Dear neighbors,
Three weeks on from the water, the hills are catching their breath. The rivers have pulled back inside their banks, the crossings are opening again, and the pastures have gone green in that way that only follows a hard rain. The cleanup isn't finished — down in Kerr and Kimble and points south, folks are still hauling out drywall and starting over — but the sound this week is hammers instead of helicopters, and that counts for something.
So this week I want to talk about building.
This fall, students from all over these hills are going to stand on the Odeon stage in Mason and pitch their ideas at the Hill Country Venture Fest. You've heard me go on about it. Here's the part I haven't asked yet: those kids need grown-ups. Not to do it for them. To sit across a table for an hour and say, "here's what I learned the hard way." If you've ever run a business, fixed a thing, made a payroll, or talked a customer down off a ledge, you have exactly what a fifteen-year-old with a big idea is missing. The feature this week is my ask, and I mean it.
And there's a thank-you to pass along. The Hill Country Venture Fest just landed its very first sponsor — a name that's been quietly keeping the lights on across these hills since before most of us were born — and we're proud to help say it out loud. You'll meet them below. When a business our readers already trust decides to stand behind this fall's kids, that's worth a whole section.
Grab your coffee. Raise your hand for a kid. And check on somebody still digging out.
Katie Milton Jordan, Editor
Here's the ask, plain as we can put it: the Hill Country Venture Fest is looking for community business leaders to mentor its student pitchers, and the sign-up is open right now at hillcountryventurefest.com.
If you've been following along, you know the shape of it. On Thursday, October 1, students from every small town within ninety miles — grades 3 through 12, public school, homeschool, 4-H, FFA — will stand on the Odeon stage in Mason and pitch a real idea to real judges. It's free, it's local, and this spring it was named the 2025 Texas Venture Fest of the Year. The stage is set. What the festival needs now is the people who fill in the part between "I've got an idea" and "here's how it works."
Think back to the thing you know cold — the thing you'd never write down because it seems too obvious. How you priced your first job. The customer you should have fired sooner. The reason you keep three months of payroll in the bank. The supplier who'll pick up on a Sunday. None of that is in a textbook, and all of it is exactly what a fifteen-year-old with a lemonade stand or a fence-building side hustle or a phone-repair idea is missing.
A mentor doesn't do the work. A mentor sits across the table for an hour and asks the questions that save a kid two years: Who's actually going to pay for this? What happens when it rains? Have you called the guy who already does this in the next county over? The student leaves with a sharper pitch. And here's the part that sneaks up on you — you leave with something too. Ask anybody who's done it.
Every kid who stands on that stage is somebody's future employee, supplier, competitor, or the person who takes over Main Street when you're ready to hand it off. The businesses that show up for these kids in October are the ones those kids remember when they're grown and deciding whether home is a place you can build a life. In a region that watches too many of its brightest load up the truck and leave, that's not charity. That's succession planning for a whole community.
And it fits the season. We just came through a hard few weeks, and the same neighbors who hauled hay and box fans to strangers are exactly the kind of people a nervous kid needs in the room. Generosity is already the local currency. This is one more place to spend it.
Less than you think. The festival will match mentors with students by fit and coach you on how to help. You don't need a degree or a title — you need to have run something, fixed something, sold something, or survived something, and be willing to talk about it honestly for an hour. Teachers are already in. Now it's the business owners' turn.
If you've got that hour, the whole thing starts at one address. Raise your hand. There's a kid on the other end of it.
Every event has a first. The Hill Country Venture Fest found the right one.
We're proud to tell you that the Hill Country Venture Fest's very first sponsor is Central Texas Electric Cooperative — the co-op that, odds are, is keeping the lights on in the room where you're reading this.
If you live in Mason, Llano, Junction, Menard, Brady, Fredericksburg, or the country in between, CTEC probably powers your place. The co-op runs nearly 7,000 miles of line to more than 46,000 meters across eleven Hill Country counties — Blanco, Gillespie, Kendall, Kerr, Kimble, Llano, Mason, McCulloch, Menard, Real, and San Saba. That's essentially the whole map those student pitchers are coming from, lit up.
Here's what we love about the fit. CTEC isn't owned by shareholders in some far-off city. It's owned by the people it serves — by its members, which is to say by a whole lot of you. It's a not-for-profit, and it works the way the best Hill Country things work: the money that's left at the end of the year doesn't leave. It comes back. Through what the co-op calls capital credits, CTEC has returned more than $31 million to its members since 1965, and it's set to retire another $2.24 million this December. Try getting a check back from a big-city utility.
The roots go deep, too. The co-op was chartered in 1947, born when this country was still stringing its first lines and a young congressman named Lyndon Johnson was fighting to bring electricity to the Hill Country. Nearly eighty years later, CTEC still runs on the same idea it started with — neighbors pooling their resources to do together what none could do alone.
That's also the Venture Fest idea, down to the studs. On October 1, students from all over these counties are going to climb onto the Odeon stage in Mason and pitch real ideas to real judges, backed by a community that showed up. CTEC stepping up as the festival's founding sponsor is exactly what you'd expect from a co-op that's been investing in its own people since 1947.
So when the lights come up on that Odeon stage this October, CTEC's fingerprints are on the switch. From the Venture Fest family and everyone here at The Townie: thank you. You can learn more about the co-op you already own at ctec.coop.
Want your name up there too? CTEC went first, but the Venture Fest is sponsor-funded this year, and there's a spot for every size of business — from a $250 Community Partner listing to presenting the whole night, plus in-kind and mentor roles. If your company wants to stand beside a co-op that's powered these hills since 1947 and put its name behind this fall's kids, take a look at the packet.
I'll say it plainer than Katie did: mentoring a Venture Fest kid is the best-value business move on your calendar this fall, and it costs you one hour. The festival is asking community business leaders to coach student pitchers, and here's the strategic read. Every kid in that room is a future hire, customer, or the person who buys your shop someday. When you spend an hour teaching one how to price a job or read a customer, you're not being nice — you're planting your name in the memory of the exact people who'll decide whether this region has a next generation of business owners. The co-ops figured this out a century ago: invest in your own people and the returns come home. This week: go to hillcountryventurefest.com and sign up as a mentor before the school year eats everyone's calendar.
Two numbers and one warning. First, small stock is hot — slaughter lambs ran $10 to $20 higher and kid goats $10 to $15 higher at San Angelo last week. If you run sheep or goats, that's a window; know what your animals are worth before you load the trailer. Second, cattle held steady on the light end but heavier cattle slipped $5 to $10, so the "sell 'em heavy" plan needs a second look. And the warning, one more time: if your hay sat in floodwater, don't feed it — mold and mycotoxins don't care that it looks fine. This week: re-price your small stock against last week's sale, walk your hay, and call your county AgriLife office before you make a feed or culling call on a guess.
The Townie keeps saying to go mentor one of these Venture Fest kids, and part of me wants to. But I ran a little feed-and-tack business for thirty years, not a tech company. I'm not sure I've got anything a smart young person would want to hear. Am I kidding myself?
— Doubtful in Doss
Sugar, thirty years of a feed-and-tack business is a graduate degree with manure on its boots. You think a "tech company" kid knows how to extend credit to a rancher who's good for it but slow, or how to tell the difference between a slow month and a sinking ship? You do. You know which customers to keep and which to wish well at the door. You know what it costs to be the only store that carries the thing nobody buys until they need it bad. That's not small — that's the whole game, and they don't teach it anywhere but behind a counter. Go sit with one of those kids and just answer their questions honestly. You'll be stunned what falls out of your mouth that you forgot you knew.
The doubt you're feeling has a name, and nearly everybody worth listening to has it. It's the quiet worry that what came hard to you must be common, because it's common to you now. It isn't. A young person doesn't need a famous mentor — they need an honest one who'll tell them the true thing instead of the impressive thing. You spent thirty years learning to read people across a counter and keep a promise you made in April when the money didn't come till fall. Hand that down. It's the most durable inheritance there is, and unlike the store, you can give it away without losing a thing.
It's Koda again — and that's a good-news story hiding in plain sight. Every other pup we've featured has been adopted, so this fine young fellow is the last one still waiting. Let's fix that.
Koda has the nicest personality, and he's a young guy too — about a year old. He loves to sit and watch the world go by about as much as he loves a good snuggle, which is saying something. Small in size, huge in love, Koda is the kind of dog who slots right into most any loving family without a fuss.
He's ready to find his forever home. Could you be his person? Come meet Koda. Reach Second Chance – Mason Animal Rescue at 325-347-6929 or email [email protected], and thank you — truly — to everyone whose share helped the rest of his crew find their people.
"I'm the easy houseguest. I'll help you watch the evening come in, I'll laugh at your stories, and I'll never once complain about the radio station. I don't need much — a spot on the couch with my name on it and somebody to keep company. I've watched every one of my buddies find their people, and I clapped for all of them. Now I'm the last one at the table, holding a chair. It's got your name on it, if you want it."
If this edition moved you even a little — forward it to a business owner who'd make a great mentor, or to a neighbor who still thinks big things only happen in big places.
📬 [email protected] | 325-475-4991
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Editor's note: All listings verified and current for the July 30, 2026 edition of The Townie. Some events may still shift during flood recovery — call ahead. The Central Texas Electric Cooperative feature is a sponsor spotlight for the Hill Country Venture Fest, whose media partner is The Townie; everything else is our own.
