I’ve been putting together a crop production puzzle for the last 20 years. Each piece has been carefully whittled into the perfect shape to fit my specific circumstances in Laurel, Del.

Retiring from farming isn’t always voluntary. Sometimes you’ve got to keep farming because you’re not profitable enough.

If sieve was a soil type, it would well describe the farmland acres I manage in North Florida.

My farming goals differ at 64 from what they were at 44. Profit is, of course, still a driver, but I’m not as interested in fine-tuning yields or producing bin-busting crops.

My time spent as a farmhand provided many learning and advancement opportunities — including starting my own farm in Connersville, Ind., which stitched together the one-generation gap in my family’s farming heritage.

Starting a farm from scratch using no-till, EQIP and CSP programs proved the best and easiest path to production for my wife, Cassandra, and me.

I’m not afraid to listen to my kid. My dad, Dale, was a little more skeptical, but then again, skeptical is understandable — especially when it was his living that was on the line when my son, Brad, and I wanted to do a little experimenting

No-till is all I’ve ever known. The practice was developed just 2 hours south of us in Christian County, Ky. My dad and grandfather bought an Allis-Chalmers no-till planter in the 1980s. By the time I purchased my first piece of land as a sophomore in college it wasn’t even a thought to put a plow to it. It just wasn’t how we farmed