Anne Shroeder, Star Gazing Farm/Language Works Websites/Sheep Shearer

Anne Shroeder has been through many transitions in her life but at age 50 she has now found her passion and peace with a dream career that will warm your heart. She splits her time between her web development business, Language Works and caring for 50+ animals in need of a home. Her animal sanctuary: Star Gazing Farm is also a non-profit organization and if that wasn’t enough, Anne is also refining her skills as a sheep shearer.

She Bought the Farm!

As a graduate student, Anne studied Linguistics and specialized in Arabic which led her to an interesting, but according to her, “dead end” job at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC where she worked for 5 years. Willing to retool in order to make a living, Anne enrolled in a vocational computer programming school and taught ESL (English as a Second Language) on the side in addition to waitressing to make ends meet. She took a course on the Internet and fell in love with web development where she still works as a freelance consultant developing sites for small businesses, non-profit and government clients. She also teaches web design at the local community college and has a flexible schedule which permits her to fit in her other passion – animals.

Anne first moved to the suburbs from the metropolitan life of Washington, DC so she could adopt a dog. In 2002 she bought a farm in Maryland after experiencing the realities of this lifestyle when she served as a “farm sitter” for a friend who has a 150 acre farm in Virginia. She found it invigorating to work on the farm and with the animals and turned her farm into a non-profit she named Star Gazing Farm where she takes in abused, stray, and unwanted animals in need and provides them with a permanent home.

Tending To Her Flock

Anne believes that farm animals are every bit as affectionate, interesting, and in need of loving care as other domestic animals and there is a real need in her community for more compassionate farm animal care. With 50+ animal residents on her farm, including a small flock of sheep, Anne discovered that it was very difficult to find sheep shearers so she went to sheep shearing school and now adds this to her list of transferable skills.

Word leaked out than Anne has become a fine sheep shearer and she travels to other farms in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania to shear small flocks. She has since learned to shear Angora goats, llamas and alpacas and has turned this into a thriving little business to supplement the farm operational expenses.

Pay-it-Forward

As a non-profit organization, Star Gazing Farm has an education and outreach division. Every year they teach children and young adults about the humane care of farm animals and help them build physical and moral strength through actual hands-on farm work. In 2007 they began a program tailored to local at-risk youth.

With Anne’s sheep shearing skills, she offers experiential classes and demonstrations with wool and fiber, showing participants how to shear, wash, card, and spin the wool they grow. The local community is made up largely of urban and suburban residents and Anne has invited them in to visit and volunteer to befriend the sanctuary animal residents and develop a greater compassion for farm animals.

Between sheep shearing and website design, it’s still difficult to make ends meet on the farm with the high cost of food, veterinary care and appropriate housing for the animals. So Anne offers opportunities for animal sponsorship, contributions, and volunteer work to make Star Gazing Farms run efficiently. Since Anne can’t take in every stray or abandoned animal she also runs a farm sanctuary network through her website to help find permanent homes in other locations for animals in need.

The Challenges of Running a 501c3 Organization

While Anne believes that she graduated from the school of hard knocks and admits to being very stubborn and determined, in the beginning she found herself out of her element knowing how to care for her many different farm animals. She bought books on farm animal caretaking and joined discussion lists online about caring for ducks and sheep and quickly became familiar with the local veterinarians.

The future goal is to have a larger corps of volunteers for her non-profit that can assist the Board of Directors with fundraising and development for the organization. Anne believes there are many private donors that would support Star Gazing Farm if they knew it existed so her goal is to be financially solvent so she can continue to develop more education and outreach programs.

By day Anne tends to her sheep, goats, birds, dogs, cats, horses, cows and pigs – 50 in total. At night, she works on her web development business and often stays up past 2 am well aware she has to be up at dawn to tend to the animals. Admittedly, she has the biorhythm of a “Web Vampire” and is able to keep these taxing hours because she is doing what she loves.

Follow Your Heart

While work life balance is often impossible, Anne is doing what she loves and shared that she has found her calling. After many career changes it’s refreshing to hear Anne talk about her work with such passion and enthusiasm. Working in the Saudi Embassy as a Linguist, I’m sure Anne never envisioned being the Founder and Director of a non-profit, a freelance web developer and a sheep shearer. It pays to follow your heart. Check out the Star Gazing Farm website and consider sponsoring one of Anne’s animal residents today. Their full bios and histories are posted on the site and your generosity will be much appreciated by the likes of Bullwinkle (pictured with Anne above) and his friends.

Quote: “Attitude is more than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than what people do or say. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill.” W.C. Fields

Anne’s Advice and Action Steps: