Several years ago, a friend and I made the nine-hour drive north from Calgary through an Albertan landscape dotted with reed-filled ponds, muskeg, and miles of bright yellow canola fields. After a day on the road, we finally turned onto a jaw-rattling gravel path featuring a large, tan sign framed with stripped and varnished tree branches that informed us we had arrived. “Trickle Creek Community,” it read. “In Him we live and move and have our being, And as a plan for the fullness of time, all things in heaven and on earth shall be reconciled and united in Him.”
It is here, in Peace River Country, that one of the most fascinating Canadian stories of recent decades has unfolded—a story of Christian retreat, of a clash between a traditional lifestyle and the titans of government and industry, and even ecoterrorism. Events that unfolded here once captured the attention of the entire country.
Trickle Creek Farm was founded in 1985, when former Christian Reformed pastor Wiebo Ludwig, his wife Mamie, and their nine children arrived from Ontario to begin a new life after Wiebo decided it was time to retreat from society to escape a culture he believed was awash with poison. As journalist Chris Hedges would later put it: “Ludwig grasped the moral decadence of the consumer society, its unchecked hedonism, worship of money, and deadening cult of the self.” The eccentric Wiebo, encouraged in his plans to depart for the wilderness by the ecclesiastical troubles that seemed to follow him wherever he went, decided it was time to leave civilization with his clan: Harmony, Ben, Fritz, Bo, Josh, Mamie Jr., Salome, Charity, and Caleb.
The Ludwigs were joined by Richard and Lois Boonstra and their three daughters, Kara, Dania, and Renee (who would eventually marry three Ludwig sons and produce a population explosion). Ludwig’s biographer, Andrew Nikiforuk, wrote in Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig’s War Against Big Oil that for the first few years, the family set to work figuring out how to live with each other in the wilderness. It was a steep learning curve. In self-imposed isolation—Ludwig declined a proffered welcome party from nearby neighbors—the clan went to work creating an entirely self-sufficient society. The residents of Trickle Creek remember hard work, family time, and experiencing untamed nature for the first time.
In the early ‘90s, the situation began to sour. Ben, Wiebo’s red-bearded eldest (and in many ways his spitting image), told me that the trouble began just as his father decided it was time for their little community to begin reaching out and building connections with like-minded Christians. He began talking to Christian Reformed folks from nearby Neerlandia and other communities with similar theological backgrounds to discuss whether forms of collaboration could be found. “That’s just when the oil industry hit us, boom,” Ben told me as we walked around Trickle Creek Farm. “That took all our focus. That decision [to reconnect] was cut short by circumstance.”
That circumstance was the oil industry’s discovery that Trickle Creek farm was situated atop a major gas field, and the subsequent discovery by the Ludwigs that they only owned the top six inches of their property—the oil companies owned the resource rights to everything else. Oil wells, flaring, and sour gas leaks followed. Livestock died and miscarried. Eventually, the Ludwig women began to miscarry, too—there were five miscarriages and stillbirths in all. Tensions flared, culminating in standoffs with the oil companies who were, Ludwig wrote angrily, causing the deaths of his children, poisoning his farm, and violating the Lord’s Day by working on Sunday to boot.
What precisely happened next is still a matter of educated speculation. After the Ludwigs exhausted their legal options—lobbying politicians, taking the oil industry to court, and even attempting to move the entire clan to Costa Rica and getting turned back in Guatemala—a covert war against the oil industry began. As filmmaker David York portrays powerfully in his brilliant 2011 documentary, Wiebo’s War, the family fought back against an industry they perceived as threatening both the lives of their children and the health of their community.
Cement was poured down oil well shafts. Other sites were vandalized, and some were blown up. Wiebo Ludwig swiftly transformed from an obscure community leader deep in the Albertan forests to someone viewed as a dangerous ecoterrorist by some and a folk hero by others. As York explained it: “Wiebo felt that our society was in a spiritual crisis, rather than an environmental crisis. He felt that our addiction to fossil fuels, rampant consumerism and materialism, addictions, and breakdown of family units were all symptoms of a society that had lost its root connection to God.”
After a relentless, years-long pursuit, the police finally managed to put the wily Frisian in prison. Wiebo was convicted of five charges related to bombings and other forms of vandalism against oil and gas installations in 2000. By then, tensions with the surrounding community were at a fever pitch—a teenager had died of a gunshot wound on the Ludwig property after joyriding across the lawn in a pickup truck in the middle of the night, narrowly missing tents filled with sleeping women and children. The Ludwig minivan was blown up during a visit to town. No charges were filed in either instance. Wiebo was sentenced to 28 months in prison and served 18. He used his sentence to begin the translation of a Dutch treatise on angels.
Wiebo denied all guilt, and the Ludwigs are still deliberately vague when asked about what happened. “A greedy industry caused real harm and posed real danger to people just trying to live their lives, and so there was pushback,” Ben told me over a cup of coffee. “The industry still pushes closer to our property, so every once in a while, we have to drop by and remind them of our history.”
The specific details of that history remain unknown. Wiebo once suggested that he was planning to write a book for posthumous publication, but he died of esophageal cancer on April 9, 2012, at the age of 70, and no memoir has been forthcoming. In one notable instance, the police asked if they could come to Trickle Creek, open Wiebo’s coffin (which he had built himself) and fingerprint him one last time. The family refused, suspecting that the police just wanted to confirm that Wiebo was actually dead.
That story has already been told by journalists like Andrew Nikiforuk and David York. The story I am interested in, however, is the story of a religious community striving for self-sufficiency, reducing reliance on the government, and building a community that resembles the sort of Christian enclave that traditionalist writer Rod Dreher in his 2017 book, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation. The residents of Trickle Creek are not interested in interfering in the broader culture, and they chose their remote location so that the broader culture—and the government—would leave them alone.
Trickle Creek was buzzing with activity when we arrived, although Ben quickly pointed out that things often slow to a glacial pace during the long northern winters. Because the growing season is so short and the inhabitants of Trickle Creek are so focused on self-sufficiency, the summer months are essential. As Ben walked us around the farm, we were constantly bumping into one or more of Wiebo and Mamie’s fifty grandchildren (at the time of our visit, there were twenty-five boys and twenty-five girls, ranging in age from infant to 29). There are 960 acres, and 650 are usable.
My first impression of Trickle Creek Farm was that everyone was so useful. The children—two generations of them now—are homeschooled, after which each chooses a trade or skill, preferably one in high demand at Trickle Creek. Ben does the mechanical work. His oldest daughter Hannah makes soap—bar soap, shampoo, conditioner, dish soap, and laundry detergent—often infusing them with essential oils she produces from herbs and plants she harvests from the forest or from one of the vast gardens. She has also developed an interest in the medicinal quality of various native plants, and jars lining the shelves in the soap-making cabin mark the beginnings of an extensive apothecary. Others tend to the healthcare needs of the family.
The residents of Trickle Creek grow anything they can coax from the soil this far north. There are wheat and barley fields, and large greenhouses for tomatoes and vegetables, including corn—which can’t survive outdoors in this climate. Harvests are stored in a massive, temperature-controlled root cellar built out of two enormous, abandoned fuel tanks buried underground. It is cool inside and packed with vegetables of every kind: barrels overflowing with potatoes line the walls. Outside, there are gardens everywhere, and berry patches, too. During my visit, some of the Ludwig girls were trying their hand at cultivating wild berries, although they still head to the woods regularly to harvest berries throughout the summer.
There is a beautiful glass and wood greenhouse Wiebo was building when he died—he last worked on it just before he passed. Ben pointed to the beautiful glass structure as an example of what they are trying to accomplish at Trickle Creek: an intergenerational community built to last. That’s why the dying Wiebo worked on a project he knew he’d never see to completion. Putting down roots means sticking around and creating something that future generations can enjoy and improve on. This, the Ludwigs believe, is something that the mainstream culture has forgotten: how to work with generations unborn in mind.
When we toured the goat barn—there are about 100 goats, 20 of them milkers—a few of the girls and women were milking into buckets by hand, while a headless chicken awaiting butchering lay nearby. Outside, an apple-cheeked girl herded a flock of ducks and ducklings towards a small outdoor pen, separate from the large chicken coop housing the laying hens. There was also a flock of sheep, dairy cattle, horses, and llamas, which several Ludwig grandchildren informed me are extremely skilled at hocking a vile concoction of spit onto the faces of those they take a disliking to. The Ludwigs perform all of their own butchering and curing.
A lanky fellow named Isaac is Trickle Creek’s beekeeper, producing nearly 20 barrels of prime honey annually that is now in demand as far away as Vancouver Island. Isaac’s honey operation has received the approval of local black bears, and much effort is expended keeping them away from the hives. The hunting is good in Peace River country, consisting of deer, elk, and moose, which Hannah informed us “we’ve just figured out how to make it taste good.” All sorts of pelts hang on the walls of the log cabin. Ice-fishing is another important winter activity. There’s a stuffed snowy owl on the piano inside the enormous log community hall, where the clan gathers for mealtimes (they didn’t shoot it—they found it and obtained a permit to have it mounted).
During supper, I discovered that not all animals around Trickle Creek become food and furs—sometimes, they become pets. A little flying squirrel was perched on the shoulder of one of Ben’s young daughters, eying the strangers nervously, and occasionally flying from one girl to the next and then diving down the nearest shirt to remain hidden. The squirrel was discovered in the woods, and one of the little girls had woken up every few hours to feed it milk from an eyedropper. The large-eyed creature now resides in her bedroom. This wasn’t the first time a wild pet had stayed for awhile with the Ludwigs—they’ve also raised an abandoned young elk, setting it free when it grew strong. An owl—not the one stuffed on the piano—also came to stay for a while.
In addition to the gardens, greenhouses, and livestock buildings and pastures, there’s also a recreational field set aside for soccer and volleyball. The farm is outfitted with an enormous woodshop and sawmill, where logs from the forest are transformed into the houses and communal buildings that make up the Ludwig living quarters: a combination of logs, straw bales, and stucco. One building hosts their biofuel operation, which turns cooking fuel collected from restaurants in the surrounding towns into biofuel, which they use to run their farm equipment and several of their vehicles. Ben took the time to explain the entire process to me, but my knowledge of chemistry is so abysmal that I absorbed very little.
Trickle Creek Farm operates entirely off the grid. Electricity comes from solar panels that track the movement of the sun, mounted on the chalet-style log homes and other buildings, and from an enormous wind turbine, all of which are connected to banks of batteries that provide digital readouts detailing exactly how much power has been stored up. The more independent Christian communities become, Ben explained, the less power and leverage the government has over them. Beauty has not been forgotten in the search for utility, either—fabulous flower gardens clustered around the log buildings.
When a need arises, the Ludwigs get on the Internet, order training manuals, and figure out how to do it themselves. If necessary, they consult experts. Babies are delivered on the farm by midwives. Their cheese—and it is delicious—is made at Trickle Creek. They have their own mill for flour and have begun the process of learning how to use looms and spinning wheels. Harmony gave me a tour of the operation, explaining how they’ve begun to make some of their own clothes. I noted that a copy of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House in the Big Woods was tucked behind one of the looms, presumably stuffed there by one of the girls. It seemed appropriate.
After the tour, we sat down in the communal building to chat over home-brewed beers. The Ludwigs were interested in discussing some of the more worrying recent political developments in Canada, including aggressive government incursions into Christian schooling. Threats to religious liberty are worrying for those in the self-imposed isolation of Peace River Country. Fritz—Wiebo’s second son and Trickle Creek’s pastor—made sure to share these concerns to the community when they gathered for supper, which was opened with the reading of Scripture, an invitation to discussion, and then a communal recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. Later, hymns and psalms were sung from blue songbooks that still have Calvin Christian Reformed Church, Holland, Michigan stamped inside the covers. Singing was accompanied by piano, flute, drums, and violin.
I have rarely eaten better than during my two days at Trickle Creek. The food was phenomenal: meat on home-made buns, fresh cucumber and potato salad, and other tasty dishes. The large clan also makes up the friendliest and most welcoming horde of hosts I have experienced in a very long time—all were eager to chat and open to having long discussions about the philosophy and work of Trickle Creek Farm. More than once, Thessalonians 4:11-12 was referenced as the encapsulation of what they are trying to accomplish: And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing.
Spending time with the family, with dozens of cousins skittering about, reminded me of a secret wish I had when I was a child that I could live with all of my cousins, too. Trevor Schilthuis, Harmony’s husband, told me that it was this family closeness that led him to follow the Ludwigs from Alberta to Ontario years ago. The adults chatted as the children romped about—the matriarch, Mamie Sr., was in the hospital in Grande Prairie for a back procedure—and one noted that old age homes are a tragic thing. Aging mothers and fathers, they asserted, should be cared for by the children that the parents once cared for. At Trickle Creek, at least for the time being, all possessions are still held in common. It is, fundamentally, an enormous family farm supporting an enormous family.
It is this fact that has created a dilemma; a dilemma referenced time and again by nearly every adult: how does Trickle Creek expand from a family operation with everything held in common, to a community? The first and most urgent problem is the fact that there is a growing number of young people on the farm of marriageable age but with no prospective partners. After the war with the oil industry died down, the Ludwigs began preparing to resume forming networks again to resolve this problem when Wiebo was diagnosed with cancer and advised them to instead prepare themselves for the inevitable upheaval that his death would bring. The clan should first figure out how to get on without their patriarch, Wiebo advised, before navigating new relationships with other communities.
Six years had passed since Wiebo’s death at the time of my visit, and although the clan was thriving, they had yet to solve any of the existential problems. There are differing ideas of what the community should look like going forward, and much acrimony, too. Debates frequently involve various family members citing what they believe Wiebo would have wanted. In order to transform from a family into a community, they will need some form of constitution, an accountable authority structure, a statement of faith, a standard of membership—in short, a method of self-governance built on a recognition that expansion is impossible so long as Trickle Creek functions like the close but complicated extended family that it is. These frequently ugly disagreements often result in family members leaving for a time—and some have likely left permanently. With no marriageable partners, an exodus is imminent unless these existential problems are resolved.
Trickle Creek Farm has gone through four phases. There was the genesis phase, when the two founding families arrived in Peace River Country to build their commune in the wilderness, followed by the war with the oil industry and Wiebo’s subsequent imprisonment. A cooling-off phase followed, which lasted until Wiebo’s death in 2012. The fourth phase must be one of transition, if the community is to survive long-term. Despite the challenges, they seem confident that somehow, some way, this will happen; that there will be an influx of people into Trickle Creek, with the next generation fueling the commune’s next explosive expansion. But despite this confidence, the transition phase is likely to be Trickle Creek’s most daunting challenge yet, especially as there is some resistance to putting pen to paper to create a governing structure.
However, the principles that the clan of Trickle Creek champion may yet prove attractive to many if they successfully navigate their transitional phase: self-sufficiency, self-reliance, love of family, a rejection of materialism and consumerism, an emphasis on the biblical stewardship of Creation, the exemplification of agrarian localism, and a rejection of the hedonism that has overtaken mainstream culture. Over thirty years ago, they set off into the wilderness to prove that people could reject modern society and find a better way. Despite the challenges they now face—and the mistakes they have made—the Ludwigs would challenge anyone who doubts that they have accomplished this to come and see for themselves.
