Wet fall, wet spring, wet fall, wet spring. It seems no-tillers need to get used to making things work in a more aquatic-type system, our recent survey of No-Till Farmer readers found. In fact, how our readers’ no-till planter setups worked in wet conditions was a common thread in the replies we received.

Don’t be discouraged by the challenges you faced no-tilling corn on corn for the first time this year; you’re not alone.

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.

To stop erosion on slopes as steep as 50 percent in the Skyrocket Hills near Prescott, Wash., Mike Thomas, Sr. and his son Mike, Jr., haven’t cultivated any ground since 1985.