Couldn't agree with ya more Jon. We've got some fields that haven't seen any form of tillage other than seeding disks since '92 or '93 and they are beautiful mellow soils granted a couple of them are as good or better than any dirt within 100 miles of us.

I wish I had a better photo but here is one of those fields that has turned out beautifully. You can see just how mellow the soil is.

We also, however, have some soils that are dificult to no-till. Some of them are gumbo, and are even harder to till. Used to disk them in the fall and get 4-5" clumps of soil. Then hit them in the spring and get 2-4" clumps of soil. By the time we got done seeding we still had 1" clumps of soil and about that time you'd get a 2" rain and it'd turn into a huge slab of concrete.

I also believe that you have to have a proper start into no-till. It may be necessary to do some deep tillage or tillage for a few years in preperation for no-till. Some of our fields were poorly managed before we started farming them in 2000 and it is still evident today. We thought that no-till would improve them, but it looks like a guy is going to have to break down and use some fuel in the future. Biggest key to no-till is to control compaction and that has never been easier in the past than it is today with all of the tire and track options now available. If you look closely at the rear tires of the tractor in the picture you can see the sidewalls are squatting quite a bit. That's because there is only 6 PSI in them which exerts very low ground pressure.

Still wish I had some of that good BLACK dirt to complain about being so mucky although our margins tend to be much better out here with 2/3 the yields of the "I" states on land that costs 1/4 as much.