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They heard the voice of the Holy Spirit in different ways, but Tom and Corrie Enander followed what they believed was the voice of God, leading them to rural Northwest North Dakota.
The couple owns Enander Seed Farm in Grenora. Their route to the farm was not what they planned, but they believe it is God’s. Grenora is a small town just south of the Canadian Border, and east of Montana, and is about 45 miles from the nearest city, in what Corrie saw as the desert.
“I grew up around trees a little more like Minnesota,” said Corrie, who, along with Tom, worked for John Deere in Minnesota’s Twin Cities. They both grew up farming in North Dakota, but Corrie said she preferred wooded areas.
Corrie’s dad, Neil Jonk, was a potato farmer, and Corrie said she wasn’t eager to go back into potatoes. Her dad and his friend found the land and told Tom and Corrie about it. She saw the treeless fields and balked, but it was at the prompting of the Holy Spirit that she changed her mind. She had plans of her own.
“I planned on doing something for the Church,” she said. After getting her undergraduate degree in Crop Science at North Dakota State University, Corrie got her Master's in Theology from the Institute for Religious and Pastoral Studies.
“Then this opportunity to farm came up, and I didn’t want to come out here. When we drove here, I told the Lord, ‘This is the desert.’”
Without telling her pastor or her spiritual director about her concerns, Corrie said she was leaving Mass when the priest stopped her. “He had no idea, but one day after Mass, he says, ‘I got a scripture verse for you from the Lord.’ I was just blown away.”
The verse was Hosea 2:14. “I will lead her out to the desert and speak to her heart.” Corrie said it was the same word she was using in her prayer time, telling God she didn’t want to go. “I knew it was the Lord.”
Tom also heard the Lord speaking to him. Tom grew up in a faith-filled Baptist family, on a farm with crops and livestock. He says he didn’t know much about Catholicism because he’d only had one Catholic friend growing up. It wasn’t until he got to college and met Corrie that he started exploring.
He started asking himself, “What is truth, and what is the final authority? I just couldn’t get past that if Jesus established a church, where is it?”
After they married, Tom went through what was then the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults and came into full communion with the church. “I always joke that my daughter’s been Catholic longer than I have because she was baptized first and then I was confirmed.”
The promptings of the Holy Spirit continued, he said, though he didn’t realize that’s what it was. “I always really liked the farm, but I knew that I was never going to go take over my home farm.”
While he was working in Minnesota, he said they’d take vacations and go back to North Dakota to farm. When he felt what he believes is his call to “go on vacation all the time.”
Unlike Corrie, the desert didn’t concern Tom. He said while they were driving to look at the property, he knew it was right. “When we drove out here, we weren’t even farming yet, and we drove out here. The sun was setting over the town where we were, and the song came on the radio, ‘I’ve been blessed.’ I felt the Holy Spirit had been with us.”
From their move to purchasing the farm, and the way the business has grown, both Tom and Corrie knew the Holy Spirit led them and continues to lead them. Including the decision to homeschool their five children, even after her oldest daughter was in 7th grade.
Corrie said throughout her life, she’s heard God the Father’s voice at different times, and “he’s very fatherly. He’s very authoritative, but he’s super kind,” she said. Once in the chapel, Corrie said, she heard God’s voice clearly while she was complaining in her prayers.
“He said, 'Corrie, it’s not all about you.' And I went, 'What?' All of a sudden, I just saw the flash of all my kids, and I went 'Oh, it’s about raising them. It’s about trying to raise saints and soldiers for the Lord.'” That cemented her conviction to get her kids out of the public school system.
Corrie said her daughter, Leah, now 25 and married, will still say it was a hard transition, but through that process, she and Tom learned a lot about what to do with their younger children. Their son, Johannes, nicknamed Shine, was in third grade when Corrie took them out of public school. It was another nudge by the Holy Spirit.
“I called this group called the Susan Barton Institute,” said Corrie, after learning that her son may be dyslexic. She ended up talking to Susan Barton, who started a reading and support program that provides resources for students who have dyslexia.
“I talked to her, and she’s like, ‘Well, I can tell you with 90 percent certainty that your son is dyslexic.” Until then, Corrie said her son would read at the 3rd-grade level, “reading like a robot.” His teachers didn’t catch the learning disability, but she was able to get him online tutors, and though he learned to read, he shared his faith along the way.
“I found an incredible Christian woman from South Dakota, who, because of Shine, through the tutoring of five years with him, she’s now become orthodox because she wanted the tradition, and because Shine loved the tradition of the Catholic faith,” Corrie said. “I think she’s one day going to become Catholic, but that’s the Lord’s.”
They kept them connected with other Catholic homeschool families, but more importantly, instilled their love of the farm. Corrie said they’ve always believed that the farm is not just a way to keep the kids busy, but they intentionally involve them. There are 209 varieties of potatoes planted each year on 200 acres of prairie.
Shine, now in his 20s, is looking at continuing his family’s potato farm and eventually taking over when Tom and Corrie decide to retire. In the meantime, he is busy teaching his little brother, Blaise, how to be a faithful farmer.
“He’s just a gem,” said Corrie, of her oldest son. “He did discern with the Redemptorists for a while, but that didn’t turn out to be the right order for him. The possibility of marriage is definitely open to him now, but again, it’s not a done deal. So, if the Lord called him out and said, you know, I want you to be a priest, we’re good with that.”
Throughout their family and farm life, Tom and Corrie have listened to the Lord. Living in a small rural community, where their church is a mission of a larger parish in Williston. Their 17-year-old goes to a youth group at the larger church.
“They do it at a coffee shop on Saturdays, and the priest really leads them. It’s unfortunate that she has to go that far away in order to get Bible study, but it’s also a way for her to meet with good Catholic kids her age,” said Tom.
Even though St. Boniface is a small parish, whose closest neighbor is nearly an hour away, Tom said the community is close-knit and spends time together as a “big church family.”
Daily Mass, family prayer, and a family Rosary every day are where they hear the Holy Spirit, but Tom said he also hears His voice out in the fields. “It is just the most peaceful when I’m out on the farm. I can just be out there all day and just get lost in time. You know it’s just such a joy.”
When the potatoes are in flower, Tom said that is God’s artwork. “Just how he set up nature is just inspiring. It's just the most beautiful art I can ever imagine. That to me is what I wanna look at. That's what I wanna see. I don't need a painting or a movie. I've got it right in front of me.
The Enanders farm the land with the understanding that they live and farm there by the grace of God. Corrie said there is a caveat that she pays close attention to, though.
“When we first started farming, in prayer, I heard the voice of the Father speak with great clarity a beautiful warning, ‘If the farm ever becomes more than Me, I will take it from you, because I love you!’ How do you get more fatherly and beautiful than this?”
At the end of the day, the Enanders consecrate their work and their family to the Lord. “After the Family Rosary, we pray this as we bless our children good night,” she said. “I consecrate you totally to Jesus through Mary. May she wrap you in her mantle, protect you from all evil, and may the Holy Spirit grant you all the graces and gifts you need to become a Saint.”
