I must admit to playing a little catch-up after spending all of last week in Springfield, Ill., working with my colleagues at No-Till Farmer to host the 22nd annual National No-Tillage Conference. Our second-largest crowd ever with 1,024 attendees took in 4 days of no-till learning at the Springfield Hilton. While there were plenty of familiar faces, we still saw 408 first-time attendees. More than 500 first-timers were on hand last year at the NNTC in Indianapolis.

From 1991 until 1996, our publishing company produced a newsletter called Ridge-Till Hotline that was similar to what we were doing with No-Till Farmer. While the response to this paid newsletter was favorable, by the mid 1990s we didn't feel the ridge-till acres were going to continue to grow. So we halted publication, much to the regret of many die-hard ridge-tillers.