mantra that led to a lifetime of prayer and hard work to build a legacy.
 
“Gary’s friend offered a quarter of land to us. We couldn’t get money from the bank because we had no collateral. So, we borrowed $5,000 from my parents, Ralph and Christine Finneman, to make a downpayment,” she said.
 
With prayer, hard work and some money from the bank, they eventually got it paid for and paid her parents back. Over time, they increased their milking herd, made more land purchases and raised Holstein steers to make the land payments. They milked anywhere from 95-103 cows that took no less than six hours a day—three in the morning and three at night—with just three machines. After that it was grinding feed, feeding baby calves, cleaning the barn out, feeding the cattle and all the other farm chores. 
 
“So, a normal day was usually 16 hours,” Brenda explained. “But we enjoyed our work.”
 
Some 50 years later, Brenda felt strongly that it was time to give back for all the blessings they have experienced over the years. She and Gary recently donated a quarter of land to the Seminarian Scholarship Endowment Fund. Proceeds from the land sale went directly to fund the education of future priests for our diocese.
 
How did a young, broke married couple get to a point where they could make such a generous gift to the Church? It’s a simple answer—plenty of hard work backed by tremendously strong faith.
 
“I feel very blessed,” Brenda said. “God has blessed us. That’s why I’m giving this donation. It was a lot of hard work, but we went from nothing to this and I am going to give back. This is the reward of our hard work. It feels good to give to our seminarians. We need priests. How would you feel if we didn’t have the Eucharist?”
 
To trace to the root of the reason why Brenda feels so strongly about returning God’s blessings to Him and His priests, it must start with her utter love of the Catholic faith that she inherited from her parents. 
 
“My parents prayed every night together. We’d pray the rosary as a family in the living room. Boy, you better kneel up straight,” she said with a chuckle in her voice. “There was no slouching. You’d see dad walking across the farmyard making the sign of the cross. Mom always had a holy water fountain in her bedroom. I’d use it about five times a day. If you passed by that fountain from one room to another, she’d grab your shirt and ask, ‘Did you forget something?’ Oh, I get holy water by the pint jar. I bless calves and other animals. I bury it in the pasture before we put cattle out, so they are safe. I’m big on holy water.”
 
Brenda grew up seven miles southeast of her current farmstead. She admits to growing up “sheltered” as the sixth of 11 children, but they definitely learned the value of family. 
 
“I milked my first cow when I was three years old,” she said. They rarely left the farm, but she’s proud to note that her and her siblings all get along, to this day. We grew up poor, but we were a very close-knit family. “I’d live my childhood over in a minute. I just loved the farm. I love farm life. I love animals.”
 
So, marrying a farmer and living that life was a natural fit for Brenda. She tried college, but nothing interested her among the limited options for women in those days. Every weekend, she found herself traveling back to her home farm because she desperately missed that life.
 
Once married, she and Gary settled into the only way of life they ever knew and loved—farm life.
 
“I was in charge of milking, grinding feed (five batches a week), feeding baby calves, breaking heifers and animal health. I did all the branding and vaccinating,” Brenda explained. Gary, who is in partnership with Ron Zachmann owning Prairie Lumber of Golva and Beach, enjoyed haying season and feeding cattle. “We milked for 26 and a half years, sold them in the year 2000. The price of milk was $8.50 when we started in 1975 and, in 2000, it was $8.50. We were losing money. We had to sell.”
 
It was hard at first to give up that chore that was such a dominant part of everyday life. 
 
“My sister said, ‘You’ll get over it.’ I cried when the cows left. It took me three days to get over it knowing how tired I was,” she realized. 
 
But selling the milking cow herd didn’t mean it was time to rest and relax. That just wasn’t their nature. “Then, we got range cattle,” Brenda said. “Started out with 25 and built to 180. And then, years later, that got to be too much and we sized down. We have about 50 now.”
 
There were plenty of tough years—especially calving in the harsh winters. Brenda recounts that she’s had nine cow accidents over the 50 years. One encounter with an angry cow sent Brenda to the clinic to get stitches in her head. In another incident, she endured being trampled by cows and ended up almost losing a leg from an infection. The worst one was three years ago. She was asked to give a neighbor’s sick cow some medicine via a dart gun. The cow, though sick, quickly recognized Brenda as a threat and came after her.
 
“I had nowhere to go and honestly thought I was going to die that day. I don’t know what was guiding me, had to be the Holy Spirit,” she said. “She ran at me and hit me in several spots. I fell in the snow, and the dart gun broke in half. My face was in the snow, and I could hear her breathing over the top of me and just waiting for me to roll over. What told me to play dead? I have no idea; I’d never reacted like that before. If I would have moved, she would have finished me off.
 
“I still can’t believe I lived through that. When I got home, I realized that I had a rosary in my pocket. I think that’s what saved me.”
 
She’s also been in two wrecks while pulling a horse trailer. “That’s what the St. Christopher medal is for to protect me. Sometimes, I can’t believe I’m still here.” 
 
And she’s still here on the farmstead today at age 72, still taking care of all the animals.
 
“When we started milking in 1974, I knew we were ‘stuck.’ You had to pay the bills. Back then, everyone milked to pay the bills. It was work, work, work. But I consider it a privilege to work. I feel for people who are bored or who don’t like to work. There was an old farmer that said, ‘The best days of your life are when you put in a hard day’s work and go to bed tired at night.’ That’s very true. I wish I could live those days over, knowing what I know now but having the energy that I had then.”
 
The workload has lessened a bit in recent years and it’s time to pass it along to the next generation under her watchful eye. Brenda and Gary have two children close by—their daughter, Nicole Davidson, works at the lumber yard in Golva and, son, Grant, has an autobody shop right next door. They also have six grandchildren and six great grandchildren.
 
Grandson, Brannon, is taking over the farm with help with the chores from Brenda. “Family is his only hope because machinery, land and cattle are expensive for anyone just starting out,” she said. “He wants to do this farm life. It’s his dream and I have to stay for him. A lot has changed. We have cameras now set up in the barn. I think about all those trips to the barn over the years and now we can just watch the cows on the cameras.”
 
In 2024, issues with Gary’s memory started when Brenda noticed that he forgot how to do chores that used to be second nature. Then, he was out in the field raking hay and was skipping rows and needed help from a neighbor farmer to find his way home. In 2025, he was injured after a fall in the shop and recovery was difficult. He’s currently in a memory care facility in Dickinson.
 
Brenda had thought about the land donation for several years, but when their pastor at St. Mary’s parish in Golva, Fr. Nicholas Vetter, started talking more about giving to the Church, it provided the extra encouragement to do it.
 
“I love the Catholic faith. If you don’t have priests, you don’t have the Eucharist!” Brenda exclaimed. “You must have priests. And we’ve had some darn good priests here. 
 
“My mom wrote letters of encouragement to seminarians and supported them financially. My parents would be so happy about this land donation. They would love this. I never dreamed that 50 years ago that this would ever be possible. My mom loved priests—they were like sons to her. She’d have them over for breakfast after Mass. When she was living in Golva, I was told that one of the priests even boosted up the Mass time, so he’d have more time at mom’s afterward,” she said with a proud smile. “That’s unverified.”
 
Brenda can’t fathom why anyone would stray from the Church. “Why would you ever leave the faith? When you walk out of Mass, you walk out with something—Jesus. I pray every day for my family members who have left the Church.” 
 
Brenda is confident there are others in our diocese who could give a similar donation but might not realize just how fulfilling it is to make an investment in future priests. 
 
To anyone contemplating this type of donation to the seminarian fund, Brenda offered, “Do it! I don’t know if there’s ever been anything that’s ever made me feel better than this. It’s something that’s going to be there in the future for generations. What would it be like if we didn’t have any priests? No priests means no Eucharist! There are a lot of people out there who could give this kind of donation. You’re not going to take it with you!”