 The Atlas Blizzard was October 3rd of 2013. When that storm hit is what really got me into thinking, why do we ranch the way we do, you know, and it was kind of like, well, because this neighbor does it this way and everybody looks at another guy, well, I guess that's why I need to be doing it. And I thought maybe I should start thinking on my own and so it was a big shock, this Atlas Storm, we lost cows and so that next year I went to the South Dakota Grazing School and went home kind of all fired up and I should have started out a little slower but I just thought I needed to move them every couple of days and they didn't have any knowledge and got some thin cows and breed back wasn't real good but we kind of overcame all that and now it's kind of a normal process. We used to kind of do it kind of like everybody else, graze all our ground and then plan on feeding hay all winter but now we try to leave about half the ranch dock pile winter grazing. After switching to rotational grazing, I guess the thing I've noticed is the pastures look better is from what I remember when I was a kid. It seems as if there's a greater diversity of grasses since we started doing this. I think cattle learn to eat more when they're limited to an area for a period of time. I've seen Prairie Sand Read for 30 years and wondered why it even grew because nothing needed but once I started this, one time I just noticed they just clipped it about halfway down and it was just level on top for like a 30 acre patch of it. I've signed up for a couple of equip programs with NRCS. Derek Oliver helped me quite a bit on that. We got some pipelines. They probably helped me with seven miles and I've probably put five or six more in on my own. We're really getting water everywhere and we do a lot of portable water, drag pipes around and get to all the areas of the pasture. Earlier this summer, I went out with Jody and we moved cattle in the water tank and everything and we both commented on how many birds we'd heard and then he showed me the cow birds that sit on the cattle and stuff. We hadn't seen them in years and they were back and just so much more wildlife and stuff going on out there and that was really fun to see. On the hay ground, we used to just cut it every year and haul it off into a stack. Now we graze it with yearlings on a daily move. It's put more litter on the hay ground. This year we couldn't keep up with it with the number of yearlings we had so we cut about 87 acres in a trial and put it in bucker piles and we're going to kind of ration that out this winter if it gets tough and cold. Give them so many bucker piles a day and fence it off with poly. Give them a little boost. The hay that we use for bale grazing, we figure about 20% waste if you want to call it waste. Those cows trample it down. They step in it and make pockets in the soil for moisture unless the grounds froze. It really holds that moisture. It puts a mat down. They defecate and urinate and it gets the soil biology going. It turns just a dead soil into a living soil and eventually with the right management we'll grow good grass. Jody worked for a rancher back when we first got married for a couple years and then we started having children and we moved to this place and bought this place. We have three children all together and brought them all three up here and Jody has virtually taught them everything they know about ranching and mechanics and horse breaking, everything. Growing up on a ranch is a lot of fun. You get to work on a lot of different stuff and do a lot of things. Rope and riding a lot. It's a very enjoyable way of life. I'd really like to have my kids out here as they grow up. We live in town and that's just not the way I grew up and that's not the way that I want them to grow up. Jody absolutely loves this way of ranching. He just said the other day when he came in the house he said, I had so much fun today. I love it. And so that to me makes me feel really good that he's happy with what he's doing and it makes me more happy to go out and help him. Joanne and I have four grandkids, the oldest ones somewhere around four or five. Doing this, you know, we're thinking down the road to have a sustainable operation and a profitable operation. Family friendly. We don't ever plan on selling it. We'd like to keep it in the family so we want it to be sustainable and profitable as we can so it keeps going.