 I had spent all my life on the home place and back in the 80s we decided that we just couldn't make it there anymore because of high interest and low commodity prices and and then there was three families trying to make living off the home place and and so when we had the opportunity to come into this place that was my goal to begin with was to make this place more productive so that we could continue to do what we love and that's the ranch. I grew up on a ranch about 75 miles from here right at the southern edge of Perkins County much different terrain much different soils rotational grazing and a lot of these scientific things were not heard of when I was growing up we turned cows into a pasture and they probably stayed there a long time so when Chuck and I got married and and lived on a different ranch started learning some different practices and by the time we got here it was a whole new ball game. We moved on this place in 2001 and leased it for the first three years and then bought it at at that time and and so with any transfer of ownership you have to deal with with the prior owner's management and so after going through two four and six all three real dry years we realized the importance of keeping the moisture on the place and so with the rotation grazing we have seen less erosion and better plant growth because of the organic matter being putting back into the soil. Our place is made up of a gently rolling terrain sandy loam soils we do have some areas of some clay pan in the 18 years we've been on the place I would say that 90% of that that was clay pan at that time has a little bit growing on it so we're making some progress there. Originally there was 900 acres of farmland and we've seated down to where we're only cultivating no-till 500 acres and a lot of that has been put back into native grasses and of course and we do farm we've got some corn we put in yearly and last year we put in some rye into some Malfalfa ground that we terminated. I'm hoping to go back with some warm season grass when we get through no-till in it. Some of the older natives coming back we saw a small patch of prairie sandery. We have one pasture that was basically blue grama and buffalo grass and this year we've had timely rains and kept everything growing and good and we've seen the western wheat grass come in and thicken up also seeing some needle grass that's coming back in that those areas so that long duration of rest has really helped and our controlled grazing has made quite a difference. We've got an area that's got some saline seeps. We planted western wheat grass and green needle in that area threw in a little bit of falcata and ciceramilk batch. We're seeing that the western wheat grass is starting to fill in in those areas it's a little thin but it's growing. Those areas have dried up because we've got a perennial growing there versus farming because that all was farmland for 60 years maybe and conventional tilled until 2005 we went to no-till and been no-till ever since. We do have a portable water system I just took a 16 foot steel water tank and plumbed it with a valve. We've got an inch and a quarter plastic pipe 200 pound PSI that we can drag around. We've got 1200 feet of pipe on that that line and the cows get used to trailing in it doesn't have a lot of capacity but it sure worked well during summer. We introduced cover crops we've been doing it for 10 years. I went to a seminar that Jay Furr from North Dakota was speaking and he said you know the best thing you can do before you go from a monoculture to a grass pasture mix is plant cover crops. We've had real good success with that. We've seen a reduction in chemical use and an increase in organic matter in our fields. We took sample for plant and corn a year ago and we were at 3.4 on our organic matter and I was visiting with Jay Furr about how much fertilizer to use and that was the first time we used the Haney test so it was kind of new and we're trying to figure out how to analyze that test and he said boy he'd like to have that chunk of ground it was a good test. We were fortunate to be able to raise our two kids Tiffany and Jack on a couple different ranches. Three of our grandchildren live very close to us the other is just a couple hundred miles away and they're still at the age where it's fun to come out to the ranch and help they have an ownership in the sheep. We run a few sheep here and it's kind of a project to basically keep the weeds down around the place. Grandkids have some sheep of their own and and so they've got that interest when they come out to check on their sheep but we do a lot of them just a certain amount of area to graze so that they aren't grazing it into the ground and they do a good follow-up on cattle and sheep tend to eat some of the more of the forbs and finer stuff. It sure gives us an option to increase the production on the place on our organic matter. Karine has been on my right all the way through this she has scratched her head a few times and wondered why we're doing it but she understands that we're trying to build this for the next generation and improve things. This country was settled back in that 07 to 012, 1912. There was periods in there where farming practices didn't regenerate the soil and we would like to leave this place in better shape.