 I used to teach high school. My job brought me to Britain, South Dakota. We were living in the Hecla area. I always ran some cattle, and one year I had some cattle that we were looking for pasture for, and my dad down in Duel County asked me if I wanted to rent that, and I agreed to. And at that time, we owned a few cows, and so we rented that, and slowly we picked up more land in Marshall County, and now we run two big grass units in Marshall County and Duel County. They're 100 miles apart, so they kind of make more of a challenge, but we make it work. We have slowly got into custom grazing, and at this point, we custom graze the majority of our acres. Custom grazing is what we do is we get cattle in every spring. It was a great job when I was teaching high school. It worked out really well. We get cattle in about the time the school ended, and then we would send them home in October or November, depending on the year, how it works out. The reason why we looked at it, we had some issues. We were living over to Hecla, South Dakota. We were living on 20 acres. We had some flood damage. We had some issues trying to winter in cattle and trying to cabin out cattle, and we just ran into a lot of issues with that. And so I one year re-evaluated and said, what do we got going for us? We had the land. We had the pasture. So it changed my focus from working on the cattle to working on the land. And I think that definitely has benefited us and applause. Taking care of our land is important to all of us. As Ray has educated himself in the soil health and improved the land, we've definitely seen the benefits over the years. The biggest thing is rotational grazing. The two to three day, four day moves, one year. We did the daily moves, what I would call the mob grazing, or the management intensive grazing. Number one is the soil health and the health of the land in general, the grass, the wildlife, the cattle, and everything else that goes along with that. I can see our stocking rates increase less acres per cow-calf pair over the summer, over our grazing period, over 180 days, or maybe 200 days, or however long you're looking at a grazing period during the year. One of the big projects we've worked on with Ray is a water development project that we did down on the dual county ground. It was involved, I want to say, a couple miles of pipe and about 10 different tanks. It really was set up so that he could take that operation from rotating dependent on when the water was there to rotating dependent on how the grass needed to be managed. There's been big changes in season long cover crops and more intensive grazing systems and all of that that have come out of that system. And it wouldn't have been possible if he didn't have the infrastructure, the water in place to make it work. We have seen the improvements. We've been able to subdivide the pastures up even more. And to get them to smaller and smaller units where we can move the cattle quicker and quicker, we've seen where that has really benefited the soil and benefited the cattle. We've tried to improve the native grass in the areas. We're trying to do things to get rid of some of the weeds and to help benefit the native plants and also get extra broad leaves in it. With that type of grazing regime, we're benefiting some wildlife species as well from grassland songbirds to a diversity of insect species, which all stem back to that type of grazing rotation that's encouraging certain species of plants to grow and maybe discouraging some species of plants to grow. As our weather changes from year to year, we swing from really wet years to now a drought year. And these practices that we've worked on have really improved the grasslands so we don't see as much stress on the grass or as much stress on the cattle. Especially when you swing into these drought years, it can be stressful. Many families may have to sell off cattle, but we're hoping with the management practices that we've used that that will not have to happen. What we do overall, in my opinion, should almost speak to any cattleman who's serious about increasing better soil health, increasing a healthier herd, or increasing your cow numbers in general, or decreasing the amount of feed you feed. And you could almost touch on all those categories of what we're doing out here. We have the kids come out and help, and that is one of our goals. Yeah, we raise livestock, we're raising the soil, but really, what's our purpose in life here? And when we're gone, what's gonna be the lasting legacy is our children. Taking care of animals is hard work, and they've learned a lot of things from that. Just the work ethic, the resilience, taking care of 4-H animals to coming out here in the pastures and helping Ray has been really good for all of us. We're not perfect, and so it's still not where I'd like to see it, but if we can be drought resistant, and if we can still get something, a crop every year, that's big in our world.