 My grandparents started this operation about 1923. My dad was born and raised, lived his whole life on this operation, and same thing with me, I've been here my whole life. In our operation, we work together as a family unit. My wife's involved, my son's involved in it. We move cows together, we work together, he's able to go out and see nature and the creation, everything that works together as it was meant to. One of the things that's been really fun for me is when we move the cattle, we're actually moving them in areas that still have grass, so that you don't feel like you're abusing the land, but you're actually using the land, not only to make a living, but to keep it healthy, that you're a steward of the land, not just of the animal. We live in what would be considered pothole country. We have quite a bit of native grass here yet. This operation has a little over 2,000 acres of native grassland yet. Same as when the Indians roam the plains. We have T.P. Rings Indian Graves. There's on this operation about 500 acres that has actually been broke, but the rest is native grass. We enjoy seeing the grasslands, enjoy seeing the wildlife on it. The whole environment benefits from the grasslands. It is a little bit rougher ground, makes it a little difficult to farm. Some people would farm it, but we don't due to the importance of the grass. My dad always said the cows are what bought most everything on the farm, not the farming. We are not wanting to have all the money that we could possibly be gaining and may be gaining if we broke up this land. Splitting the land up, allowing that grass to grow, to regenerate has benefited us and that we can leave it as it is and still make a living off of it. And we're proud of that. Back in 2006, we had a severe drought and I had just prior to that, I was able to enroll in an equip program sponsored by NRCS and I was approved for it. So we put in that year, we put in 25,000 feet of water line. In stages, he kind of added pipeline, added tanks, and just put them right in his cross fences and you really see the even distribution of the grazing and the pastures because of that. When we started the rotation, we did about two to three weeks per paddock and then we'd move them on to the next one. From seeing the benefits of that and rotating the cows through and how the grass could recover because they're having to eat species that if they were just allowed to roam the whole pasture, they'd just pick out their choice plants. So some areas get more overgrazed than others. By forcing them to go through the different paddock, splitting those pastures up, they have had to eat more of the grass and then there's a longer recovery time for the ones that they really hit hard. With Roarbox operation, they have really reduced their dependency on hay to where they're brought in, some of their hayland into the rotation. And one thing I think they see that they're doing there is a lot of nutrient cycling. When they harvest their hay and they bring it into the home place, the cattle eat it there, they drop their manure there and then they got to haul it back out. And in their operation, the cattle eat there and they leave their manure there and that's reduced some of their inputs on that front. This year, even with their drought, I was able to leave some rest and you can really see the big blue stem, a lot of the forbs that have started to be coming through, so there's a big variety of plants and vegetation for the livestock to choose from. I have seen an economic impact with the rotation to be able to up my herd, be able to sell more pounds of beef off the land. One of the hardest things for I think for most producers is the fact that when you go out into the pasture and you see the grass that has grown already and you think, well, these cows can still stay here. There's still something to eat. If you leave that leaf structure there, it's in a way it's like its mouth for the roots. You got to leave that leaf surface area there for it to take in the sun to build those energy reserves for next year and to build that root growth. You're not losing what's there. It's benefiting the biology and the plant to regrowth and give you more when it comes back. Being able to keep that shade on the soil to cut down on the evaporation of what moisture you do have to work with. That first fence is always the toughest to put up. You never had that fence there before. It's a change. Change can be hard, but that first fence is the toughest. And once a producer gets that first fence in, it only takes one to notice a little bit of a difference. And that's the gateway fence to lead in to more fence and to go that next step. Whether it's our own land or the land that's around us or the water that we drink in 100 years or our kids drink in 100 years, we value that. We're trying to take care of it in a way that it still produces, but it produces in a way that is showing it the honor that it deserves.