When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them I’m a dairy farmer—mostly.
Well, I also have a sawmill and a kiln. And in the spring, I make maple syrup and help my parents sell equipment for maple syrup production. And yes, I do keep a few beef cattle and pigs, but that all falls under the category of agriculture, right? Plus, it’s a family legacy. I’m at least the fourth generation to farm and make maple syrup in this area.
My dad has a sawmill I learned to run, and that inspired me to buy my own. I can also deliver a calf, then hop on a tractor to do field work, and hop off to wait on a customer at my lumber store. One day I may be running my sawmill, the next I could be doctoring animals, the next, tearing apart a piece of broken equipment to fix.
I enjoy the variety of activities that come with my vocation. There is satisfaction and connection to the circle of life.
There is also heartbreak and contemplation—like when a newborn calf doesn’t make it. You are staring at a perfectly formed animal but missing the breath of life. These kinds of experiences remind me of Genesis 2:7, where God formed Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into him.
One thing I’ve realized about myself as I’ve grown older is that I love to learn. I want to know how things work. We live in a fascinating world made more fascinating because it is ordered and reliable, yet complicated beyond what we fully understand. We understand what causes different weather patterns more than ever, but there are still days when my hay gets “washed” even though it wasn’t supposed to rain.
We know when we put a seed in the ground, water it, and expose it to sunlight, it will grow. But we now know it’s far more complicated than that. Agronomists at seed companies are studying how corn seedlings sense how close they are to other plants. If we plant corn kernels too close together, the seedlings will orient themselves to shade out their neighbors. But planted the right distance apart, the seedlings orient themselves parallel to their neighbors instead. Corn kernels also sense what the weed pressure is above ground. Just having weeds in the field as the corn seedlings emerge lowers yield potential as the seedlings adjust to the competition.
And then there’s the variety and uniqueness of the different logs that I run through my sawmill. What causes one maple tree to have a curly grain, or Birdseye, and not the tree beside it?
I intentionally used the word vocation earlier instead of occupation. An occupation is the regular job, trade, or work that a person does to earn a living. The term vocation taps into the deeper meaning of work, sometimes even used to refer to a divine calling to serve in a specific church vocation.
One of my struggles as I became a young adult and started working off the farm was finding work that mattered. I was doing carpentry while I went to college for a degree in engineering and trying to find the eternal significance in what I was doing and studying. A year at Rosedale Bible College (RBC) helped deepen my faith but didn’t answer the question of what I was supposed to do with my life.
We don’t have to be “in ministry” to minister to others.
After RBC, I transferred to Messiah College, where I had an engineering professor named Dr. Vader. Dr. Vader started each class with a short devotional and frequently talked about how to make our occupations into our vocations, our ministries. He taught us about how we can use our relationships, skills, and abilities to help others we connect with. We don’t have to be “in ministry” to minister to others. Those insights changed my whole perspective on my career.
What does all that have to do with the store where I sell slabs and lumber, mill wood, and kiln? I meet all kinds of people through our store. It’s small, and I’m mainly open by appointment. I started the store for the purpose of making some extra money but also because I like interacting with people.
One day I had a couple walk in, and I sensed that their mood was heavy. They’d reached out ahead of time about some wood I’d advertised. I showed them the wood and asked what they were building. It turned out they were building an urn to hold the ashes of their young adult son who had unexpectedly passed away. They needed some lumber, but more than that, they needed love and compassion and someone to grieve with them. Moments like that humble me and remind me of my higher purpose—my real vocation.
A “salt and light” vocation truly takes many forms as we work in a wide variety of jobs.
Photo credit: Vaughn Moser
