The rolling hills and bottomlands of southeastern Iowa are anything but simple to farm, leaving Steve Berger and his father, Dennis, with the challenge of saving their soil while building it up. Through 36 years of no-till, the Bergers have gained a lot of knowledge on how to manage residue within crop production to develop a highly functioning microbial system. The Wellman, Iowa, no-tiller explains the use of cover crops like cereal rye in a corn-soybean rotation and how they utilize hog manure effectively from their farrow-to-finish swine operation — all with the aim of leaving soils better than when the Bergers started farming them.