 I've been farming full-time for about 10 years. I rent 650 acres, approximately half of that is in pasture and hay meadow and alfalfa, and then the remaining half is in cropland, and its corn, soybeans, oats, and wheat are typically part of the cropland portion of the acreage. In addition to farming, I also work at Bonhomme High School. I am their ag instructor and their FFA advisor. It's a really neat opportunity to have that kind of a job because it really coincides with what I do on the farm, and it really gives me an opportunity to teach students about things that I'm passionate about in my life. Typically when we start our soils units, depending on the class, we always start with like an overview of soil characteristics, soil texture, organic matter, and how all of those different factors and components are going to affect the productivity of the soil. And then after we cover that broad overview of those soil topics, we move into soil erosion and how we can degrade the soil with monocropping, continuous residue removal, you know, not having livestock on the landscape, and we tie all those topics in together, and then they can see how some of the management practices that we have in our operations can really impact long-term productivity of the soil. Some of the things that we'll do is a slake test. The slake test gives a very simple measure of the biological health of that soil, and then we also do infiltration tests, and then the tabletop infiltration and runoff test as well. On a typical year, given the prices of corn and soybeans, I've been converting some of those acres, usually 25 to 30 acres into a full season cover crop mix, and that would be planted sometime in May. And with that full season mix, it allows me to graze it mid-summer, and I can take the cows off of the pasture. They're allowed to graze that mid-summer. They go back to the pasture while the full season regrows, and then they can come and re-graze that in the fall, so it really just gives me more acres to graze and puts less stress on the pastures, which is important as well. With cover crops going on the crop ground, my main goals are to build organic matter, have something on the soil surface so that ground is not bare, and then also help build structure and reduce compaction. Those would be my main goals. In addition to that, I also want to fix some nitrogen. I want to provide some livestock feed as well, but those would be my main ones, is really just to protect the land, build that organic matter, and improve the soil structure as well. We really do need to start focusing on soil health because if we look at the long-term productivity of the soil, if we start looking at some of the weather patterns that we're starting to deal with, if our soil gets too degraded, the farmer is not going to be making any money. The main thing that I want my students to realize is that you don't have to do it the way that Dad and Grandpa did it. These have changed. There's better equipment out there at a no-till, and a lot more crops you can rotate in. Hopefully if they can see some of what I'm doing, and if they can see that some of what I'm doing is working, they don't have to make changes this year or next year, but maybe they start farming in five years or so down the road. They realize, you know what, this just isn't quite working. Maybe we should try some of what Mr. Meese are talked about. Bring your soil covered, soil armor, crop rotation, diversity, incorporating livestock back into the landscape. No-till is obviously the big one, not tilling it allows all the worms and microorganisms to work together and improve your soil health. Maybe we should give some of those practices a try and see if that would help what we're dealing with here on the farm.