[SUBSCRIBE TO THIS PODCAST]

Brought to you by:

“We started kind of experimenting with no-till in the late sixties and even the early seventies, we did not have the equipment to help us do it right at that time. And this predates RoundUp as well…”

— Paul McPherson, No-Tiller, New Park, Pa.  

In today’s episode of the podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, come along on the road with me as I travel across parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania to visit 3 different farmers who are working with cover crops and no-till in unique ways.

Our first stop in part 1 of this journey took us to Jim Hershey’s farm in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. In the next farm visit, we met Cecil County, Maryland farmer Bryan Racine, who is relatively new to the no-till and cover crop movement, but is learning and innovating at a rapid pace.

In this final installment of the Cover Crops on the Road Podcast, we’ll finish up the road trip with a visit to New Park, Pennsylvania grower Paul McPherson at Maple Lawn Farms.  His operation is unique from the first two visits for several reasons. Let’s hop in the car and head out to the farm to learn more.  

Related Content

• [Podcast] On the Road with Cover Crops — Jim Hershey Part 1 
• [Podcast] On the Road with Cover Crops — Jim Hershey Part 2
• [Podcast] On the Road with Cover Crops — Bryan Racine Part 1
• [Podcast] On the Road with Cover Crops — Bryan Racine Part 2

         
           

      

         

No-Till Farmer's podcast series is brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment.

More from this series

Yetter Farm Equipment has been providing farmers with residue management, fertilizer placement, and seedbed preparation solutions since 1930. Today, Yetter equipment is your answer for success in the face of ever-changing production agriculture challenges. Yetter offers a full lineup of planter attachments designed to perform in varying planting conditions, multiple options for precision fertilizer placement, strip-till units, and stalk rollers for your combine. Yetter products maximize your inputs, save you time, and deliver return on your investment. Visit them at yetterco.com.

---

 Full Transcript

Welcome to the No-Till Farmer Podcast. I'm Mackane Vogel, associate editor of No-Till Farmer. In today's episode, come along on the road with me as I travel across parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania to visit three different farmers who are working with cover crops and no-till in unique ways. Our first stop in part one of this journey took us to Jim Hershey's farm in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. In the next farm visit we met Cecil County, Maryland farmer Ryan Racine, who is relatively new to the no-till and cover crop movement but is learning and innovating at a rapid pace. In this final installment of the Cover Crops on the Road Podcast, we'll finish up the road trip with a visit to New Park, Pennsylvania grower Paul McPherson at Maple Lawn Farms. His operation is unique from the first two visits for several reasons, but let's hop in the car and head out to the farm to learn more.

Good morning, cover croppers, no-tillers, and other growers. Today we are headed... actually, I thought we were headed to another Maryland farm. I was incorrect. It is just north of the Maryland-Pennsylvania state line on the other side. So we will be in Pennsylvania again today. And it's an area called New Park, Pennsylvania. It is a little bit south of the Susquehanna River, where we heard about that a little bit last episode with Bryan Racine. And it'll be interesting to see if that still plays a role even though they are a little bit south. So we'll look into that.

Where we're headed is Maple Lawn Farms. We're going to meet up with Paul McPherson. A little bit about the farm. He'll tell you more, but what I can tell you is it's a sixth generation farm in York County, Pennsylvania. And I know they do some farmer's markets. I believe they've got a commercial side of the business, so I don't know if they're doing pumpkin patches or... I know, like I said, farmer's market. There may even be like a corn maze or something like that. So I know there's some fun for the family and for kids that they do, but I'm excited to meet Paul.

He also told me when I reached out to him, he was just going to come up with a list of things that he thinks I might find interesting or that our audience might find interesting. And one of which, he mentioned he actually has a neighbor who plants with a no-till John Deere planter pulled by five or six horses. Not, actually, too uncommon for Pennsylvania, especially that area. I know there's a large Amish community in Pennsylvania in general. I'm not a 100% sure if that's the area where it's most heavily populated by that group. But nonetheless, it's definitely interesting, and this should be another great trip so I'm excited.

And just a picture perfect day. Right now I'm looking at baby blue skies. A lot of clouds, but just good, fluffy white clouds. I don't think there's really a lot of rain in the forecast. And we're sitting right around high 70s, low 80s. So it's hot, and it's always humid on the East Coast around here, but we'll make do. I got the AC blaring in the car right now on my way out there, so that's helping. And yeah, I think that's about it for my intro. So I will keep on trucking down the highway here and we will be there shortly to talk to Paul.

The family has been here for a long while. We've only been on this particular... only been on this particular piece of land for I guess maybe 100... it's not quite 200, so early, mid-1800s.

Okay.

So we are... Pennsylvania has a Century Farm program where you can trace it back, so we did that 40 years ago.

Yeah.

So a while ago. But yeah, so that's... we all got off the boat.

So take me back to the beginning of the history here. What are the origins of the farm here?

Like I say, the original... and this right here is not the original farmstead because, as has happened everywhere, you keep attaching properties.

Sure.

So the initial one is to the west about a mile. At that point, in the 1800s, they were all small farms. Everybody had some of everything. Since then, Maple Lawn Farms is a C corporation. There's hardly any of them around. But he incorporated it in '47, so that's probably all there was in '47.

Sure.

At that point it was potatoes, vegetables, wheat, and poultry, and fruit, because we've all been in fruit forever. And we have, since the market's changes we're completely out of vegetables primarily because there aren't very many processors in the area anymore. The processors have moved mostly west. Some north. But at one time this part of the country, we're an hour out of Baltimore, there were a lot of small processors. Tomatoes, corn, because that's where they were close to the population. That's changed.

The peach market has changed somewhat because it's more... we are almost entirely retail now. Apples are split between wholesale and retail but peaches, pretty much all retail. It used to... originally this part of the country was heavily in potatoes. That's all gone. York County at one time had 350 to 400 potato growers. I don't think I could find three. I maybe find two. Don't think I could find three anymore. So that's changed. And it has become more cash grain. A lot of cash grain.

Livestock has moved back in because of integration. And you have the poultry and hogs, and that's increasing, which makes a good market for all of the grain that we grow. We are at... one of the interesting things when I talk to Midwest farmers is if I don't ask, they ask, what's your basis? And their basis is... I don't know about Wisconsin, but Illinois, Indiana, they're usually, depending on how close they are to a ethanol plant or a soybean processing plant, they're from 10 to 30 under. You get up into, when I was in South Dakota it apparently is not unusual for them to get 50 under, 60 under.

And right now we are at 95 over. And we were... which is better than it was. That's closer to where normal is. But last year, for a while we were 30 under. In the middle of harvest I think it might've even been even. But normally we're on a positive basis, and that. That helps a lot. But there's more continuous corn in this area. It's getting more and more soybeans. Part of that is that our soybean, we've been a plus basis on corn and a minus 30 on soybeans. And after a while you start doing the math, and the corn is better at that.

But I think we're going to see more soybeans. We've got, Purdue has increased their... well, they built a plant. Then they increased the size of that plant. So I think we're going to see more soybeans. It's getting... we're not on a positive basis but the negative isn't as bad as it was. And we got a place to go.

So when did you guys start with no-till or cover crops or any of the regenerative agriculture? When did that come into the picture?

We started kind of experimenting with no-till in the late '60s. And in the late '60s and even the early '70s we did not have the equipment to do it, so-

Or the resources, really, to know.

Yeah. And that predates Roundup.

Yeah.

So you're dealing with 240 and a combination of maybe Princep, atrazine, but maybe just atrazine. So yeah, you're right, you didn't have the resources. So we kind of backed off. We have continued to see what works, but now we've got the equipment I'd say for the last... we've been pretty much no-till for the last 20 years. Now we're starting to look at, maybe we do have stratification. Maybe we do have some of the potash and maybe the phosphorous in that top layer.

Maybe we do have to look at, do we occasionally need to do something to get the nutrients a little more uniform through the soil or at least know where the root zone's at? I think some years it may not make much difference. But if it gets really good and dry, that seems to be the time that you end up with tissue tests that say you're low on potash, not very high on phosphorous. But potash seems to be the big one, at least for us, that we're struggling with.

So we may have to look at some way of doing something else with the soil periodically. And you kind of hate to do it because, in the short run, it creates some other problems. In the long run, if too many of the nutrients are in the top inch or two, then what do you do with them?

And so we think maybe we're going to... well, we did some last year. We did some late tillage. Vertical tillage type. Hopefully. And then... which helps as far as getting a cover crop established. It really does help if you're putting it in later, and particularly if you're spinning it on and not putting it on with some type of machine that puts it in the ground. So maybe that helps. I don't know if that's the answer or not. Maybe it helps. But we continue to learn new things.

Yeah. It's one of those industries where you could be doing it for five years or 35 years and you're still going to learn new stuff every year.

Yeah. Yeah.

What species of cover crops have you had the most success with in this region?

Probably cereal rye. The last two years we've used a little bit of wheat, and I've been surprised that it works pretty good. Now, I think if you get too late, if the crop comes off late and you have trouble getting... if you're not getting it in before the 1st of November or something like that, or actually mid-October, I think the rye is going to be better. But the wheat did pretty good. I was surprised. And we used a local seed on it. Got the seed tested, certified by the state, and it worked all right. Pennsylvania does have a... well, I guess it is through the state. The Conservation District in this county has a program where they are paying for putting cover crops on. It's not as good as Maryland. Maryland has the best cover crop program anywhere, and-

What makes it so good? Just the higher payments or-

They pay better and they kind of insist that it gets done in a more timely way. And the pay is the incentive. And people really try hard to do that. And there were a couple... not so much anymore, but three, four years, five years ago when you left Pennsylvania and went into Maryland on one of these back country roads, you could tell that you had gone out of Pennsylvania into Maryland because the fields were green. It worked. And now that's changing. That's changing. At least in York County it's changing, because they also have a program that, it pays enough to cover the cost of the seed. That's a big thing.

Yesterday I visited a farmer who was in Cecil County, Maryland, and he was talking about, I think he is involved in the Maryland cover crop program. Now, last week I was visiting, I don't know if you're familiar with Jim Hershey in Elizabethtown?

Mm-hmm.

Spent some time with him. And it's been interesting, what you're talking about, to see the differences between ag in Pennsylvania and in Maryland. But for you guys-

Now, Jim, is he in Lebanon County? I don't think he's in Lancaster.

It's Elizabethtown technically, but I don't know what county that would be off the top of my head.

Yeah, I think he's just north of Lancaster County. So I don't know what kind of a program their county might have.

Yeah, right.

But yeah, he is really on the front edge of all the no-till stuff.

Yeah, definitely somebody that a lot of people turn to for advice and that kind of stuff. I know he's having a field day in July.

Yeah.

I'm going to come back into town for that as well.

Yeah.

So that'll be a lot of fun. But what can you say about this area? Tell our listeners a little bit about the climate and the type of soil that you deal with out here, and how that plays a role in the decision-making on the farm.

Well, one of the things that is pretty obvious is that we are in rolling hilly country. And what we can see from here is what we would call flat ground. When it gets to where you're worried about the high-clearance sprayers trying to stay in a row and sliding sideways, that's steep ground.

Yeah.

But it's what we have. So it's a little more of a challenge there. To an extent, the no-till actually helps on steeper ground. You don't get the erosion. And I can remember when everything was plowed and worked more than once. And you had a two-inch rain in an hour, there was just mud everywhere. We don't see that kind of erosion anymore. Even the Amish have gotten away. They're still plowing but they're doing better as far as cover cropping and even some no-till planting. We have the ground. We do not have deep soil.

We're working with from four to eight inches. There are some bottom lands where it's maybe crick bottom land. We don't have a lot of that, but where we might have a foot of topsoil. And the trade-off is it probably stays wet there. It is not without its... it's a two-way thing on that. So we've gotten more... and 20 years ago there were a lot of strip crops we had, and probably 30 years ago. But I would say the strip cropping is not what it was. A lot of it is going away partly because of big equipment, partly because of rented land where people are now going in and they want to put the whole farm in the same crop because it's easier and it works better with the equipment and they don't have to come back. So I think that's a challenge and... but we really need to protect the soil because some places, particularly on steep ground, we just don't have a lot of it. And I think that's where a lot of the cover cropping really makes sense, to try to hold whatever you've got.

Would you say a lot of your neighbors around here are no-till and cover crops? Or is it still taking a long time for people to get with that program?

Certainly a lot more no-till every year. Cover cropping is coming but I would not say that's a predominant practice. And that's true for all of York County. This part... further north in the county they have soil types that are... in places, they have soil types that are less forgiving than we've got here. We do have some decent soil types here that are a little bit more forgiving for wet weather and compaction. They're still selling big discs and they're still selling chisel plows. You'd have a hard time finding a moldboard plow, but they're still selling chisel plows.

Sure.

So it's changing, but I think the early adopters are in and probably it'll be a slow, gradual change from here on.

So as far as your farm, what types of equipment are you guys using here for cover crops and no-till?

A lot of those cover crop rye or wheat that we're using we're spinning on. Were refined at the light tillage, vertical tillage. Gives us enough. It chops up the fodder enough and it gives us a little bit of soil to get that seed started in. We have used a drone, and it works pretty well. It's not cheap but it has its place. And it's not everywhere every time, but it does have its place.

Did you guys purchase one or did you have somebody hired to come in and use it?

The mill just south of us has two of them. They had one. They've got two now. They're doing a lot of work with them. I think probably the most acreage they're doing is in fungicide work on corn and soybeans. But they're doing a lot of cover crop work with it too. And we've got one peculiar field that, we can't get it. Number one, we can't get it harvested until after the end of the first weekend in November because we still have people walking through it at that point. And it's got bridges in it and pathways. And the drone worked pretty well on that. Last year is the first year we tried it, and it worked very well.

You think you'll do it again?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

With that field, that's the way to go with it.

Yeah, it seems like I've heard more and more farmers at least giving it a try, especially with some particular fields like that, where you haven't found out something that works real well. It's amazing, just the technology that we've got now, that-

It is.

Solves some of those problems.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Hugh, my son, does have some. He has a video, maybe still pictures of them doing that that particular field. Have you run into the people at the mill yet?

Not yet.

No. They are very progressive. One of the things that they're doing, they have a sizable, a farm-size plot, areas of different products, different timings, different machines. The similarity would be to Beck Seed, at what they're doing. And they're not quite as sophisticated as Beck is, because I don't think anybody else is that sophisticated, but they also have a field. They're just south of here. They're in Hartford County, but they're just south of here.

So we watch what they do and some of the things that they have tried where they... and we don't run a good experiment station. We just don't. It's too much trouble. But they are able to do a better job on testing a population of soybeans at three or four different populations, and timing of fungicides, and some of the new biologicals that they're working with. So we've watched them on for a year or so on the Pivot Bio. We're using the Pivot Bio. But there's so many of them out now that it's hard to know which ones work and which ones don't, and what fits our program.

Yeah. It's good to have somebody you can rely on nearby that is testing those sorts of things. Have you-

We'll come back to the episode in a moment, but first I'd like to thank our sponsor, Yetter Farm Equipment, for supporting today's podcast. Looking for innovative solutions to maximize your farm's productivity? Look no further than Yetter Farm Equipment. They're dedicated to providing farmers with the highest quality equipment. From row cleaners and closing wheels to fertilizer equipment, strip till units, and stock devastators, Yetter has the tools you need to optimize your farming operation. Visit yetterco.com to learn more and find a dealer near you. And now let's get back to the podcast episode.

Do you guys have any experience with planting green at all? Do you do that here or...

We don't. We did. It did not work that well. Granted, it was five, six years ago now, and we have different equipment now. But I am happier with tilling the stuff off when it's about that height, and then everything seems to work better. This year some of it got a little higher than that and-

Like just above the waist type height?

If it gets to waist-high, we're late.

Okay. Yeah.

We would rather have it somewhere between just knee-high to waist-high.

Sure.

That seems to work pretty well. And having said that, we were so late getting in on some of it that it wasn't all that high but it was cold and wet, and the Roundup was slow. And I told Matt. I said, "It's not our intention, but some of that's going to be green when we plant." It was dead but it was still sort of green.

Sure.

But that's a world of difference, between that and what these guys are able to do with the really planting green. Good for them. That's a different skill set.

Yeah. One of the themes I've been looking at as I explore more of these farms around the Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware area, especially last year. I had a chance to visit a farmer in Delaware who was pretty close to Chesapeake Bay. And it's interesting to me, how much that body of water plays a role in the decision making out there. I'm curious. I know you guys are not super close to Susquehanna River, but-

We're in the watershed.

Right. So talk a little bit about how that affects what you guys do and what you have to do with your farm.

It has certainly affected when we put on fertilizers but, in particular, any kind of manure. And we, like a lot of people, are buying chicken manure, having it hauled in, and spreading it. And that's become a pretty common practice in the area. The hog people have their own manure, and they have their own issues, and that doesn't transport well, but chicken manure does. So there are timings. Timing on that. I think everybody that I've seen is pretty conscious of the timing and pretty careful to do it right.

And the Chesapeake Bay Commission has declared Lancaster County and York County as being the two most terrible counties for polluting the Bay, which we don't think is true. There may have been a time, but it is not anymore.

Yeah.

We don't have the concentration of livestock that perhaps was here at one time, and the practices are just completely different. Our county government has worked with, I'm not quite sure who, but the Chesapeake Bay and others. But they got some funding to put stream monitors at a number of places in York County to see if we were as bad as they say we are.

And after three years, the results are coming back that those streams are a lot cleaner than the methodology of what they assume was saying that it was. So at least agriculturally, we're doing much better than predicted, so that... but it is a factor. Maryland is probably a little tougher on that, but we're in the same watershed and we're being checked by a similar group of people, from the not so much FSA or NRCS, but the Conservation District, because they're the ones that are really watching that. So to that extent it's been good that they are also the ones who are funding some of the cover crop programs.

Yeah, interesting

So what are... you mentioned a lot of fruit now, but what are all of the crops that you're growing right now?

We've got cherries, sweet cherries. We will start blueberries this weekend, peaches in about two weeks, and then apples in late summer and into the fall. We have pumpkins that, most of them are you-pick. We will truck people, haul people out on a wagon to pick them. On the commodity side, it's corn, soybeans, and grain sorghum. And so our second year on grain sorghum. Last year was a learning experience. This year we think we can do a lot better.

Okay.

Also a peculiar season. It seemed like everybody in the area had problems with grain sorghum last year.

So what are some of the things you're looking to improve upon this year that didn't go right with it last year?

Well, weed control for one. And we've changed seeds so that we can go back in and respray, because we do have Johnson grass and some other grass issues. So we're maybe overly cautious this year, but we're going to go in and respray on that. One of the things that caught everybody last year was we had, at close to maturity, there was a 10-day wet period, so the grain sorghum sprouted. Nobody told me it would do that. And the guys that have been growing it for three or four years had never seen it before.

Sure.

So we're thinking, and apparently it doesn't happen every year, but if it were to happen again, then you've got to go in and harvest it when you really don't want to.

Yeah. Yeah. What are the weeds that you deal with the most out here? What species?

The one we worry the most with is probably Johnson grass. The broadleaf weeds, we run the whole gamut of them. We have everything that anybody else has, I'm sure. But the herbicides today in corn and soybeans are so good that you don't really think you can go in and work on it. However, if you're growing pumpkins, the herbicide program is pathetic, and there's just, if you have a broadleaf problem, there's very little that you can go back over with on pumpkins.

So we have trouble with marestail. You can have trouble with velvet leaf. And some of the ones that, in corn and soybeans, you just don't even think about them because they're controllable. So that's a bit of a challenge. You can clean the grass up in pumpkins. That's no problem.

Yeah.

But if you have a broadleaf, it's a challenge. So we really, very conscientiously rotate crops around where we know there's going to be pumpkins next year or the year after.

Sure.

We're trying to clean up some of those broadleaf weeds and some diseases, too, but yeah. So we've got enough. There's still enough things out there that you've got to consider what you can work with to-

Yeah. How about, much pest pressure? Do you get any slugs out here or anything like that?

We did last year.

Okay.

We've been watching this year because it's been equally... maybe not equally wet, but this has also been a wet year, it seems.

Yeah.

So we have not seen slug damage so far, which is good. Last year we replanted half the soybeans. I had never replanted corn or soybeans in my life.

Wow.

Last year we learned a lesson. So we're watching a little closer. We have not had a problem that we thought we needed to treat anything yet. We've been using fungicides on corn and soybeans for six, eight years anyhow. And our initial problem was gray leaf spot.

Okay.

Particularly if you get continuous no-till corn, you're going to have gray leaf spot. So part of it is varietal. All the seed corn companies are pretty good about knowing which varieties are more tolerant. And part of it is that you just need to be aware of it. And more years than not you probably ought to be spraying for it. So we were already doing that. What's the new one? Tar spot.

Oh, sure.

We have that in the area. We haven't seen a really big problem with it, but we've been using a fungicide anyhow. And there again, probably no-till continuous corn. The worst place in the world for it. I don't think they've figured out varieties yet, but I think probably the fungicide program that we've had for a while probably helps with that.

Yup.

We've changed the timing a little bit because of the tar spot. Backed the application time up a little bit. But we have not had a bad problem with it, so I... but we know it's in the area. We know it's here.

Yeah. So as we wrap up here, talk a little bit more about the actual activities that go on here. Obviously there's wine tasting, pumpkins, corn maze. Talk about some of that.

Yeah. When my son came back to the farm we needed to add a source of income, and he is... And if he's here we will catch up. I think he's here. We will catch up to him. So he started the corn maze in '96. 47. So we've been doing that for a while. And that kind of led to... we were already, we've been doing you-pick apples and peaches since the late '60s.

Wow.

Those two we figured would fit together.

Yeah.

And initially, to show you how smart we are not, we thought, well, the recreation business or agritourism would be a good hedge as far as bad weather. If you have bad weather, that won't affect it. That's completely wrong. If you have a rainy weekend, nobody is coming out.

Yeah.

So it's another thing that you work around, and it's why the lavender festival is two weekends, because there's good chance that, one of those weekends, you're going to have a rainy day, or a couple of them. So that has worked in. We felt that we've kind of got into the wine... we make peach wine, apple wine, cherry wine because that's what we grow. Now, we work with another local vineyard to fill in some gaps. But same with the pick-your-own, and particularly on peaches. If you've got so many ready and you're expecting... you need a good weekend and you have two or three days of rain, all of a sudden you've got a lot of fruit that is not marketable anywhere.

So we figured maybe we can use that fruit to make peach juice for other wineries, which we did for a couple years. And then we said, "Well, if we're making juice for other wineries, maybe we should just have a winery of our own."

Yeah. Smart.

But it adds to the complexity of the whole thing.

Sure.

So we do a little of that. But the agritourism is a very big part of the business, and that's the part that he runs. And he has now been doing designs and some marketing for other farms from New Jersey to California and from Quebec to Texas.

Wow.

So he's busy. He keeps busy.

Yeah.

He keeps busy.

So what all goes on at Lavender Festival? Tell us about that.

We have about an acre of lavender plants out there. It's set up so that we can take people who park here in on a wagon. We haul them out to that area. And there's an extension of the winery out there. We'll have... I think they're going to have live... you'll have to ask Hugh if we're having live music there or here, but I think it's here this time. But they can go out and take pictures and come back, so ride them back. Food is here, which is what the tent is for.

Right.

So a gathering area.

And how many acres are you total? I should've have asked that before, but...

We're paying tax on about 1,300.

Okay, nice.

So it's enough to keep us busy.

Sure. Well, let's wrap up with this question. I'm curious. Obviously you've been in agriculture for a long, long time. What is your earliest agriculture memory? What's your first memory of farming?

That's an interesting question. The one that really sticks, when I was a kid, growing up, we had a lot of potatoes and a lot of snap beans. That puts it into the early '50s. Late '40s, early '50s. There was a stretch of dry weather in that area so my father got a big irrigation setup. And one of my memories is, and this is hand-moved aluminum pipe in potato fields which are a 100% tillage, more than once.

Yeah.

So when you pump water on there, you have mud. So yeah, carrying pipe. Carrying pipe in the mud in potato fields. Completely different from what we do now.

All right. Well, another successful visit there with Paul McPherson. Got a chance to talk to his son Hugh for a little while too, who's in charge of some more of the commercial side of the business. He's in charge of the maze, the corn maze, and a lot of the other hobby stuff there that Paul was mentioning in the interview. Helps keep profit coming in. So it was cool to talk to him too.

And a couple takeaways here as we wrap up this series. I think, number one, I didn't even realize that cover crops and no-till could be involved in something like a corn maze rather than corn and soybeans, how I'm used to seeing it in the Midwest. So cool sort of sidebar there. But I think the biggest takeaway from Jim Hershey's farm to Bryan Racine's farm and then today, to Paul McPherson, no-till and cover crops and regenerative agriculture, it comes in all different shapes and sizes.

And whether you're Jim and you've been doing this 30-plus years, or you're Bryan and you've got no blueprint to go off from beforehand and you're five years in and trying something new every day. Or you're somewhere in the middle and you're Paul. He's got memories. He said his earliest ag memory is related to tillage, deep tillage, and potato fields. And to see how far he's come. It's really interesting to me to see that no matter whether it's a small or large operation, no matter how long they've been doing it, it's all pretty much for the same reasons. And it's about keeping the soil healthy and wanting to preserve that resource for future generations.

And all three farmers that I visited on this trip all mentioned without really me even asking directly, they all mentioned their sons starting to take more responsibility. Obviously in Bryan Racine's case, his son is just a young lad right now but even still, he mentioned without me bringing up that that's the goal. That that's what he hopes will happen. And some day his son will take it over. And that's why they all do this. They want to see that farmland be even more successful for their children and their children's children and all the generations to come.

So as always, chatting with farmers, covering agriculture, doing what I do continues to be a very rewarding job. And I thank you all out there for listening and for supporting the podcast as well as No-Till Farmer Magazine, Strip-Till Farmer Magazine, and all the other wonderful publications and branches of Lessiter Media. From the Pennsylvania Turnpike, headed back to Baltimore, I am Mackane Vogel and I will talk to you next time.

That's it for this episode of the No-Till Farmer Podcast, and thanks for tuning in. We hope you enjoyed On The Road Podcast series. Well, for our entire staff here at No-Till Farmer, I'm Mackane Vogel. Thanks for listening, keep on no-tilling, and have a great day.