Field scouting usually happens in broad daylight. But to scout for one indicator of the vitality of your no-till fields, it’s best to step out after dark, or dusk at earliest. Then look for earthworms.

Even with a cold and wet spring in 2004, Tim Goodenough readily saw the many benefits of no-tilling with corn yielding as high as 265 bushels and soybeans reaching 67 bushels per acre.

Nitrogen costs keep rising, forcing no-tillers to examine fertilization program options and their impact on crops and the bottom line. For some no-tillers, liquid livestock manure might be an option — if they can overcome concerns about odors or the feasibility of incorporation.

One of the best pieces of advice we got before shifting to continuous no-till is to get your fields in the best shape possible when making any major changes in your farming methods.

When you think about being directly involved with saving a natural resource as significant as the Chesapeake Bay, it’s hard not to get excited. That noble thought might be enough reason all by itself to really hard sell continuous no-till systems, including cover crops and rotations. And when you can see clearly that no-till makes farming more profitable — in addition to the big-picture environmental equation — you can start to sense that we’re onto something, as they say, that’s really big.

They're thinking big down under. The 120-foot planter manufactured by Multi Farming Systems is already the world’s largest, the company says, and negotiations are under way to build a 302-foot version at customer request.