 We're at the family's home place here, north of Sturgis, South Dakota, but dad came to this property in 1954. The ranch has basically always been centered around cattle, and dad did some wheat farming and some of that, but probably when Ed and I came in as partners in the ranch in the 70s, we really kind of focused more on the cattle because that's really where our passion was. Our passion wasn't in the farming, so through that time period, well then we've kind of taken some of the farm ground that dad used to summerfowl wheat on and turned that into grasslands and turned into cattle, and so a way we could run more cattle. My dad was always really interested in range management. I'm not real sure where that interest came from, but he really enjoyed going out and finding plants, and at the time when we were in 4-H, I mean we'd spent half the summer out looking for different range plants. He had a real keen interest in anything that had to do with the range. The soil's a real heavy clay. We deal with a lot of native grass. We're working on like a 14-inch annual rainfall a year. You know when I was in high school and it was drought way more than it ever rained, and we've really learned how to deal with droughts better than we can in the last two years that it rains in muddy all the time. I feel a lot of people have to sell cows. We're in a seed stock business, and we've put a lot of time into A.I.ing and some of that, and we can't just get rid of our cows and buy back the same genetics that we have now, so we implement a lot of different strategies. Early weaning's been just a great tool for us. This ranch here is kind of 350 to 450 cows is what it will run depending on the growing condition. We'll have all the heifers here. We'll run those heifers over with the first calf all summer long, and we'll also have some three- and four-year-olds, so we'll A.I., and as they're a cycle back, we'll ship those up to Chad's house, so he gets most of the older cows, and we'll keep the younger cows here, so we'll have the first calf heifers and most of the three-year-olds on this ranch. When they ship to Chad's, they'll stay there basically as long as they're still on the operation. Right now we're on the two-top ranch we call it, which is in Butte County, north of Belfouche, about 35 miles. We bought this ranch in 2014. We drilled a deep well and started putting pipeline in in 2015 with a sage grouse initiative equip contract. We've done quite a little on this ranch in the last four or five years, I guess, and split the pastures into smaller pastures for easy management, easier to move the cows around, and we'll get some better utilization out of them. Chad and I have three kids. I've been learning what conservation means to the entire Blair family. This has kind of been Grandpa Ed's dream for a long time to win the Leopold Award and teaching the kids what it means for Grandpa to receive this award and do it as a family has been pretty cool. We learned to appreciate the value of not overusing grass and making it better for the next generation and for the wildlife and your livestock because the whole goal is to be profitable and maintain your conservation level that you want to have and I think we're reaching it. It's been neat to learn right alongside with my husband. Our ranch is really special and you can't just leave the cows in one pasture forever. You have to move them around. We move the cows because it's good to keep the grass not undergrazed or overgrazed because if grass is overgrazed, it's going to have a hard time getting to grow back up and if you undergraze it, there's going to be too much grass. The Blair Ranch is both Tutop and Butte County and here on the home ranch in Mead County. Grass is abundant and it's not just because we had some adequate rainfall throughout this growing season, it's that way every year. You'll always notice that they seem to have more grass than the conventionally managed or the season long grazed pastures that are just across the fence or just down the road. That's not by accident. They have a lot of ideas and they're willing to listen to any alternatives and they come up with many of their own alternatives and ideas, but really the coolest thing to see is that they are very goal driven. They have their goals and objectives and they know how to see them through. The Blair's are just really good to work with because they have that experience that can only come with a multi-generational type of ranch. They're stewards of the land. They can see things are going in a direction that might not be good and that's when they're coming to talk to us before there's even a problem. They kind of raise the bar for everybody in the area which some producers, that is what's needed and having good innovators and people to look up to like the Blair's, it's not just beneficial for their individual ranches but for community levels and landscapes that are going to see benefits for years to come. What I think is neat about the award is that you're being nominated by your peers. People that have seen what you've been doing out there and appreciated I guess is the big thing for me about it. I've always felt that we've worked really hard at our ranching operation. I mean we've been out there in the wind and the rain and the cold and moving cattle on time when they needed to be moved. And you know it's a pretty elite club. The winners that have been at the Leopold Award, these are people that are doing something and it's nice to be recognized with that group. I think getting a Leopold Award is just kind of a neat deal to kind of make you feel somebody recognized the work and the time and the effort that you put into it.