 This farm was started by my grandfather, John Johnson. He came from Sweden with his brothers, so this is a century farm. My father, he started farming with his dad. I started farming with my dad with no pressure. You know, you have to love it in order to do it. I did the same with Brian. I never really said anything. You know, he was part of the operation helping, and I wanted it to be his decision, you know, alone that he wanted to farm. And it's been quite a blessing to have him come back. I started after college in 2004, and now my wife and I have four kids. Ella's 12, Lila's 10, Leo is 7, and Evelyn will be 3 here shortly. And they're all active helping various activities in the farm here, working cattle, checking cattle in the pasture, calving season, they really enjoy it. They like to ride along with me in the field, in the tractor, in the combine. It's definitely a family affair. My favorite thing in the farm is cutting corn with dad and papa. We have to feed the chickens. We have to go check the cows. We kind of have to decide who does the chicken chores because none of us really like going to pick eggs at like 5 o'clock. I grew up in northeastern Nebraska on a cattle farm, on an Angus farm. And I swore to my dad I would never ever marry a farmer because it was such hard work. And I went to college and hated living in the city and met Brian. And I was like, oh, hey, there's a farmer. So I got myself back to the farm. And it's kind of been my goal and my passion to make a complete system out of this farm. Bring those cattle back, you know, to the carrying capacity that the pastures can hold. Utilize those rotational grazing wise as what they can hold. And then in the last couple of years we've really focused on integrating those cattle back onto the crop ground, spending less time and energy, moving manure, already having it out on the fields. We saved money by putting them on cover crops and putting them on that longer until it grazes a little shorter. So it wasn't that I had to change a whole lot because the footprint had already been made. It was just tinkering with some new ideas and some new practices here and there. One other thing that we have really honed in on in the last five, six, seven years is focusing on really the acre by acre productivity of the farm and looking at even if it's a small piece of ground, what's the best use for that acre? Is it corn? Is it soybeans? Is it small grain? Is it forage? Or is it really we need to put that into grass so we're reducing our erosion and we're providing some habitat for wildlife or whatever it is on those CRP acres? It was mostly just managing the water. What can we do with our crop rotations and our management system to be able to handle the water and use it efficiently? Through the water issues that we encountered it became more of a, okay, we have to change some of our crop land away from crop production into grass and water management and that's where the CRP acres came into play. That whole systems approach of having different things growing, whether it's in your pasture, whether it's in your crop ground to keep the soil healthy, keep all those microbes happy and functioning healthy together. When you have a healthy soil, you have a healthy crop, you have a healthy livestock. It all comes back to you're producing healthy soil, you have a healthy end product. To us that's really important. They've seen an increase over the years of organic matter on their operation through the diversity of crop rotations, the addition of cover crops to their rotations and I also think, and especially with a year like we're experiencing now, they're starting to really see the benefits of improved infiltration in their soils. The organic matter is building, they're keeping their fertilizer levels up there so if somebody else down the road gets used, this farm ground, I mean it's going to be well taken care of and be the most productive it can be. As you drive down the road coming in here, you can see some of the conservation practice they put in place, the St. Lean areas, they planted back in the grass, they recovered those areas, seen grass waterways and they have been innovators in conservation in our area and soil health for a long time and I think we learned more from them and they learned from us but we really like working with them. You know on our operation we do what we do because it works for us and we think it's sustainable and it's the right thing to do. We weren't looking to receive awards for anything we do other than just because it works. We want to be able to pass it along and keep doing the right thing and learning as we go, making adjustments, improvements, more trees, more shelter belts, some cross fencing, just integrating the livestock more. It's a journey that we're on here in this operation. We've come a long way in 30-some years of no-till. There's a lot more that we know that we need to do and that we can do. We're driving through the pasture in the ranger and the granddaughter reaches out and grabs a couple stems of grass. She goes, oh, crusted wheat, grown grass, that's kind of neat. They take it to heart too, you know, and they're proud of what we're doing here. When you think of those moments where you're all together and you're working hard and at the end of it the little kid goes, wow, that went really fast and that was so much fun. Like, those moments are just like heartbeat moments of we're doing this right, we're doing the right thing, or during harvest when we're all out in the field. Alan and Mickey and Brian and I and the kids and it's, you know, someday it'll be the kids running the equipment, you know. Those are the moments where you're pulling in the corn or the wheat or the soybeans or your bale and hay and everybody's together. It's like, this is what we're doing this for, is to build a family, build these values to be passed on to the next generation.