How did you get interested in agriculture? And what are you hoping to gain from your apprenticeship?
May 2025

I have always had a love and desire to entrench myself in, and learn about the natural world around me. This desire was fueled by countless books of the animals and plants of this world. I flipped through new and old pages of worn and glossy books over and over again, as if I was collecting each species to enjoy at any time. As I grew older, this desire still remained entrenched in my being, but it felt trivial to base my future on factoids and snapshots of the world. Upon graduating high school, I set out to pursue a degree in economics because in my adolescent mind, it felt like it was the biology of money. Also, I hoped it would help me to make some decent money. My hairbrained idea backfired quickly. It felt like an even more trivial pursuit, since, as it turns out, I had no intention of sitting through lectures about economics for four years. After a semester, I switched colleges and degrees. Now pursuing marine biology, I felt like I was finally where I belonged, and I absolutely loved it. Unfortunately, this same dissatisfying feeling of triviality still lingered in the back of my mind. This degree felt like I could pursue any facet of the ocean, yet each pursuit would lead me down the same tunnel. My future career felt as if I had to be granular in order to be successful. It seemed I had to pursue grants and craft pinpoint expertise on an esoteric field of research to hold a long lasting career, which sounded absolutely suffocating.

In my junior year, the covid pandemic hit and it shook me hard. I left college and moved back to Dallas to find a job. After a year, I felt maybe I messed up a lot, and decided to reapply back into college and try and finish my degree in marine biology. It was not the same, and the energy I had for academia before vanished rapidly and I left again after only a year and subpar grades. Now feeling completely lost, I simply resigned myself to a job and took each day singularly. During this time though, I found out about permaculture and regenerative agriculture; it completely blew me away. I found myself watching countless videos and reading articles about the subject, feeling that same passion I did when I was a kid. It felt like the answer to the roadblock that kept me from fully pursuing my previous paths in life. 

Now having been able to finally get a taste of what ranching is like, it’s extremely demanding and exhausting, but exhilarating. I am outside all the time, out in nature, and I love it. I have never been so challenged in every aspect of my being. This lifestyle makes no sense to me, but I have this sneaking feeling I would not want it to be any other way. 

 

Final Reflections
November 2025

What a journey, to say I was not expecting what ranching would entail would be an  understatement! It is a constantly shifting set of goals, realities, and troubles that can completely alter the work done each day. The Television programming is not complete, without the daily insert. I will be extremely frank, the entirety of my apprenticeship felt as if I was in over my head each and every day, struggling to adapt to, and retain every facet of this programming. I have not been holistically challenged like this in many years. Learning and re-learning, and making mistakes all along the way, this apprenticeship forced me out of my comfort zone every single second of every day. It feels like I am awake again after a deep sleep that the hum and drum of cosmopolitan living lulls you into, and I am very grateful for that. This apprenticeship is exactly what I needed in life to finally tell myself again that I am a capable person, able to accomplish the task at hand, regardless of the scenarios ahead of me. Whether or not I pursue agriculture in the future, I desperately needed this opportunity to finally come face to face with my limitations. This was the perfect antidote to my struggles, helping to draw myself back to the reality of who I am and what I can be capable of in the future.

Calving, haying, logging, branding, fencing, and everything else in between, this apprenticeship was basically a multitude of apprenticeships combined into one. You had to become a jack of all trades just get through each day. I definitely feel like a master of none in all regards as well. Reflecting this fall on everything I had done, one thing felt very present during the duration of that time, the reality of the seasons. The brutal and brisk winds and snow of the winter were a complete culture shock to someone who had grown up with seeing whole cities shut down from an 1/8th of an inch of ice. The winter was shock therapy to my soul, and how brutal and demanding a job like ranching can be. The snow thawed and seeing the spring flush forth, was a spectacle for the mind and body. The spring brought forth my first inkling on what a full set of seasons, and its requirements, can look like at the northern extremes of the United States. I thought I was prepared for the summer, having grown up my whole life in Texas, I was extremely haughty in that assumption. I now have a newfound appreciation for a nice ceiling fan, and air conditioning. Autumn has always been my favorite season, and what a joy it has been to wake up to cool mornings and the bright yellows of the leaves falling. You can feel the jobs and season unwind and soak in those last rays of sunshine before the cycle starts over again. 

Participating and becoming a part of the seasons has been something that snuck up on me. Getting to nurture and witness the calves grow, simultaneously with these steadfast changes really drove home this realization. After a year working in agriculture, I would like to shift paths for the time being and pursue another career. That being said, this life and what it demands will still linger in the back of my mind, for years to come. The call to the unknown, and its ever-changing demands, will hopefully be a reality I draw back to and answer again. Thank you to Mark, my mentor, the Pratt family, my coworkers, friends, family, and everyone at Quivira, for helping me to be a part of one of the coolest and toughest jobs on Earth, I hope never to forget the moments I have gathered from this journey.