Dear neighbors,

Last Thursday, the Odeon filled up early, the lights went down, and for about three hours, Mason watched a room full of teenagers do something most grown adults never work up the nerve to try: stand in front of a crowd and defend an idea.

By the end of the night, three of those ideas had trophies attached to them. Tres took first place and $1,500 for Toys on Demand. Sabina took second and $1,000 for Find Your Impact. And the My Closet team — Isaiah, Manny, Brooklyn, and Kate — took third and $500. Every team that walked up to that microphone left better than they started, and every judge's question got a real answer back.

This week's edition is a love letter to that night: the winners, the photos, and a proper thank-you to the people and businesses who made the whole thing possible. Scroll down for the full recap.

If you weren't there, you can still relive it — we've got the photo collage below. And if you're already thinking about next year, tell us now. We'd rather save you a seat early than scramble for one in September.

With love,

Katie Milton Jordan, Editor
[email protected] | 325-475-4991

Townie Picks: five worth putting on the calendar

[Mason] Bob Schneider at the Odeon Theater | Sat, Oct 10, 7–9 p.m. | Odeon Theater, 122 S. Moody St. The Austin singer-songwriter and multiple Austin Music Award winner plays Mason. $25 advance, $30 at the door, $10 for 18-and-under at the door. Tickets have been moving — this one's not a guaranteed walk-up.

[Mason] Open Wheeling Weekend | Fri–Sun, Oct 9–11 | Katemcy Rocks Offroad Park, 4869 W Hwy 29. A full weekend of open rock-crawling at standard rates — bring your rig or come watch.

[Llano] Boys & Girls Club of Llano Golf Tournament | Sat, Oct 10, 8 a.m.–4 p.m. | Llano River Golf Course, 2835 W Ranch Rd 152. Charity tournament benefiting the local Boys & Girls Club.

[Llano] Artoberfest at the Llano Fine Art Gallery | Sat, Oct 10, 6–9 p.m. | 503 Bessemer Ave. A fall-themed evening at the gallery, with a nod to Llano's German heritage.

[Junction] Junction ISD Homecoming Week | Through Oct 9 | Junction HS. Homecoming week wraps with a home football game Friday night.

More this week

[Llano] Shannon Kaspar 1 Mile Fun Run & 5K for Schoolkids | Sat, Oct 10, 8–10 a.m. | First Baptist Church Llano Activity Center, Berry St.

[Llano] Llano County Master Gardener Fall Plant Sale | Sat, Oct 10, 8 a.m.–12 p.m. | Llano County Courthouse Gazebo. Rescheduled from Oct 3.

[Llano] Red Top Jail Annual Meeting & Open House | Sat, Oct 10, 11 a.m.–1 p.m. | Red Top Jail, 400 Oatman St.

[Llano] Sipping Saturday Live Music Afternoon | Sat, Oct 10, 2–5 p.m. | War Trail Spirits, 122 E Main St.

[Llano] Llano Sunday Fun Day Young Entrepreneur Market | Sun, Oct 11, 1–4 p.m. | Llano Courthouse Square. Young vendors, in the same spirit as last week's Venture Fest.

[Mason] Bingo Night at Murphy Creek Cellars | Tue, Oct 13, 5:30–7 p.m. | 120 Ft. McKavett St. Monthly, also running Oct 20.

[Mason] Wild West Young Life Banquet & Fundraiser | Tue, Oct 13, 6–9 p.m. | Mason Young Life, 505 Austin St.

[Junction] Lions Club / Meals on Wheels | Tue, Oct 13 & 27, 12 p.m. | Meals on Wheels, Junction. Monthly meeting.

[Menard] Micro Wrestling at Silver Spur Steakhouse & Saloon | Thu, Oct 15, 8–10 p.m. | Menard.

[Llano] Free Mammogram Screenings | Oct 12–15 & 19–21 | Llano Regional Hospital, 200 W Ollie St.

[Mason] Red Wine and BBQ | Fri, Oct 16, 5:30–8 p.m. | Murphy Creek Cellars. BBQ by Rossler's Blue Cord BBQ.

[Fredericksburg] Fredericksburg Trade Days | Fri–Sun, Oct 16–18 | 355 Sunday Farms Lane. 350+ vendors, monthly flea market.

[Mason] Jeff Woolsey & The Dancehall Kings | Sat, Oct 17, 7:30 p.m.–midnight | London Dance Hall, 17430 US-377 (greater Mason area).

[Llano] Llano Lions Club Sporting Clays for a Cause | Sat, Oct 17, 7:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m. | Ink's Ranch.

[Fredericksburg] Tracking 101 at Enchanted Rock | Sat, Oct 17, 11:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m. | Enchanted Rock State Natural Area.

[Mason] Mason Family Halloween Bingo | Tue, Oct 20, 6–7 p.m. | Dairy Queen, 1017 Ft McKavitt St.

[Mason] ROCKTOBERFEST (6th Annual) | Thu–Sun, Oct 22–25 | Katemcy Rocks Offroad Park. Multi-day off-road festival.

The Venture Fest afterglow is still going. Teachers, parents, and coaches who spent weeks helping students practice are telling us the hardest part wasn't the pitch — it was watching from the audience and not being able to help once the microphone turned on. If that was you last Thursday, we see you too.

A heads-up for anyone who missed the forecast swing: no rain in sight through the middle of the month. It's sunny, dry, and holding in the mid-to-upper 80s all week — a good stretch for anything outdoors you've been putting off.

Weather. A dry, settled stretch holds through the middle of the month. Thursday and Friday both run sunny with highs near 86–87°, calm winds building to a light 5–10 mph breeze by afternoon. The weekend stays similar — sunny Saturday near 84°, mostly sunny Sunday and Monday near 86° — with no measurable rain in the forecast for any of it. After the heavy rain that moved through at the start of the month, this is about as settled as October gets around here.

River and fire. The Llano River near Mason is running at or above its historical median for this time of year, a welcome carryover from the rain two weeks back. Burn bans remain active in Llano and Menard counties; Mason, McCulloch, and Gillespie counties currently have no ban in place. Check the county directly before any outdoor burning — bans can change on short notice.

Drought picture. Mason County sits at 0% drought as of the latest Drought Monitor release — genuinely good news, and a sharp contrast to the state as a whole, where nearly 92% of Texas is in at least moderate drought and better than a quarter of the state is in extreme or exceptional drought. Whatever's keeping the rain finding Mason County lately, we'll take it.

Agriculture & Livestock. At Producers Livestock/Cargile, the Oct. 1 cattle sale (692 head) ran fully steady with strong demand for better-quality offerings — steers 400–600 pounds mostly $340–$385, heifers 400–600 pounds mostly $310–$360. The Sept. 29 sheep and goat sale (4,136 head) saw lambs up $10 to $20 and kid goats up $15 to $30 week over week. Hay held in the $60–$75 range for good-to-fair Bermuda round bales, per the latest USDA report, with new-crop premium bales fetching closer to $100. On the animal-health front, Mason and Llano counties remain outside any New World screwworm quarantine zone — the nearest active zones sit well to the west, on the Edwards Plateau.

Market Snapshot. Cattle, Oct. 1, per hundredweight: steers 400–600 lbs, mostly $340–$385. Heifers 400–600 lbs, mostly $310–$360. Slaughter cows, $115–$142. Slaughter bulls, $150–$190. Sheep and goats, Sept. 29, per pound: slaughter lambs, $2.60–$3.82. Kid goats, mostly $3.49–$3.85. Slaughter ewes, $1.20–$1.75.

Tourism Pulse. The after-Venture-Fest quiet has settled over Mason, but the calendar doesn't stay quiet long — Bob Schneider at the Odeon this Saturday, a full weekend of events in Llano, and ROCKTOBERFEST waiting at the end of the month. Dry, warm, and wide open: a good stretch to get outside before the holidays crowd the calendar.

The Odeon doesn't usually fill up on a Thursday night, but Venture Fest isn't a usual Thursday. Students who had spent weeks rehearsing in trucks, kitchens, and school hallways took the stage one at a time, pitched a real business idea to a panel of judges, and found out — in front of a packed room — whether the work held up.

It held up for a lot of them. Here's who took home a trophy.

First place and $1,500 — Tres, for Toys on Demand. A 3D-printing model built to cut out packaging waste and the pollution that comes from shipping toys around the globe — printed close to home, on demand, instead of boxed and freighted in. Judged on both the idea and how clearly Tres could explain it.

Second place and $1,000 — Sabina, for Find Your Impact. A pitch about helping people figure out where their time and effort can do the most good — the kind of idea that sounds simple until you watch someone actually build the tools behind it.

Third place and $500 — Team My Closet: Isaiah, Manny, Brooklyn, and Kate. Six teams from one mentor group competed Thursday night, and not a single student used a note card. Mentors watched the pitches grow from a 90-second elevator version to a full three-minute competition round over the course of just a few weeks — and said the difference showed in the storytelling as much as the business plans.

Every team that walked up to that microphone left the stage with a sharper idea than they started with, whether a trophy came with it or not. That's the actual point of the night.

Relive it. We put together a collage of the evening below — judges leaning in, a packed house, four kids holding a check bigger than they are. If you were in the room, find yourself in there somewhere.

Save your seat for 2027. Venture Fest 2026 is in the books, but the next one starts filling up faster than you'd think. Email us and we'll make sure you're first to know when registration opens.

Nadine says: It was a full house at the Odeon last Thursday, and not one of those people was there because of an ad. They showed up because somebody they trust — a student, a teacher, a neighbor — asked them to. That's the whole game, whether you're selling tickets to a pitch night or selling boots out of a storefront on the square: people move for people, not for copy.

If you want a full room — or a full parking lot — stop asking "how do I reach more people" and start asking "who already trusts me enough to bring somebody else." That's a shorter list than you think, and it's worth more than a bigger one.

This week: name three customers who'd bring a friend if you just asked them to. Ask one of them this week. See what happens.

Walt says: You're about to read a whole section of this newsletter where Katie thanks the businesses that backed Venture Fest, by name, in public. That's not just good manners — it's good business. A private thank-you note gets filed away. A public one gets remembered by everybody who reads it, including people who weren't in the room.

If a customer, a vendor, or a neighbor did something for your business this year that you only thanked them for in private, consider saying it louder. Put it in your window, your newsletter, your next post. It costs nothing and it's the kind of marketing that doesn't feel like marketing.

This week: think of one thank-you you've been meaning to say in public. Say it before the week's out.

The Townie Business Circle is where we go deeper on the ordinary decisions that keep local businesses sturdy. Join the Business Circle →

Hill Country Venture Fest doesn't happen without the businesses who back it financially, long before a single student ever picks up a microphone. A proper, public thank-you is owed, so here it is.

Headline Sponsor

Nutrition by Design / Stock Show Secrets — our biggest backer this year, and the reason this event got to the stage it did.

Corporate Neighbors

Central Texas Electric Cooperative — member-owned power, Hill Country roots.

Texas Regional Bank — community bank, Fredericksburg and Kerrville.

Hill Country Telephone Cooperative — member-owned broadband and phone.

Frontera Healthcare Network — healthcare across the Hill Country.

A thank-you too to Justin with the Building Texas Show, who came on as an in-kind media sponsor this year alongside us.

Want to join them? Community-tier sponsorship for next year's Venture Fest starts at $250. Email [email protected] for sponsorship packages and details.

This week's topic: "My kid wants to try out for something big and I'm more nervous than they are. How do I help without hovering?"

Dear Hazel Mae and Fern,

My daughter wants to try out for the school play, and she's never done anything like it before. I watched a room full of Venture Fest kids pitch to a panel of judges last week and thought, I could never do that at her age — and now she wants to try something just as scary. I don't know whether to coach her through every line or just leave her alone and let her figure it out.

Signed,
Pacing in the Kitchen

Honey, there's a difference between helping and hovering, and the line is usually "whose idea was the last fix." If she asks you to run lines, run lines. If she asks what you think of her delivery, tell her the truth, gently. But if you find yourself rewriting her approach because you'd do it differently, step back — this one's hers to get wrong a few times before she gets it right.

The Venture Fest kids didn't get good by having somebody else carry the idea for them. They got good by saying the wrong thing out loud in front of a mirror about forty times until it turned into the right thing. Let your girl have her forty times.

What you're nervous about isn't the tryout. It's watching her risk something in public and not being able to catch her if it goes sideways. That's a real feeling and it doesn't mean you're doing it wrong.

Here's what I'd tell her, if I were you: the room full of people watching her isn't the scary part — not trying is the scary part, it just doesn't announce itself the same way. Tell her that, then let her walk in there and find out for herself. You don't have to make it less scary. You just have to still be standing there when she walks out, however it went.

Got a question for Hazel Mae & Fern? Send it in: [email protected]

Notes from the porch swing: the rain's moved on, the sky's gone quiet, and this is the week for noticing what you built instead of what's coming next.

Aries (Mar 21 – Apr 19)
You're already planning the next thing before this week's even settled. Give it one more day of just being proud of what already happened. The next thing will keep.

Taurus (Apr 20 – May 20)
Somebody thanked you this week and you brushed it off too fast. Let it land next time. You earned it same as anybody standing on a stage did.

Gemini (May 21 – Jun 20)
You've got three good stories about last Thursday and you're saving them for the right audience. Tell the first person who asks. The story doesn't get better with age, it just gets less told.

Cancer (Jun 21 – Jul 22)
You were the one checking on the nervous kid backstage, and nobody put your name on a trophy for it. That doesn't mean it didn't matter. It mattered most.

Leo (Jul 23 – Aug 22)
Your turn to shine is coming, same as always, but this week belongs to somebody younger. Clap the loudest. You remember what it felt like to need that.

Virgo (Aug 23 – Sep 22)
You've already found the one typo in the program and the one chair that was crooked. Let both go. A good night doesn't need to be a perfect one.

Libra (Sep 23 – Oct 22)
Your season's here, and so is a stretch of genuinely easy weather. Take the easy week while it's offered — not everything needs a plan behind it.

Scorpio (Oct 23 – Nov 21)
You noticed exactly who showed up and exactly who didn't. Keep the first list. Let the second one go before it turns into something it doesn't need to be.

Sagittarius (Nov 22 – Dec 21)
Dry skies and open weekends all week — you've got no excuse left for staying in. Go see something you haven't seen before, even if it's twenty minutes down the road.

Capricorn (Dec 22 – Jan 19)
You were somebody's steady hand last week, whether it was a nervous kid or a worried parent. Let somebody be your steady hand this week. You're allowed to need one too.

Aquarius (Jan 20 – Feb 18)
A stranger's win felt like your own this week, and that's not nothing — that's community working exactly how it's supposed to. Keep noticing.

Pisces (Feb 19 – Mar 20)
You could feel how much that room wanted every kid to do well, before the first pitch even started. Trust that same read on people this week. It's rarely wrong.

Until next week: say the thank-you out loud, clap for somebody younger than you, and enjoy the dry spell while it lasts.

Meet Oliver! He's a young fellow, about 7 months old, weighing in at 28.7 pounds. This lab mix takes his time warming up to new faces — a little unsure right now, the kind of quiet that comes from still figuring out who's safe. Give him room to settle in, and everything about him says future super-companion: steady, watchful, and ready to attach hard to whoever earns his trust.

All of his vet work is done, and he's available for meet and greets now, alongside his brother Oscar. Both boys are in Mason. It would be wonderful to see them adopted together, but Second Chance Mason isn't expecting any one home to take both — unless, of course, you've got room in your life for two good boys who've never known a day apart.

If Oliver Were Human…

I'm not the one who talks first at a party. I find a corner, I watch the room for a while, and I decide who's worth my time before I decide anything else. Once I do, though, I don't do anything halfway. My brother's had my back as long as I can remember, and I know what loyalty looks like because he showed me first.

Give me a little patience up front and I promise it pays off. I'm not going to perform for you. I'm going to pick you, quietly and completely, and then I'm going to mean it for the rest of my life.

Meet Oliver (and Oscar too): Call 325-347-6929, email [email protected], or visit Second Chance Mason to learn more.

Photo by Second Chance Mason Animal Rescue

That's a wrap on Venture Fest 2026 — three trophies, one packed house, and a town that showed up for its kids. Thank you for being part of it, whether you were in the room or reading about it here.

📬 [email protected] | 325-475-4991
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Editor's note: Event times and details come from public calendars and the organizers; where sources disagree, the listing says so. Weather and market figures come from the National Weather Service, U.S. Drought Monitor, and Producers Livestock/Cargile, current as of this edition's writing — check ahead before any outdoor plans. Check with each host before you go.