Education & the trades
Passing on the work.
Every business we preserve carries knowledge you can’t download — how to read a herd, run a crew, wire a building, bring in a harvest before the weather turns. If that knowledge isn’t handed to someone younger, it retires with the people who hold it. We intend to make passing it on part of how we own.
The state we’re in
The hands that do the work are getting older.
On the farm, on the ranch, and on the job site, the same thing is happening: the people who know the work best are nearing retirement, and there aren’t enough young people learning it beside them.
58.1
average age of a U.S. farm producer
9%
of U.S. producers are under 35
349,000
new workers construction must attract in 2026
1.9M
manufacturing jobs that could go unfilled by 2033
Sources: USDA NASS, 2022 Census of Agriculture; Associated Builders and Contractors (2026); Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute (2024).
The good news is that young people are not turning away from this work. Enrollment at vocational two-year colleges has risen nearly 20% since 2020, and the number of registered apprentices in the country has more than doubled in a decade. The interest is there. What’s too often missing is a place to learn the work alongside someone who has done it for forty years.
What we’re building
Learning the work inside working businesses.
The businesses and land we preserve are the classroom. Our plan is to open them to the next generation — and to learn from the institutions and operations that have set the standard for generations.
Apprenticeships in the trades
In the contractors and Main Street businesses we preserve, we intend to pair young workers with seasoned foremen and tradesmen — electricians, operators, mechanics, builders — and to build toward registered apprenticeship paths, so the skill stays in the company and the community.
Farm and ranch internships
On the farms and ranches we preserve, we plan to offer seasonal and year-round placements: calving and branding, fencing and range work, herd health, haying, equipment, and the business side of an operation — the whole of the life, not just a chore list.
Learning from the best in ranching
We look to the programs and outfits that have defined American ranching — the King Ranch Institute for Ranch Management at Texas A&M University–Kingsville, home of the only master’s program in ranch management, and the cattle and horsemanship tradition of historic operations like the Four Sixes (6666) in Guthrie, Texas. We will seek opportunities for our people to train with and learn from operations like these.
Colorado State University
Close to home, we intend to pursue work with Colorado State University — Colorado’s land-grant university since 1870, with Extension in all 64 counties, working research ranches, and the CSU Spur campus in Denver devoted to food, water, and health.
Local colleges and ag departments
Wherever we own a farm or ranch, we will seek out the nearby colleges and agricultural departments — community and junior colleges with production-ag and ranch management programs — to place their students on working operations and give them a reason to build a life close to home.
We are in the early stages of building these programs. The institutions and ranches named here are examples of the work we admire and intend to pursue; no affiliation or partnership is implied.
Why it matters
A business can be preserved on paper and still be lost — if no one is left who knows how to run it.
Preservation means keeping the people and the know-how, not just the name on the sign. Training the next generation is how a farm, a ranch, or a contractor stays whole for decades — and it sits right beside our larger education mission, where the trades are honored as equal to any other path. Read about our education mission →
Preserving what might otherwise be lost.
Share our heart for the next generation?
Whether you run a program, teach, own a ranch, or want to support this work, we’d love to hear from you.
Get in touch