Starting a new job amid chaos

My new job, for the next few months at least, is being a Livestock Volunteer at Heifer Ranch in Perryville, AR.

Heifer is a non-profit organization that operates on a global scale to end world hunger. They operate on a sustainable and continuing model of social and economic growth. Instead of giving starving people milk, they give them a cow. And many other things, like the knowledge and support needed to care for and profit from a cow. And those previously-starving people, once they have food, motivation and even some income from their cow, must pass on one of their cow's babies to another family in need, who have been appropriately educated. That's the simple version, and that's how Heifer is going to end world hunger.

Amazing.

So I'm here at their educational ranch, enlightening the general public. We're an educational facility, and I am here to help raise awareness of world hunger and how Heifer is working to end it.

And in order to do my job, I need orientation. Two whole weeks of it. Heifer is a huge agency, and has many protocols and procedures that all volunteers must learn. It's surprisingly corporate, even though I'm just here working for free. I'm coming from the theater world, where I'll work for a company for a day or a week or a season; where we're all friends and the organizational structure is lax; where no one's really an employee and everyone's a starving artist. The first week of orientation here was a welcome into the corporate structure, where titles carry meaning, people have desks in offices and promotions are sought after. And I thought I was just gonna herd some sheep.


Departmental orientation (week two) was interrupted by 'massive' snowstorms. There were a whole 4 inches of snow on the ground on Monday. Arkansas shut down for 3 days. Two weeks into my sojourn on the ranch, I still had no idea what my job was.


There are only 6 new volunteers this season, with the rest of the volunteer staff being filled out by returning volunteers rolled over from last year. That's an extremely high retention rate, giving everyone the sense that they've seen it all and done it all before, and making orientation haphazard for us new folks, especially with the snow.

I will be working with sheep, goats, cows, camels, water buffalo, llamas, chickens, turkeys, rabbits, pigs, horses, donkeys and bees. This should be good.