Farm Work for Parsons

Farmer Wilber Cochel, 73, tall and bone-thin, and the manager of 410 rich Missouri acres near Kansas City, was breaking in 15 new hands this week. They did not know much about farming; they were all Episcopal divinity students. "They're as green as can be," said he. "They don't know a manure fork from a hay fork . . . That doesn't do the farm profits any good." But Farmer Cochel is not primarily interested in the profits. His most important crop these days is well-rounded clergymen.

Wilber Andrew Cochel was a pioneer in animal husbandry, and by 1918 he was field representative of the American Shorthorn Breeders' Association. One day the president of the Kansas City Star offered him the editorship of its weekly. In the 20 years he stayed at the job, Cochel became an important influence in U.S. agriculture. And he grew more & more certain that a vital phase of the country's rural life was being neglected. "We have the 4-H Clubs, the Future Farmers of America, the Farm Bureaus and the Grange--all fine organizations--but none of them doing anything specifically to develop the spiritual and moral side of farm life."

At the Episcopal Church's triennial convention at Kansas City in 1940, Farmer Cochel saw part of the trouble. Most of the clergy neither knew nor cared about rural life. Cochel and his wife Caroline talked it over. Then he went to the Episcopal National Council in New York and offered them his own farm, Roanridge, as a special training ground for the ministry.

The council accepted and set up a new National Town-Country Church Institute. Each summer, the institute puts theological students (currently 50 of them) through a course at Roanridge and 14 other rural centers. Until Sept. 1, the 15 at Roanridge will follow a 7 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. schedule of Sunday preaching (as vacation fill-ins), house-to-house surveying and pastoral visiting--plus a total of at least 80 hours of farm labor.

Farmer Cochel, who deeded his farm to the church in 1947, manages to make it show a token profit (last year, $2,500). His deed provides that he will manage Roanridge as long as he wants to. "Every other time any church tried to run a farm, it blew up on them because they didn't know how to do it," he says. "I didn't want any bishops telling me how to farm."

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