Farm? They'll Figaro it out

Enlarge Image

Terry Mierau eased his way from the opera houses of Europe to a farmhouse in Manitoba, but he and wife Monique are not looking back. (RUTH BONNEVILLE/WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store

NEUBERGTHAL -- No more soaring arias. No more finger-gnarling pathos.

Just overalls, rubber boots, and a manure shovel.

When opera singers Terry and Monique Mierau, both aged 40, arrived in southern Manitoba this spring to take up a colossal career change -- to become farmers -- you could almost hear the finale, Make Our Garden Grow, from the operetta Candide.

The real-life opera singers sang across Europe for a decade, based out of Amsterdam, from Austria to Germany to France to Great Britain, and were separated and reunited more times than opera characters Candide and Cunegonde, performing in different operas in different cities.

But there was always a gnawing inside to escape the crowded cities and footlights for a simpler life.

Not only that. The Mieraus have taken up residence in a restored, traditional Mennonite housebarn. There are pigs, like Molly, and turkeys, like Omar, in the next room!

"I'm very happy to live next to my pigs," said Terry, pointing out there is no barn smell whatsoever in the house, thanks partly to a connecting vestibule that acts as a buffer.

As well, the animals will generate heat in winter to help warm one side of the house. "This barn works so perfectly for us. It's not a museum piece."

The last time two singing urbanites -- neither of the Mieraus have a farm background -- tried their hand at the bucolic life, they were played by Eddie Albert and Zsa Zsa Gabor and she was singing: "Dahling, I love you but give me Park Avenue."

The Mieraus' transformation was not quite so sudden. Terry is from Langham, Sask., northwest of Saskatoon, and Monique is from the Netherlands. They met while studying opera in Amsterdam. They married and Terry, a tenor, and Monique, a mezzo soprano, spent 10 years touring Europe. A career highlight for Terry was playing Tom Rakewell in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress.

But when the couple had their first child in 2005, touring life lost its glamour. They had done well financially, and even purchased a remote farm in the woods in New Brunswick as their summer getaway. Then Terry started to dabble in actual farming, first with organic chickens. He began stretching his two-month hiatus on the farm to six months so he could raise weanling pigs, while Monique returned to Europe to sing. Monique's mother would tour with her to care for the children.

When a property came up for sale on a traditional housebarn street in Neubergthal, just southeast of Altona, with a 36-acre farm running behind it, it sounded perfect.

"We were grossing three times as much with singing as we make farming. But in farming, you don't spend your money going out all the time. We're happy to be at home," said Terry.

It's an organic farm, called Cedar Lane Farm Authentic Foods, but not yet certified organic because the Mieraus only arrived in June. They raise chickens, eggs, pork, beef, lamb and vegetables, all sold directly to consumers.

The animals are all free-range, including the pigs, which are let out to pasture and "run around like dogs."

"Everybody's outside," Terry explained. "That's the point. I don't know an animal created to be inside.

"I really enjoy (farming). It's so diverse and creative in a different way," said Monique, who feels like she has come full circle in this Mennonite heritage village: Mennonites originated in the Dutch- and German-speaking areas of central Europe, including the Netherlands.

The Manitoba Opera Company probably doesn't even know they're here, Terry said, but the couple would consider singing again if it fit their schedule. Area residents report Terry and Monique have raised the bar at Altona Mennonite Church, in terms of congregational singing. "You can hear them in church. Now there's energy when we sing hymns," said Joe Braun, a parishioner.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 22, 2012 A10