LUXEMBURG, Iowa — To patrons of Dubuque Farmers Market, the backstory of Waystone Gardens might be much more than meets the eye. Allyson Winter and Lincoln Morris-Winter live with their two children, Misha, 2, and Otter, 11 months, on the Oberbroeckling family farm in Luxemburg. There, they’ve revived the homestead since stepping up to steward the property in February 2022, after owner Elmer Oberbroeckling relocated to a nursing home.
The family has since made it their home. Morris-Winter, an Iowa native, learned of the opportunity because of his family friendship with the Oberbroecklings, and he jumped at the chance, putting in much work on the front end to make the property a home for his wife, who was expecting their first child. The two-story stone farmhouse was emptied and transformed into something found in the Irish countryside.
Upon entering the kitchen and moving past the pastel-washed walls of the dining and then living room, the space is an homage to a time of stark beauty and simplicity. Winter and Morris-Winter’s lives intersected at St. Isidore Catholic Worker Farm in Cuba City, Wis.
, where both were staying for a brief time. It was during the COVID-19 shutdown, and Morris-Winter was only passing through for a day or two. When they met, something clicked and they began writing letters back and forth, getting to know each other perhaps on a deeper level than they could have through in-person conversation.
They married and lived in Dubuque for a time, with Winter working at Convivium Urban Farmstead and Morris-Winter at Jubeck New World Brewing. The move to the farm when they were starting their family offered the chance to try market farming full time and start their own Catholic Worker Farm, aligning their life and work more fully to the movement co-founded in 1933 by Dorothy Day, who integrated social activism and Catholic tradition through her work to aid the poor, expand awareness of social injustices and reform social structures. “Being a Catholic Worker Farm is about listening to the land, being good caretakers of the land and working to restore our and others’ relationships to the land.
In doing this work, we’re responding to God’s calling in our lives to tend to the most vulnerable and to nurture the sacredness of life,” Winter said. The family and business will relocate this fall to the Little Platte Catholic Worker Farm in Platteville, Wis., a new collaborative effort with Morris-Winter’s sister’s family where the work will include land-based community life, regenerative agriculture and ecological rewilding.
The farm will also offer spiritual retreats, educational programming and land-based crafts and art. According to their community covenant, the “aim is to create an intentional way of life that grows from shared clarity of vision, prayer and imagination.” Waystone Gardens is currently offering kale, collard greens, cherry tomatoes, turnips, carrots, fresh garlic and onions at the Saturday morning market in Dubuque, with cucumbers, zucchini and regular-size tomatoes coming soon.
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