 The first time I had heard about it was through the NRCS, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and I heard about the new program that was coming out, and it sounded real attractive for my programs. I heard about it from our district office, Ryan Forbes. I was into the FSA office one day, and he caught me and asked me if I'd heard about it, and I hadn't, and he explained it to me, and we went from there. It all started, I believe my husband, Hewin, asked at our local office, and they're the ones who filled us in and kept us informed about it, helped us with the paperwork, got us signed up and explained the programs to us, so it was our county office that did most of the groundwork, I would say. We saw the things that we were already doing that are involved and didn't think it would take a whole lot to meet the criteria. We pay a little bit more attention to how we feed our cattle. There's one of the programs that you analyze how your cattle are utilizing the feed that they're on and the protein in the feed and other things in the feed, and now we know how to rotate them in different pastures that helps you utilize our natural forage here. What we grow naturally is grass, that's what we do here, and it's showing us how to do it better. Our rotational grazing systems have probably been enhanced. We're running two and just getting ready to start a third rotational grazing for the cattle. The cover crops have been a big part of it. The cover crops have been tough. It all depends upon mother nature and the rain, and this year we got good rain, so we've got really good cover crops coming. The biggest change was I introduced prescribed burning. Before I never would, I didn't even have the desire to even think that burning was a good deal. It's a hazard. And after I signed up for it, found out and implemented it, some of the burning, I had to burn two years out of the five and acreage, and controlled burning is simple and easy if you have a plan and put it together and do it properly. I've signed up for five enhancements, and the biggest one is no-till or strip-till, conservation tillage. The other biggest one that changed the most was split end application, half my nitrogen spraying and half its side-dress. And then there's a few smaller ones, stock nitrate tests and sprayer enhancements, boom height, that type of stuff. The cover crops that we're planting and we're using for secondary grazing with the cattle have really benefited and helped stretch the feed. And I don't know if we can see the benefits to the land yet, but there are definitely benefits going into the soil and how you see them coming out is tough, but I definitely think they're there. There are more benefits. And what CSP has done for us financially, it's allowed us to explore better options to produce better, to produce a better product, which is beef. That's what we produce. And it gives you a little bit more financial freedom to do things, to do things you dream up and go, geez, I wish we could do this, but money-wise you just can't. It's kind of giving a little bit more freedom in that aspect, kind of opens your eyes to more ideas. And also to help wildlife, because a lot of the programs that you do are for wildlife. So it kind of makes you more conscious, I guess, of your surroundings. I think the biggest one was the no-till and the strip-till, especially after a couple of years of building some soil structure. We're seeing better infiltration of water and then most importantly due to that is less erosion. This spring, right after planting, we had some enormous rains and for the most part everything stayed put very well. This place has been farmed, my grandfather homesteaded here and started breaking things up with that type of thing, plowing up grasslands, put it that way to farm back three generations ago. And my father found out that things weren't going real well and he started sewing it back to grass and I've continued to do that, mainly because the land isn't capable of producing crops like it's rough land along the Ponco Creek here and it doesn't work real well. Soil health is a thing, that's a new buzzword, I guess, and it's new to me, but I wish I could understand more about it and that's probably the biggest thing that we're changing here. We're improving organic matter with the grassland habitat now as compared to what we had, one, two percent organic matter on the crop land before we started seeding it back and now we're up to oh, four, five percent organic matter. Our precision farming has increased. We started out with this program doing variable rate fertilizer and setting up zones and it's just kind of snowballed from that. We went from variable rate fertilizer to variable rate seed and the yield data coming off the combines we're just, it's really snowballing and we're using more and more of it. CSP program has definitely improved the soil quality throughout my two counties in the state of South Dakota and it can be just measured in little things if every farmer did variable rate fertilizer application they're using let's say ten percent less fertilizer. If you get 60 guys in the county covering 30,000 acres using ten percent less fertilizer just think the amount of money that's saving them and less energy being used to produce that fertilizer. So the cumulative effects of the entire program with the multiple producers is what is the big benefit. CSP gives producers an opportunity to take a look at different enhancements like cover crops, strip till, no till and it gets them out on their land it gives them the ability to go out and do these practices and take a look at what's actually going on out there. They're starting to see their soil health their soil structure become more stable their organic matter when they're doing their soil testing they'll see the numbers rising their organic matter over time. The filtration rate when it rains being able to get all the water into the ground the land itself seems more supportive of the larger machinery where the compaction and running around if it's a wet fall or something like that it's not a big deal to them where they can go out there and they can combine and not tear their field up. The other thing is if it does rain when you're combining what they've told me is that they can go out the next day and a lot of their neighbors aren't combining and it doesn't sound like a big deal just a one day in time but if you're the only one combining and there's a long line at the elevator that's a huge deal to get your crop out of the ground. So CSP gives producers an opportunity to learn about their soil and soil structure and soil health and about different conservation practices or enhancements and it'll take the risk of differential risk off it a little bit by supplementing with a payment. I think if you're a good producer and you're a good steward of the land you're doing a lot of the practices anyway it's just a win-win situation. Yeah, do you have to do things other practices and does it take time? Yes, but for the benefit you get back it's well worth it. It really benefits your whole operation your land, the species of animals on your land your actual cattle and if you're into farming, your crops I mean it's all designed to benefit you as a producer so why you wouldn't utilize it I don't have an idea why you wouldn't do that I would recommend it to anybody I think the biggest reason is it just gives them an opportunity to try some new things if they're willing and open minded to try them it gives you some benefits of offsetting a cost for me the biggest one is strip tilling and hiring somebody to do strip till and helping to offset the cost so it gives you a chance to try it without incurring the entire amount. We don't own this land we're just here to use it for a while and probably the biggest thing is if we leave it in a better condition for the next generation and that's what we're trying to do here is probably the best thing in programs and finding out about things the technical things that go along with improving habitat and vegetation that's the biggest thing that I think is worthwhile for our folks here