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.Â