 The main reason that both Dennis and I looked at soil health was actually just to keep the family farm afloat. Margins of commodities can be very, very slim at times. And so we were trying to think of how we can maybe run more cattle on the pastures that we actually have. Gene and I are mainly a cow calf operation with some crops and do a lot of rotational grazing. We use cover crops as much as possible and we try to blend everything together so everything complements each other. The crops on top of the Cato Hills, you know, it's probably not like going to give you the yields like you are in the flats. But with no-till practices, it really does make a huge difference. Maybe not right away, but you'll see it in three or four years down the road. And with cover crops, you start to see the yield differences that you have because your ground is doing what it's supposed to be doing. Switching to no-till has really helped us on fuel savings, being able to do more with less machinery. We have a lot less inputs in our machinery. It has made a big difference, I think, on erosion, especially up here when we have a lot of slopes. We have a lot of very good topsoil and a lot of our soils. It hasn't been farmed as long as other places. We're also bordering a lot of water and a lot of waterways. So we have to be careful with not over-fertilizing or over-spraying, because it can get into our water systems. We definitely have a shorter growing season than just a few miles to the west of here. Winters can be tough, but also summers can be cooler, which is quite an advantage in our pastures and for our cattle. So I would say the opportunities probably outweigh the challenges. Across the county, this year, it has been extremely wet. We had like 90 inches of snow over winter and it hasn't really stopped raining. I think what you see is a lot of the situations where people do tillage every year. They'll do some fall tillage or spring tillage and they'll just do a corn bean rotation on the crops. They're going to have a standing water on their fields. When you have people like Dennis and a lot of other guys in the county who do cover crops, have a rotation, corn, bean, wheat, oats, whatever else in their rotation, they got a better infiltration system with the cover crops and the biological activity. And they're the ones that actually got the crops in the ground and they're the ones that are actually able to get the crops off the ground. As our cow herd started to increase, Gene and I were approached with the idea of rotational grazing. And we did start slowly at first. Immediately saw some benefits from it and started to make our pasture smaller. Started to move the cows more frequently. We also had some crop land that we turned back into pasture and even some of our pastures that were a solid cool season grass. We interceded big blue stem and side oats and Indian grass. So when the cool season grasses are slowly coming to an end, those warm seasons kick in and it really makes a difference. I have to admit that I was quite reluctant getting into the cover crop. So I had to rethink my whole thought process on what is actually happening underneath the soil. Biologists and scientists say that when the prairie was broken to farm that our organic matter number that they gave it was between eight and nine. So it was rejuvenating itself every year. Sadly over the years, most of our soils can be as low as one to three. And that is the bad news. The good news is that that can be changed. And through the use of cover crop and especially running cattle on a cover crop you can change that organic matter in a very short time. It's never too late to start and you're never too old to learn. And that is our goal now is to get that organic matter increasing both in our crops and our pastures.