Applications have closed for 2024!

We may offer internships again in 2025! Applications would open in January of 2025. Please check back then and do not contact us regarding internships before January 2025. Thanks for your interest!

a few FAQs:

Are you currently hiring for paid positions?

Answer: We may be opening up a few summer employment opportunities in January & February. We’ll be looking for 1-2 irrigation and maintenance hands to help on the home ranch for the summer. The job will likely involve moving wheel lines, pivots, pods, some machinery repairs, and moving electric fence.

When is your next internship and how can apply?

Answer: our next internship would be summer 2025 if we decide to offer this program again! Applications would open in January 2025.

Can I just come out and visit/work for free to learn about what you do?

Answer: We aren’t currently set up to receive guests outside of our regular internship program, sorry. There are a host of liability issues and risks in the everyday work on the ranch, and we would be legally liable if one of our guests were injured while on the ranch (interns within our program are covered by insurance in case of injury).

Do you offer winter internships?

Winter is pretty slow (and boring and cold!) here at the ranch and we don’t have winter housing available. Our only current internship opportunities are in the summertime.

If you have questions: Send Melanie/Linnaea an email alderspringjobs[at]gmail[dot]com. Please email that “job” address, not our main “help” email address. Our “help” address is our beef customer service account and Kelsey, who responds on the help account, doesn’t manage hiring or internship queries.

Thank you for the enthusiasm about our program!

2024 Internship Description:

We have left 2024’s position description available below for anyone interested in reading. Please note that internship openings are currently CLOSED. We may offer this program again in 2025, but be aware that the position descriptions might change significantly! We adjust our program every year!

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Duration: 3-5 weeks (you can select either a 3 week internship or a 5 week internship based on what works for you).

Dates: We have several sections this year that you can select from: May 22 – June 28^th (5 week section), May 29 – June 21 (3-week section), July 3 – August 8 (5 week section), July 10 – August 2 (3 week section)

Due to the shorter length of this internship, we can’t accept late arrivals or account for time off (beyond days off that will be scheduled into the internship). You must commit to these dates and to the full internship period.

Compensation: This is an unpaid internship. However, simple free no-frills housing, breakfast + dinner while on the range, and as much free ground beef as you’d like during the internship period will be provided!

Submission deadline is February 5.

Eligibility Requirements:

1. You must be over 18 years of age
2. You must be a US citizen (sorry, we can’t make exceptions. There are liability, visa, and insurance issues involved for us in employing non-U.S. citizens in a ranch setting)
3. You must be healthy, physically fit, able to lift at least 65 lbs, and able to endure long days of physical labor
4. We require some prior horsemanship experience due to the shortened internship period. You must come with the demonstrable ability to confidently catch, halter, saddle, and bridle a horse without assistance and then comfortably ride at a walk, trot, and lope on a loose rein. You must have independently ridden a minimum of 10 times in the past. Please do not overstate your skills in this area! Doing so may put your safety at risk. You’ll be riding independently off-trail in mountainous country almost as soon as you arrive. To start out, we’ll put you on reliable horses that know how to handle themselves in difficult terrain, but it’s important that you are honest about your experience level on the application!

Our Mission Statement

Alderspring Ranch is a profitable family ranch raising beef to nourish human wellness while stewarding and restoring God’s creation, building sustainability for future generations.

Internship Program Description

Please note that we’ve made significant changes to our internship program this year. Read the full description below before applying!

For hardworking and humble individuals interested in learning about cattle handling, ranching, horsemanship, wilderness living, regenerative ranching practices, and practical ranch skills on a working ranch, this is the internship for you.

Interns will be part of our team here at Alderspring for a 3 or 5 week period (you pick). In previous years, the internship has been solely a range riding internship. This summer, you’ll be spending every other week on the range during your internship and will then spend the other weeks on the home ranch with the opportunity to job shadow in areas that interest you.

This is not a ranch vacation. Come prepared for long days, hard work, and minimal amenities!

We are also not a “cowboy outfit.” We herd cattle on horseback and use many traditional cattle handling practices, but we’ve also incorporated nontraditional methods in much of what we do. Don’t come expecting to become an expert roper or a bronc rider. We emphasize low stress stock handling. There will not be a situation where you chase a cow down at a full gallop in a scene straight out of a cowboy movie. It’s a rare occurrence to even break a trot while herding cattle.

Job description for the “range” portion of the internship:

You will spend 7-8 days at a time in one of our backcountry cow camps. You will be on our crew of riders herding cattle to the best grass while controlling grazing to prevent overgrazing or impact to sensitive wildlife habitat. You’ll camp with the cattle out on the range in remote cow camps that we move every few days. There is no wifi, no showers, no electricity, and no bathroom.

Days on the range can be long and physically grueling. There is no shelter from the weather: it could be raining, snowing, hailing, 100 degrees, or everything in between, but we still have to ride and get the cattle to grass. Cell service is very limited. We have a GPS texting system in case of emergency, but it isn’t unusual to go several days at a time without ever hitting a patch of cell service.

We use low-stress herding and stockmanship methods to herd cattle. Expect to spend some time pushing cattle to the next location, but a lot more time trying to slow them down, settle them, and get them to eat once we reach good grass. During these times there are often lulls and long silences for sometimes hours at a time; many past interns have found that the silences and boredom were the most difficult parts of the job.

Cattle crest the ridge bound for camp in our remotest camp locations of 2023.

You will be expected to help on occasion with work associated with the Inherding project, including but not limited to maintaining tack and equipment (you will be responsible for the care of your provided tack and gear), helping with horse care (based on your experience level, we won’t ask you to do a task you aren’t comfortable with), moving temporary electric fence horse pens on the range, possible rangeland ecological monitoring, and moving camp or water tanks from one location to the next.

Ranch portion: During your time off between range stints, you’ll be on the home ranch for a 7 day period. You’ll have one full day off after returning from the range to rest, recover, and go to town, and you’ll have time before your next range stint to prepare. During the rest of your time on the home ranch, you’ll be involved in whatever ranch jobs are occuring that day.

The day-to-day work on the ranch is varied, but some of your tasks may include:

1. Working on irrigation systems including pivots, wheel lines, pods, and/or flood irrigation
2. Electric fence building and pasture rotation for the finishing beef cattle on the home ranch
3. Hard fence construction (jack fence, barbed wire)
4. Various construction and repair projects
5. Manual weed management
6. Sorting cattle, potential occasional doctoring, and occasional weighing of cattle
7. There may be some opportunity to help with and learn about calving if you come during the earlier internship periods. We calve mostly in May/June
8. Assisting at our shipping warehouse to help mail beef orders out to customers
9. Helping with camp moves on the range
10. Helping with weed management on the range
11. Helping with water system moves on the range
12. Potential ecological monitoring on the range

Please note that this isn’t a complete list. What we do on the home ranch is constantly changing on a day-to-day basis.

You will not be expected to be responsible for or bring past experience in any of these areas (there will be someone to supervise or work with you).

Whether you benefit from those tasks above is up to you. They can be seen as just manual labor unless you are willing to ask questions. For example, there is a lot of complexity to managing irrigation systems; ask as many questions as you can. Electric fence building isn’t just about stringing hotwire. When building a pasture, we are also calculating acreage, available dry matter, thinking about how to graze that pasture to improve soils, and managing grazing for ideal weight gains. All of that is useful information for those serious about ranching.

If you choose to turn your brain off and unroll hotwire, that’s what you’ll get out of the job. If you ask questions and get involved in the process, you’ll learn about grazing, soil health, and pasture management. If you see helping at the shipping warehouse as just taping boxes, that’s what you’ll get out of it. If you see it as an opportunity to get an inside look at how we’ve run a seven-figure direct-to-consumer shipping business since 2004, we’re happy to answer your questions!

Training:

If you read our internship description in previous years, you may have noted that we had 2 weeks of training at the beginning of the summer. Since this internship is only 3-5 weeks, training will be more “on the job.” The day after you arrive, you’ll head up to the range for your first riding and herding stint. Because you’ll be thrown into it without much preparation, we won’t expect you to know everything immediately! For the first few days you are welcome to simply “job shadow” various crew members to learn (literally just follow them around on your horse if you would like). We also all carry handheld radios, so you will be able to ask questions that way if needed. Similarly, with any ranch jobs you end up doing, we do not expect you to be an expert and are happy to answer questions.

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Not required: experience with cattle, ranching, or any form of higher education, though these factors will be considered. Also not required is horse gear. Personal gear including cowboy boots, rain gear, a cowboy hat, range wearable clothing and a bedroll/sleeping bag is expected. If you have a saddle, you are welcome to bring it, but it will be subject to our approval prior to use (nothing personal—if a saddle doesn’t fit a horse well and is used for long hours at a time, it can permanently damage a horse’s back).

You will receive an extensive packing list if you are selected.                   

Rules & requirements during the internship:

1. No drinking, drugs, vaping or smoking on the ranch property or in cow camp.
2. Interns may not bring, carry, or use firearms. We have had multiple instances of irresponsible and unsafe firearm handling that put other crew members and our livestock at risk. As a result, regardless of your expertise or training, only our regular employees and crew members are permitted to carry firearms on the ranch. Do not bring them with you to the ranch.
3. You will be expected to maintain cleanliness in the community area shared with fellow crew members and employees.
4. You must commit to the entire internship period. You’ll be given days off to rest and recover, of course, but because the internship will be shorter and more intensive this year, we can’t accommodate additional time off (family/personal emergencies are an exception, of course). If you know you will require time off during the internship period, do not apply.
5. No guests at the ranch (it’s completely fine if friends or family drop you off for the internship or pick you up after, but you cannot invite guests to visit or stay at the ranch while you are here).
6. You may not bring your own horse or dog to the internship. No exceptions, sorry!

Josh, who has been a long-term employee at the ranch since 2022, works on setting up water tanks in a new camp.

Click below for the 2024 application!

Thanks so much for applying!

FAQs:

Is this dangerous? There is always some danger where livestock, remote country, and wildlife are involved. However, we do our best to mitigate risks for our crew. In the past several years, we’ve had only a few low-risk injuries such as injured toes, bruising, cuts, and the occasional sprained ankle. We have an evacuation plan and emergency communication tools in place in case of severe injury.

How do I learn more about what the day-to-day looks like on the range? If you’re one of those people who has to have ALL the details, don’t worry! Check out our Instagram story highlights on our profile (we’re @alderspring_ranch). We have lots of stories from previous summers on the range saved there, so you can literally scroll through weeks of daily range updates. Knock yourself out!

Can I bring my dog/horse? Sorry, no!

What are you looking for in an ideal candidate? We’re looking for someone with a good attitude, a strong work ethic, and a “team player” mentality. Prior experience in agriculture will be considered, but we’ve hosted many interns in the past who had almost no experience in ag but were eager to learn.

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Daughter Maddy with her dog Patsy in 2023. Patsy is a full-grown border collie now and will be part of the crew on the range this summer.