Wow, what a year! Who would have dreamed that our no-till planting window in southwestern Ohio would only run from March 28 to April 27. The few no-tillers who recognized early that the soil was ideal for no-tilling had an excellent crop. Many no-tillers who waited for the more traditional planting dates never got a crop in the ground.

No one thing got us into no-till, but every year we find more reasons to stay with it. In the 1970s and early 1980s, our farm management included my father, Doyle, my Uncle Jerry and a cousin, Roy. They had given up the moldboard plow in the 1970s and had switched to a chisel plow system, but were still doing a lot of tillage.