Welcome to my first installment of No-Till Notes. I’m looking forward to writing this column and sharing my no-tilling experiences with you. I hope to provide lots of no-tilling ideas you can use on your farm.

Looking for new ways to trim production costs, California dairyman turned in 2007 to a variety of conservation tillage practices for forage production in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

The first time I saw what Dwayne Beck was doing on the irrigation research farm near Redfield, S.D. (before he developed the Dakota Lakes Research Farm), I knew we were on the verge of a new type of crop production in our area.

When it comes to developing the best management strategies, Dale and Larry Landreth worry about only one crop — wheat. That’s because the father and son team from Reardan, Wash., grows wheat every year on all of the 2,500 acres that they own and rent.

If your familiar with the cyclical weather patterns (very dry to very wet) we’ve experienced in North Dakota since I started no-tilling in 1986, the fact that I’m still in business might say an awful lot. Not only am I still no-tilling, but I have expanded from 1,000 to 4,000 acres of cropland. And thanks to the many hours I no longer have to spend in the field, I’ve built up a busy grain cleaning and processing business.