Since its founding as a small family farm, the Broughton Land Company has been managed for long-term success. For Dan McKinley, the current general manager, that means making no-till work on the huge operation that grew out of a family farm started in the 1880s near Dayton in Columbia County, Wash.

When I was a kid, I knew it was spring when the mud roared off our highly erodible hills, across the roads and flowed through our farm yard.