Never a dull moment at Redwing Ranch: What regenerative ranching, storytelling, and engineering might all have in common

Izabella Smolnicka-Dos Santos (she/her)
Hometown: Fort Myers, Florida
Major: MS Sustainable Design & Construction, '27
Internship: Redwing Ranch

Izabella Smolnicka-Dos Santos reflects on her internship at Redwing Ranch and her experience capturing the ranch’s daily adventures, long-term lessons, and moments in between.

This summer, I left Stanford and roadtripped across the country to southern Colorado to spend a few months on a working cattle ranch. On paper, that sentence doesn’t sound particularly related to my degree. In practice, it was one of the most transformative learning experiences I’ve ever had.

As a recent graduate of Environmental Systems Engineering, I spent four years studying urban systems, sustainability, climate science, and the built environment. I’m now returning to Stanford to pursue a master’s in Sustainable Design & Construction. Most of my academic life has revolved around buildings, infrastructure, cities, energy, and the systems that make them work.

And yet, somehow, I found myself in Gardner, Colorado, a town of about 130 people, checking water tanks, treating sick calves, moving cattle between pastures, running a chainsaw, designing social media graphics, and occasionally wrangling a rattlesnake. And I loved every second of it.

I came to Redwing Ranch with two goals. One was professional: I wanted to understand what sustainable land management actually looks like when you are responsible for managing real land, livestock, weather, and financial constraints. The other was much more personal: after years of being fascinated by ranching from a distance, I wanted to know what it actually felt like to live and work in a rural ranching community. It turns out, you can learn a lot when you stop looking at something from a distance.

My first few weeks at Redwing were a crash course in ranch life. I learned that the words “doctoring,” “hot,” and “cake” all have different meanings in ranch contexts; that cattle can unintentionally open gates and let themselves loose - usually at the most inopportune moments; and that there is always another superstition you could try to coax an afternoon rainstorm. I also learned how much knowledge is packed into seemingly ordinary decisions: “Where should cattle graze next? How much forage is actually available? How long can a pasture recover? Where would prescribed fire be most beneficial? What does the market mean for tomorrow’s work? How do you balance the health of the animals, the land, and the economics of the operation?” As it turns out, none of these questions have simple answers.

And that was one of the things I found most fascinating about ranching. Redwing approaches the land as a system, rather than a collection of isolated problems. Cattle, grass, water, fire, wildlife, weather, people, and economics are all connected. A decision made in one part of the system inevitably affects another. That should sound familiar to an engineer.

Redwing is a working cattle ranch, but it is also a living demonstration of adaptive land management. The team uses livestock to mimic historical grazing patterns while applying prescribed fire to manage fuel loads and recreate ecological disturbances that have long shaped the landscape. By doing so, they achieve more goals than simply producing beef. Redwing also rebuilding soil health, sequestering carbon, and managing invasive plant species; all of which speak to their mission of “regenerating land, livestock, and livelihoods.”

One of the biggest opportunities of my summer was discovering how much of my internship happened outside of the pasture. I worked closely with Redwing’s Programs Manager, Erin Sheridan, to support the ranch’s growing education program and online presence. I developed social media content, designed marketing materials, helped prepare educational resources, and worked on projects that will continue long after I’ve left. To name a few, I helped create a digital storyboard documenting Redwing’s history and growth, automated administrative processes for workshop coordination, updated features of the ranch’s website and search engine optimization, and compiled a library of promotional materials for Redwing’s first Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX), which will bring hands-on prescribed fire training to southern Colorado next spring.

While I didn't expect graphic design and storytelling to become such a major part of my summer, the more I learned about Redwing, the more I understood why they mattered. There is an enormous amount of knowledge within the ranching community that comes from decades of lived experience. But knowledge only creates change when people can access it, understand it, and share it with others. I became especially excited by this opportunity to translate technical knowledge into something people actually can engage with, because ultimately, a workshop announcement isn't just a flyer. A social media post isn't just a picture. A website isn't just a collection of information. They are all invitations into a community.

I still remember the first time someone registered for a Redwing workshop after finding the ranch through social media. It was a small victory, but I was ridiculously excited. Suddenly, all those hours spent writing captions, designing graphics, taking photos, and figuring out how to tell Redwing’s story had a tangible result. Someone who may never have heard of the ranch had found it and decided they wanted to learn.

Other highlights of my internship included participating in a branding where I learned to flank, tag, and vaccinate calves; securing a brand partnership with a company that Redwing regularly uses products from, which in turn, will support the sponsorship of more workshop attendees; Redwing’s bi-weekly book clubs, where we discussed everything from trends in U.S. crop inventories and prices, development of data centers on farmland, and changes to Colorado water law; meeting local business owners and residents at the first ever Southern Colorado AgTech Expo; and wrangling a rattlesnake! The phrase “never a dull moment” certainly became my mantra of the summer, because there’s no better way to express the fact that no two days of my internship were alike.

For most of my life, ranching felt like an industry I could observe from the outside. I have familial connections to it, but I didn't grow up knowing how to work cattle or manage a pasture or understand the economics of running a ranch. Thankfully, the team welcomed me into an environment where I knew almost nothing and taught me anyway. They let me ask probably too many questions and trusted me with work I had never done before. They showed me that expertise doesn't always come from a classroom, and that being inexperienced is not the same thing as being incapable. Most importantly, they showed me that there is room in ranching for people who don't fit the stereotype of who a rancher is supposed to be, which is essential considering that the future of land management, agriculture, and the American West will require people with different backgrounds, skills, and ways of thinking. It will require people who can move between disciplines rather than staying inside one professional box.

Maybe that is why this experience felt so connected to engineering after all. Engineering, much like ranching, is about understanding systems well enough to make them work better. It is about recognizing constraints, finding relationships, asking better questions, and designing solutions that account for the world as it actually exists.

And perhaps that was the greatest lesson I brought home with me. I arrived at Redwing thinking I was there to learn about ranching. I left realizing I had been learning about adaptability, community, communication, leadership, ecological systems, and what it means to build a life around work that you wholly believe matters.

As I return to Stanford this fall to begin my master’s in Sustainable Design & Construction, I’m bringing a very different perspective with me. I will continue studying buildings and cities and infrastructure, but I’ll also be thinking about the landscapes and communities beyond them, including the systems that feed us, protect us, and shape the places we call home. My summer at Redwing Ranch was a professional experience, but it was also something much more personal. It expanded my understanding of what sustainability can look like, introduced me to an extraordinary community, and opened doors (or gates!) I didn't know were even there.