Sister Tarcisia Villotti is in charge of the orchard - all 50 trees of it that must be uprooted and moved.

It's hard work for a good cause: If buildings and roadways were placed as originally planned on the 280 acres south of St. Joseph belonging to the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, they'd be at risk of flooding. So the orchard must be moved in order that the property's first building - a guest house - can be built in its place.

But that's OK; these Benedictine sisters know all about moving and putting down new roots.

"It was a complete shock to find I'd be moving to my home diocese," says Sister Villotti, the only Benedictine of Mary originally from Missouri. The 20 sisters moved here from Pennsylvania three years ago, after visiting Kansas City and striking up a fast friendship with Bishop Robert Finn. He invited them to live here, and they've temporarily established their home, the Priory of Our Lady of Ephesus, in an old convent in Kansas City while waiting to build a permanent home that will accommodate their away-from-the-world lifestyle - a home they'll break ground on today.

The sisters plan for their guest house to be close to finished by the end of the year, and they'll live in it until their monastery is built, says Mother Therese McNamara. Their land, located on 316th Street between Highway VV and Mac Road just north of Gower, Mo., also will house crops and dairy cows and a total of about 10 buildings. Among these will be a retreat house for priests - "a place for them to relax and put souls and bodies back together," Mother McNamara says. "Just as the apostles needed Mary to refurbish their spirits, that's what we do for priests."

Serving and praying for priests is central to the purpose of these sisters, who are different from other Benedictines in the area in that theirs is a cloistered community, more like traditional European orders than ones established in America for missionary purposes. The only community of their kind, they dress in traditional habits - even when they're clearing land with chain saws and hatchets or riding around their property in their rough-terrain vehicle (named Zelie after St. Zelie Martin, mother of Little Flower St. Therese). Their days are divided into eights: eight hours of sleep, eight hours of prayer, eight hours of work.

In Kansas City, making liturgical vestments has been the work that "keeps bread on the table," Mother McNamara says. Planting and clearing their new property is a much different - and in some ways more difficult - kind of work than what they've grown accustomed to since coming here.

"But it's a good kind of hard," she adds. "If we work hard, we sleep hard. And if we sleep hard, we pray better."

Maybe this is one reason the sisters look forward to farming again, so much so that some of them "milk cows in our sleep," says Sister Scholastica Radel. She traded cow milking for sewing and some graphic design when the sisters moved to Kansas City and is eager for days in the not-too-distant future that will bring both kinds of work.

"I love to breathe with both lungs," she says, "to have the creative and the manual work. Manual labor helps you overcome yourself, especially any pettiness, and you know you're contributing to a common good - something more than yourself."

But the sisters' new home and the work they do there won't be just for them. In addition to serving as a retreat for priests, the Priory of Our Lady of Ephesus will be open to others seeking time away from the world.

Driving the RTV around the property, Sister Villotti can see the potential for this. She can see where the fruit trees will grow and where the rose bushes will bloom. For now, she's devised a system for watering them that involves plastic buckets with holes drilled in the bottom, but eventually, she hopes there will be an irrigation system in place.

And this isn't all she hopes.

"We just want to work and serve God and help other people find his peace," she says. "I just hope people can come here and find God."

Lifestyles reporter Erin Wisdom can be reached at ewisdom@npgco.com.