My Little Corner of the Universe

Shanti Deck and Intern Sarah Gocek feed out the lambs on a beautiful foggy day

Today is the end of my first week on the job but it feels more like
the beginning of the rest of my life. It’s only been a few years since
I got it into my head that I wanted to be an organic farmer and I can
still hear my mom in the back of my head telling me I need a real job.

"It's time you get your own udder free-loader"
Plenty of people have “real jobs”. Too many, in my opinion because it
isn’t easy to get big-boy job straight out of college nowadays. It cost me $30,000 and four years of college to find out that a degree still don’t make you smarter than a pig but it might
make you just about as ornery as one.


My name is Derek Schroeder. I’m a 23 year old from Wyoming and a fresh

intern to the Deck Family Farm. So far I have learned how to milk (and
artificially inseminate) a dairy cow, I’ve herded pigs and sheep,
nursed baby lambs and found a few dead ones. I learned how to mill
grain, castrate lambs, dock their tails, and that you won’t make it
through an Oregon winter without a good pair of Muck boots. I go to
bed every night with weak muscles but a heart brimming with
exuberance. I’ve been humbled by the kindness and generosity of not only the Deck’s,
but my fellow interns as well and the knowledge I’ve already gleaned from them is still processing in my brain.



Feeding Bambi the day after she was born


But most memorably, I made a new friend. She has long, delicate
features with a soft, auburn coat. I found her before the sun rose
last Wednesday, comfortably nestled at the feet of her mother, Beauty.
Her name is Bambi and she is part Jersy, part Angus, part adorable.
She is smart, patient and always hungry. Most newborn calves struggle
being taken from their mother’s and put on routine bottle meals but
Bambi senses the connection we have with her. She knows that we mean
to take care of her because she will grow to take care of us. We
provide for her as a means of establishing the relationship of
fecundity between the grass we feed her and the milk she feeds us.


We would be nothing if it weren’t for the animals we keep. Not just on
the farm, but on this big, blue ball of chemicals and elements we call
home. It’s the great calling of our race to use our abilities to
nurture and care for this planet in a way that provides not only for
us, but for the other inhabitants as well. That is what initially drew
me to farming. It’s a microcosm of what humanity should be doing with
its abundance of free time and energy – a distillation of the lucidity
we seek, clambering around in our big monkey brains. I learned a lot
in college, but no human will ever be able to teach you what a dairy
cow, or a pig, or a stubborn ewe can: you be kind to me, provide for
me and nurture me and I’ll do the same for you.


I’m sorry mom. I don’t mean to disappoint you. I know I may not have a
real job or any motivation to get one. I’m less than broke and my best
friends are farm animals but when I lay my head down at night my
spirit is content with the gratification that my little corner of the
universe is just a little better today than it was yesterday.