 We found out we were the 7 millionth acre and Shane gave me a call from the office and he said congratulations basically you got into the program you're the 7 millionth acre and you know I honestly didn't have any idea how many acres were invested in the South Dakota CSP so it was sounding like a milestone and it is a milestone so I guess we were fortunate enough to be part of this this place came up and we really didn't think we were going to be lucky enough to be able to make it work but we did I stepped away, well I went to college, yeah I was in the National Guard, South Dakota National Guard, it was a good experience you know as all together was 8 years then there just came a point in time where we had room for expansion and I wanted to come back and be part of it we bought this place 3 years ago and it's been a learning experience definitely coming out here by ourselves we've got a lot of family help at times when we need it the top 3 things that we're doing in order to help with the conservation around our place is rotating cattle and spraying taking care of noxious weed we've put in water line systems to keep the cattle moving and giving them a water source so they're not concentrating in one certain area our cross fences are also something that we're utilizing and rotating them I can watch them cattle out there and when you go on to a new pasture it just has so much more punch to it than something that's been collecting sunlight and getting tall and kind of rank I got to visiting with Shane in the office in Kennebec and just the more he talked about it the more it seemed like it fit our fit what we were consistently doing plus adding more on to make things just not much better I haven't had too many producers say they don't like CSP it provides them that little bump you know financially or even through the technical guidance that my staff and I can provide through our office or on their operations and bump them to that next level we take people in CSP from a high level of conservation to a higher level of conservation we like the fact that the CSP program is set up to kind of help us as farmer and rancher help us better utilize what we have I mean it's basically to assist us and make us better at what we do when I first heard about CSP I was kind of surprised we weren't already in the program because we do a lot of the stuff they require you know if we can get some assistance we're doing things right well that's great you know stepping in that office up in Kennebec there's a lot of people in there that are willing to help us out and sign us up for these programs and let you know what you need to do when you need to do it and that's helpful you know I don't want to have a job in town and then run a few cows I wanted to try to make a living out of this we're both doing it together so it's not like everything's on me because between the outside stuff and the inside books she has to keep she's probably busier than I am really it's a team effort and it takes a good team to do this deal out here because there's some trying time that's for sure the conservation stewardship program encourages and includes the whole operation and so this program isn't for everyone it's for producers that have maybe already worked with their local natural resources conservation service to put conservation practices on their land and it's to take that a step further it was really a program that producers were waiting to see South Dakota ranks number one as far as the number of acres enrolled in the conservation stewardship program in the nation being able to work with Aaron and work with our boys and work with my dad and brother you know it's rewarding in itself and I don't know if you could put a price on that you want to think once your heart's in it your heart's in it that's the whole reason we are doing what we're doing is to let in the end hopefully we have something for them probably didn't know that when we started but when you start having a family you start thinking different that's kind of what we got to is we hope one of them boys wants to do something with this place and that's what kind of gets a guy going every day if we got a program that's going to reward us for doing that good job we're going to be part of it you get some assistance from people that are part of the program and say hey you could do this I mean it just keeps you thinking about how to conserve it's a relationship we're going to take care of the land that's our number one priority out here