 And so when I think of things that Gene and I have done, the reintroduction of grasses, we planted a lot of trees, you know, I hope someday that someone will walk across our past and say, this is really neat, and I don't even care if they know my name, I just want them to enjoy what nature is really about. You're only given land so much, you know, we're here on earth such a short while and to leave it better than what we found it is important. My wife, Gene and I live on top of the Cato Hills in northeastern South Dakota, it's a ridge of hills about 200 miles long and 100 miles wide, also known as the Glacial Lakes area or the Prairie Pot Hill region. We have five children, eleven grandchildren who are still very active part of the family farm even though they are away at different jobs at the moment. I think what set us on our path or our journey of soil health is I saw the rainfall simulator, in fact I had to see it several times before it really sunk in. What was happening underneath our soil and how important it was. We decided to start rotating our pastures. We are in a partnership with Fish and Wildlife, they supplied materials for us. Way back in 1989, when I first started at Wabay National Wildlife Refuge, we worked with Dennis and Gene restoring wetlands on their CRP Conservation Reserve program land. We divided our pastures up into several small paddocks. Restored a number of wetlands in their CRP and pasture lands. And so by using Fish and Wildlife and NRCS and different opportunities to help us cross fence, that really has helped economically, helped take some of that stress off. We found out that the major part of grazing that's really important and it's really familiar is rest, rotate and recovery. That's how easy rotating pastures are. We've increased our carrying capacity, it's increased our weaning weights, our breed back, we have less sickness and that really does make a difference. We have reintroduced a lot of native grasses into our pastures. We just interceded into some of our cool season grasses. Didn't see the result right away but took about two to three years before we saw the benefits of that. So this is August 24th and we did have a wet spring, we had a wet last fall. And in June the rain stopped and we've had very little rain this summer. You can just tell by the root system of these native plants how they can withstand and draw it a little bit easier than having a small cool season grass out here. Now these areas are in grass, tremendous change for wildlife. Water quality, the water filters through the grass into the wetland and then down into the lake and a lot of the nutrients are trapped and stored up here in wetlands and uplands and keeps the lakes cleaner. We live in a unique area with lots of water, there's 30 lakes within 30 miles of here and hundreds of ponds. And we first started rotational grazing, one of the things that we had done is we thought we could use those ponds for watering. And we soon found out that as especially late summer those cattle were going out further and further into the ponds to get water and coming back and dragging mud and we were destroying the wetlands. And that's when we really got involved in, with ECRIP programs, getting fresh water to our pastures. We have water tanks, we even put up a solar well, which has worked really well. And I think fresh water is just a very important part of any rotation. A couple years ago we started using cover crops and the things that the cover crops have done for us is generally we come in with the forage oats or forage barley and we usually can get that off first or second week in July and we come right back in with a cover crop with the intention of grazing it. What the cover crops have done for us with our rangeland is we're able to pull the cattle off the pastures a little sooner and give them a rest before winter hits. It's also great for the biology of the soil. You get the hoof action along with cover crops and all the manure out there. We have really seen a difference in our yields the following year and it has given us a longer grazing season. We keep something growing longer, especially we use rye quite often and we get some grazing in the fall. And then in the spring as we cab we try and move the pears off as quick as we can or get them away from the rest of the herd and we can throw them out in that rye field which gives us more hoof action and just healthier for the calves. It's just a nice place to be able to throw them. Then we'll terminate the rye and come in with the soybean crop and it's something that's really helped us extend our feed and at the same time benefit for the soil. Conservation isn't always cheap, people think that and it's very true sometimes. You have to put forth some effort but there's programs with NRCS conservation district, there's official wildlife, there's places where you can get help to offset that and then the benefits show up later economically with higher weaning weights, stronger calves, better ground your land is better. When I think of conservation one of the biggest things that I learned was given to me by a man who never said a thing. In his 70s he came back here and started planting trees and I thought why is he planting trees, he's in his 70s, he's not going to be able to enjoy it and my thinking was really wrong because he enjoyed doing it, guess who's enjoying it today? I am, my kids are, my grandkids are. Life now is moving faster than it ever has before it seems like but let's leave this the better place and we can still farm and do that.