A Day in My Life: Hospice Aide + Goat Farmer

Most people live one kind of life.

Mine happens in two completely different worlds.

By night, I’m a hospice aide. By morning, I’m a goat farmer. Somewhere in between, I try to sleep… but that part doesn’t always go as planned.

And layered into all of that, like it is for a lot of people whether they say it out loud or not, is mental health.

My day usually starts when most people are winding down.

Hospice work isn’t fast-paced or loud. It’s quiet, slow, and deeply human. I spend my time caring for people at the end of their lives—helping keep them comfortable, sitting with them, sometimes holding a hand when words don’t really matter anymore.

Some nights are peaceful. Others are heavier.

You walk into a room and can feel that a family is preparing to say goodbye. Sometimes there’s conversation, laughter, stories being shared. Other times it’s quiet, with loved ones just sitting close, not wanting to miss a single moment.

There’s no rushing through that kind of work.

It teaches you to slow down, to pay attention, and to understand what really matters.

But it also stays with you.

There are nights you carry home. Moments that replay in your head. Feelings that don’t just shut off because your shift ended. And when you’re already tired, already stretched thin, that emotional weight can hit a little harder.

Mental health doesn’t clock out when you do.

When my shift ends, the world is just starting to wake up.

That’s when I head home.

Most people would crawl into bed at that point—and sometimes I do, for a little while. But farm life doesn’t pause just because you worked all night.

The goats are waiting.

The moment I step outside, it’s a completely different environment. No quiet rooms. No hushed voices. Just goats yelling like I’ve personally offended them by being five minutes late with breakfast.

It’s chaos in the best (and loudest) way.

Feed buckets, hay, water, checking fences—it all has to get done. During kidding season, it’s even more intense. You’re not just feeding animals, you’re checking does, watching for signs of labor, and making sure new babies are healthy and nursing.

And if there are bottle babies?

Then you’re really not getting much sleep.

Bottle babies don’t care that you just worked all night. They don’t care if your mind is still processing everything you just saw. They see you, and suddenly it’s the end of the world if they don’t get fed immediately.

They scream. They climb. They follow you around like tiny, demanding shadows.

And somehow, they pull you out of your head.

There are mornings where you’re running on empty—physically, mentally, emotionally. Maybe you didn’t sleep much. Maybe your thoughts feel heavy. Maybe the night before was just… a lot.

And then you walk into the barn.

And something shifts.

It’s not that everything magically gets better. It’s not that mental illness disappears because you have chores to do. But farming forces you to move. To focus. To be present in a very real, physical way.

You have animals depending on you.

So you show up.

You measure feed. You fill water. You check on babies. You problem-solve whatever the day throws at you. And in doing that, even if just for a little while, the noise in your head quiets down.

There’s something grounding about it.

Hospice reminds you how fragile life is—how quickly things can change, how important the small moments are. Then you step into the barn and see the opposite side of that.

New life.

Baby goats wobbling on unsteady legs. A doe softly talking to her kids. The barn full of energy, noise, and movement.

It’s hard to stay stuck in your head when you’re surrounded by that.

But this kind of life isn’t easy.

There are days when the exhaustion catches up to you. Nights at work can be emotionally heavy, and mornings on the farm are physically demanding. There’s no real off switch. You go from caring for people to caring for animals without much time in between.

And both come with responsibility.

In hospice, you’re trusted with someone’s comfort and dignity at the end of their life. On the farm, you’re responsible for the health and well-being of every animal under your care.

Both roles matter. Both require showing up, even when you’re tired.

Even when your mind isn’t at its best.

There are hard days in hospice. There are hard days on the farm. And when you’re also navigating your own mental health, some days feel heavier than others.

But there’s also a balance in living in these two worlds.

After a night spent witnessing the end of someone’s story, coming home to a barn full of new beginnings puts things back into perspective. It reminds you that life keeps moving. That even in the middle of hard seasons, there is still growth, still noise, still life happening all around you.

For me, farming doesn’t replace the hard parts.

But it helps carry them.

And most days, that’s enough to keep going.