 My name is Don Nicholson, along with my wife Trista and three boys, Aiden, Gavin and Ian. We farm and ranch in Frederick, South Dakota. And one of the things we're trying to do is incorporate our livestock more into our crop ground. Where we live in Frederick here, the climate and the rainfall is very east and west. Across 281 it just starts drying up more, so we have kind of farming in two different areas where the stuff east of 281 we have generally more rainfall. As we go further west it starts falling off and it lends itself more to the livestock side of the operation. Initially I started into no-till. After college I came back to the farm. It was just me and my stepfather farming so labor was, it seemed like an easier avenue to go. Less tillage, less work. So I started out as a labor-saving and then I started seeing, you know, benefits to the soil and doing less work and still keeping up yield-wise with neighbors. You know, we've always had livestock and we've always had crop ground. Focusing on the cattle in the fields longer. Start seeing the benefits of the soil health. The crops we grow here are corn, soybeans, oats, triticali, alfalfa and starting to do a little bit more in the cover crops. The alfalfa I think has been key for me to start identifying areas of the field that are not as productive and allows me a different time of the season to be able to get into those areas if it's fixing saline area spots. In our area also there are a lot of potholes so with excessive water, ponding and ditch effect saline areas start popping up and expanding, you know, if they aren't cared for or treated differently than the rest of your crops. I use a lot of precision stuff in my cash crops so I started using that to identify the poor producing areas and then zeroing in on what those spots need and how to do it. The best way to do that in my operation is through the cattle and bale grazing. Some of the effects that I've seen in the areas where I have been bale grazing after doing it the first year, you know, you get the cover which I believe the cover helps eliminate some of that evaporation. It keeps the soil moisture rather than drying out and bringing all those salts to the top and then wicking moisture from other areas and pulling up more salts. It's part of the healing process. It might not look the prettiest at times but it's a root in the ground, it's something that's growing. Also on our pastures, I have been rotational grazing for quite some time. Golfers say play the course, don't let the course play you. You've got to look at how the ground is and what kind of grasses are there and what you can do with it. Each area is managed differently, just like in my crop ground. Each zone is managed differently. There's challenges every year and every year is a different challenge and what I've found in my soils, you know, building the organic matter, having better soil health allows me to weather through whichever weather storm I face with. I wasn't born into farming but from a very early age, since I was probably nine, ten years old, I was been exposed to farming and then got a great opportunity and a lot of freedom to try different things. My stepfather gave me a lot of freedom that way and that's helped me going forward. I remember him always telling me, you know, do what you think's best and that's what I hope to pass along to my sons, you know, whatever they're doing is do what they think's best.