Former Huntsville monastery steps in to help the Great Salt Lake

A cooperative agreement pending approval from resource managers will result in an additional 635 acre-feet of water to help the Great Salt Lake.

The water would come from the historic Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity, a Trappist Cistercian monastery established in Ogden Valley in 1947. For more than 70 years, monks not only ran the Huntsville monastery but supported themselves by farming the land and keeping bees.

It is now known as the Abbey Farm, acquired by Bill White, who agreed to a conservation easement to keep the land intact.

“We’re not losing any farming or production. Instead, we’re utilizing the land more efficiently by switching our less productive fields to dry farming techniques, which enables us to keep the land in production and send that saved water to help Great S