08/29/2026
Y’all, I get these comments fairly regularly, and they generally come from two completely different directions. On the calf posts it is, “Why don’t you just go to vet school?” because apparently once you voluntarily read enough bovine veterinary research papers to know what pulmonary intravascular macrophages are, society starts expecting you to acquire a doctorate. Then on the Bible posts it is, “Maybe raising calves isn’t actually your calling. Maybe you’re supposed to be teaching Bible classes.” So apparently my acceptable career choices have narrowed down to veterinarian or Bible teacher, and nobody has considered the possibility that maybe God looked at me and said, “Calves. Give her several hundred calves, a Bible, an internet connection, and access to veterinary research journals. This should keep her occupied.”
Because I actually think raising calves can very well be my calling.
I think we have this strange idea that if you're good at something, you're supposed to keep “leveling up” until you reach whatever job we have collectively decided is more impressive. You have a vet tech degree and like medicine? Become a veterinarian. You raise calves and spend your spare time reading papers about obscure bovine diseases? Vet school. You write Bible posts? Bible teacher. You explain complicated veterinary concepts using Jersey calves and questionable analogies? I don't actually know what career path that one leads to, and I would prefer we don't investigate too closely. But why does getting better at something automatically mean you're supposed to leave it? Maybe becoming really good at raising calves can simply result in being...a really good calf raiser. Revolutionary concept. Somebody should probably publish a paper about it so I can read that too.
Because calf raisers are important. We're literally raising the future of the herd. That 60 pound Jersey currently traveling at Mach Jersey because somebody put a bucket where apparently no bucket has ever existed before is potentially going to become a cow who spends years in that dairy herd. What happens to her right now matters. Colostrum matters. Nutrition matters. Cleanliness matters. Ventilation matters. Growth matters. Stress matters. Catching pneumonia early matters. Keeping diarrhea from turning into dehydration matters. Noticing that one calf out of one hundred drank a little slower tonight matters. Figuring out whether the Jersey staring blankly into space is sick or simply contemplating her next felony matters. And knowing the difference between actual neurologic symptoms and normal Jersey behavior deserves its own certification because “ran sideways at full speed, jumped straight into the air, stared at something nobody else can see, licked the wall and then attacked her friend's ear” can apparently all fall comfortably within normal limits.
There are thousands of tiny decisions made during those first few months that nobody is ever going to see when that calf becomes a cow. Nobody is going to stand in the parlor two years from now looking at a healthy first lactation heifer and say, “Wow, somebody did a great job noticing that calf wasn't quite right when she was seventeen days old.” Nobody is going to know how many bottles were washed, how much bedding was hauled, how many temperatures were taken, how many respiratory rates were counted, how many navels were checked, how many nights somebody walked back through the barn because one calf had the look, or how much of my life has been spent examining manure with the concentration of an archaeologist who has just uncovered evidence of a lost civilization. There are moments when I catch myself staring at calf p**p thinking, “Hmm. Different consistency than this morning,” and somewhere every teacher who ever told me to pay attention to details can rest assured that the lesson stuck. Possibly more successfully than they intended.
And yes, I love the veterinary medicine side of raising calves. I want to know why. I don't want to simply know that something happens. I want to know what is happening inside the calf, why it happens, why one calf gets sick and another doesn't, what stress changes, what nutrition changes, what the immune system is doing, what the microbiome is doing, and whether somebody published a paper twenty seven years ago involving fourteen calves that somehow explains the extremely weird thing I saw today. That's how research rabbit holes happen. You start with a perfectly reasonable question about calf diarrhea and suddenly it is midnight, you have seventeen tabs open, you're reading about intestinal tight junction proteins, and you have absolutely no recollection of how you got there.
But I don't have to become a veterinarian for that knowledge to matter. Veterinarians and calf raisers have different jobs, and both jobs matter. Learning more veterinary medicine makes me better at my job. I can understand disease better. I can recognize things sooner. I can ask better questions. I can make better decisions about management and prevention. Maybe knowledge doesn't always have to be used as a staircase into another career. Maybe sometimes you learn more because you want to do the work already sitting directly in front of you better.
And then there are the Bible posts. Apparently if you write enough about Scripture, eventually somebody decides you should stop whatever else you're doing and teach Bible classes professionally. Except I don't think God is particularly limited by job descriptions. David watched sheep. Peter caught fish. Paul made tents. Amos was a shepherd and tended sycamore figs, which sounds exactly like the sort of occupation where relatives would corner him at family gatherings and ask, “So, Amos, is this what you're planning to do forever?” Meanwhile God was apparently perfectly capable of using the shepherd with the figs.
Maybe we need to stop assuming that a calling always requires leaving where we are.
Maybe sometimes the calling is staying.
Maybe it is taking good care of the animals God put in front of you. Maybe it is learning everything you possibly can because those little lives deserve somebody who keeps learning. Maybe it is noticing tiny changes nobody else would notice yet. Maybe it is mixing milk, checking navels, treating calves, washing equipment, hauling bedding, discussing p**p with an enthusiasm that would make normal dinner conversation impossible, and periodically standing in the middle of a pen asking a Jersey, “WHY?” while both of you know perfectly well that there will never be a satisfactory answer.
And maybe you can do all of that and still talk about Jesus.
Those things aren't competing callings. I don't think God is looking at my life going, “Well, she wrote about Ezekiel again. Better revoke the calf privileges.”
I don't need to “level up” from being a calf raiser because raising calves isn't beneath the important jobs. I'm not standing on the bottom rung of some career ladder waiting to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. This is an actual job. It requires knowledge, experience, observation, patience, judgment, physical work, an unreasonable tolerance for bodily fluids, the ability to identify approximately seventeen varieties of calf p**p before breakfast, and enough emotional stability to watch a Jersey spend five minutes trying to get through a gate she could simply walk around without questioning every decision that led you to this point in life.
We're raising the future of the herd.
Those little calves aren't the unimportant part before the real dairy cow appears. This is where the dairy cow starts. The foundation we build now is the foundation she carries with her into the herd, and doing that job well matters even if nobody ever sees most of the things that went into it.
So yes, I'm probably going to keep reading veterinary research papers nobody assigned me. I'm going to keep asking questions. I'm going to keep learning bizarre bovine facts and then inflicting that knowledge on all of you because apparently if I had to learn about pulmonary intravascular macrophages, so do you. I'm going to keep writing Bible posts. I'm going to keep writing books. I'm probably going to keep somehow involving NASA in situations where NASA had absolutely no reason to expect Jersey calves. And I'm going to keep raising calves.
Because maybe raising calves isn't what I'm doing while I wait for God to show me my calling.
Maybe this is part of the calling.
And apparently my particular calling comes with Jesus, several hundred calves, research papers, pneumonia, books, questionable amounts of chocolate, an emotional support traffic cone, and Jerseys with absolutely no respect for the laws of physics.
There are worse ways to spend a life.
