 I'm Garnett Perman. I'm married to Lyle Perman and we live on Rock Hills Ranch near Lowery, South Dakota. Early on, I don't remember if it was late 70s or early 80s, we had a large western snowberry infestation on our ranch. We wanted to get rid of it. We knew it was something cattled in me and we had an aerial sprayer come in and just blanket spray our pastures. And we're really unimpressed with the results. What we found is that we killed a lot of trees, we killed a lot of broadleaf plants that feel like wildflowers and things like that. And we didn't really affect the western snowberry at all. It knocked it back a little bit, but a year or two later it was back full bore again. And so with the results that we saw, we said, well, we're never going to do that again. So since then, we haven't done aerial spraying. We do spot spraying, but have tried really hard not to do large scale chemical applications. Some of the concerns that I had with chemical use for noxious weed control is it really didn't seem like we were gaining anything. We were losing diversity and still having a weed issue, especially on our native prairies. We would go in there. It didn't really matter what kind of chemical we were spraying. And you would go back the next year, still have the weed problem and you would stop seeing the prairie plants that you always used to see in the past. So one of the potential negative impacts we see from spraying broadcast over your entire land is you really take out those native wildflowers. We call them forbs and those forbs play a really critical role in the overall diversity of the grasslands. They support not only pollinators, native pollinators, a lot of their seeds support grassland nesting birds. And the pollinators actually themselves are the other insects that rely on those flowers are another food source for grassland nesting birds. So you kind of see this negative cycle of ongoing impacts from one decision to spray one weed that you really didn't want in your pasture. And it has this long lasting effect of impacting things you really didn't think about impacting. And that starts at the plants that are growing out there and the soil that they're growing in and it ends all the way really at us. You know, and the stuff that we're eating and enjoying, but you know, through there it goes through insects and birds and the whole ecosystem. Our grasslands, you know, especially in the prairie pahoe region, have the embedded wetlands, right? We're like a giant sponge for cleaning the water. So the less grass we have, the less wetlands we have, the more sedimentation and those sorts of things get into our water systems. And that just doesn't affect here in northern Great Plains, you know, that trickles down the Mississippi River and then causes issues further south as well. Broad scale use of chemical on, you know, just broadcasting over the whole pasture is something that really doesn't fit what we're trying to accomplish as far as having a healthy forage base. Yeah, we'd be taking out our problem plants, but we'd be taking out a bunch of beneficial ones as well. So that doesn't meet our environmental goals. For several years we've been thinking about, you know, what about like goats or sheep or something that would eat this stuff? And this year we finally took the leap and made it happen. And so far I've been really happy with how that's gone. The reason we thought about bringing sheep back into the operation was twofold. Number one, diversification and income streams. Let's try and get another species in, but probably more importantly, they utilize different plants than the cattle do. We're having problems with a particular form that's not native called leafy spurge. And we knew sheep had a history of being a good controller for plants such as wormwood sage. We didn't really know too much about Western snow barrier buck brush, but we did know a little bit about the leafy spurge. But what's kept us from getting into the sheep was our concern about fencing and predators. And I'm happy to say that the Van Welles have solved both of those problems by providing us with a shepherd, Jesus. He herds the sheep, but we're also learning a little bit more about what it's going to take to contain the sheep when he isn't herding them. So it's been a learning curve in the two months that we've had them, but so far we've been very pleased with the results. You look at the impact of sheep on the landscape and we compare the pounds of square inch of pressure on the soil, on their hooves as compared to a cow, much less deep soil impact. Sheep have a different way of digesting ruminantly than cattle and much like deer put out a pellet. So it has a different way of decomposing and going into the soil. So again, our prairies out here evolved under those multiple species of grazing. And if we can go back to those types of thoughts and emulate some of that, I think we have a great opportunity to not only provide income and profitability, which has to be the foundation, but also ensure a sustainable, regenerative type of productive agricultural enterprise. This is so not a new concept. We've been doing targeted grazing for many, many years. And in fact, if you look back historically, what's happened with weed populations, how they've exploded exponentially. And I mean plants like leafy spurge, spotted napweed. And what's happened with sheep numbers across the West is how they've gone down dramatically since World War II. And I am a firm believer that the loss of the diversity of grazing animals on our landscapes has resulted in that ability of those evasive plants to really take over an ecosystem. We're happy to have people over and talk to them and show them what we're doing. We do it partly because, one, it's our way of giving back. We're so blessed to be here. This is our way of giving back. So hosting a tour or just having individual people come is something we enjoy doing and something I feel is really important.