 In the early days of no-tilling, we'd started dabbling with it in the mid-1980s on certain crops. It wasn't until 1991 that we went 100 percent and I kind of had an aha moment, what we call nobleblading. It was a big v-plow that we used to work our oats and wheat stubble with after harvest and what it ostensibly did is it just sheared the soil surface about four inches deep and it looked as though the residues where everything looked fine but underneath the soil surface it basically sheared everything away and I got out and looked and I noticed that a big slab of soil had popped up and it was just full of earthworm holes and I realized at that moment that I just destroyed that entire environment so I took that slab of soil and I put it on my dad's desk and I said we're going to begin to make changes today so we took the wheels off the noble blade and parked it in the trees and that was really kind of the first step of moving to a complete no-till system and then things just started to build and change after that. It was Mother Nature that made the grass that we just simply moved in on and it's been here for thousands and thousands and thousands of years and we cannot improve on that grass because I saw it go through the 30s and disappear with blow dirt everywhere. People didn't know how to farm their cropland and it it took you know the dirt moving took any vegetation that was growing and what that didn't take the grass operation and yet when it turned around in the early 40s we saw those stems of that grass reemerge. It's amazing that that grass lived through that kind of punishment. How do we manage not only the native prairie soils but how do we manage the crop ground to get our soil structure back to where it should be? That's the real challenge that we have. I think the first step is to understand and gain an understanding of what we're dealing with in the native prairie soils. This is a perfect system Mother Nature intended it to be this way and it works and this is the kind of system I want to get our crop ground back to. When we when we plant in our field we disturb less than 15 percent of our soil surface and that's that's just what we do it's there's you know we don't do it because you know it saves us money or anything we do it because it's the right thing to do. The soil is our biggest resource and it's necessary for us to treat it you know as best as we can so that it's never a question about whether or not we should conserve our resources it's just how we can how we can do it best. So this last year we've made a pretty major investment in installing fences on our crop ground which sounds kind of counter-intuitive. In the last 50 years it's been the common practice to eliminate the fences and farm as much as you possibly can but we're trying to bring it back where we can put cattle back on the cropland fields and the reason for that is as we do more and more cover crop and do more and more residue have more and more residues out there we need to figure out how to capitalize on taking up those nutrients and utilizing those those those residues. So we're installing fences around all of our crop ground that we have access to water so that we can in fact get cattle back on those acres during the winter months the late fall and and early winter months. The cows that we actually manage on our place we refer to them as a genetic parent stock cow herd that really controls a lot of genetics for a lot of different animals at the end of the day. We've got 13 cooperator herds that help us make bulls we merchandise 3,500 bulls as as dad probably said they all come in to our cow herd basically and select the best genetics that that cow herd can produce so if you think of it as a genetic pyramid this cow herd at the end of the year and in one year's time has a genetic influence on over 100,000 calves. The Juergensons they are so uniquely integrated within all their operations they don't make any changes here without really studying what's going to happen over here so whenever we make a recommendation on the cattle side it's presented to the farming side also so that we make sure we're not adversely affecting one operation over the other. I think the key to our success is we have a Monday morning meeting starting at 6 30 my brother Brian my son Cody and now my nephew Nick we talk about the issues of the previous week and then we talk about the issues that are coming up and then an hour later we have a weekly meeting with our employees we can all talk sanely among ourselves now and talk more as a team. The things we do are kind of a pain in the butt the way we have to manage our cattle it's an insanely difficult task it has to be more detailed and it takes more people to manage it so the fact that they deal with that really shows that they have passion we're a big family and you know and that's another key reason that things work so well here because everyone just is involved and feels like they're part of something bigger than themselves. We're so blessed so lucky to have Martin still on operation he gave us the ability to make decisions and make mistakes but Martin gave us the latitude to make decisions and make changes that would improve things he knew that he didn't have all the answers he knew that the next generation probably had more tools in the toolbox than he did and I see that with my son too I mean he's bringing in technologies that I might be intimidated by. As the youngest person here at the farm I kind of have a different perspective on technology and things like that that a lot of other people don't I've always been raised being hands-on in conservation and it's never even been a question about whether or not we should conserve our soil resource it's it's just been a part of our life you know we started no tail farming I believe in 91 the year I was born so I've never known anything different. What I've learned is the people that survived the 1980s they they all get an A in production because we're all pretty darn good at it but I think on average where we where we fail is in the transition from one generation to the next. Transition in agriculture needs some major work on it needs some improvement on it and that's why I'm talking about it today because I think we need to face up to the fact that we've got to figure out better ways to get the younger generations to make more of the decisions and be involved in the decision-making process let them make a mistake or two because that's how they we were fortunate enough in our family that that's what happened and it has just blossomed our whole business has just blossomed because we had young people making a lot of the decisions. It's all about the future if you really stop and think we are only owners of this property for a very short period of time our family's been here for over a hundred years you really think about it that isn't a long time everything we do must have the next generation in consideration. You know I get the opportunity to raise my son here and you know I'll get to raise him working by my side you know sitting with me in the tractor you know coming to work with me whenever you know it's it's possible to bring him along and I get to raise him the way I was raised so you know it's a bright future I think that's that's a good thing looking forward to Dorgon St. Lion and Caton it makes me very happy to know. Winning the award really kind of solidified in our minds that the things that we were doing are are right and good and so the challenge I guess the thing that I'm most concerned about is that we can carry that message forward and help others and also continue to improve what we're doing. What the award does it celebrates these families and what they're doing on their farm and ranch which is great people can come and visit and take what's going on here and take what they like and see what's working. The unique thing about the Jorgonsons is they'll tell you their failures and they'll tell you their successes but they'll share the failures and probably some things not to do. It really solidified in my mind that all the trials and tribulations and all the good things and the bad things that have happened over the years and developing our no-till system and and developing our range rotation systems that yeah it is the right thing to do. Not necessarily always the most beneficial thing to do from an economic standpoint but from a soil perspective it's the right thing to do. The most valuable resource that we have is the soil and we can in fact make the soil better and make a living on it.