08/28/2026
🌾🚜🌱 A beautiful, informative evening for last night's Rotors.Roots.Renerate Field Day!
A huge THANK YOU to our hosts, Jones Family Farm Milton, Indiana for their hospitality and efforts to make the field day such a success.
The field day would not have been possible without our sponsors: Wayne County Farm Bureau, Conservation Cropping Systems Initiative, Clean Water Indiana and the Wayne County SWCD Board of Supervisors.
Also a big thanks to Jessica Hoehn, Conservation Cropping Systems Initiative Lead Program Manager, and Elliott Gough, Resilient Indiana Technician for their much appreciated assistance last evening and to The Fresh Side for the delicious meal!
Here is a quick recap:
Adam Jones, Jones Family Farm Milton, Indiana gave a history of their family farm and how they utilize cover crops among other practices to increase their soil health.
Amanda Kautz, USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Services Soil Health Specialist for Indiana demonstrated with the Rainfall Simulator where we watched a powerful visual display of soil health concepts and how rainfall interacts with soil under three different scenarios: Long Term No-Till with Residue, Bare and Heavily Tilled Soil, and Long Term No-Till with Living Cover. Be sure to watch the video to see the full results, they speak for themselves!
Aaron Gettinger, A&G Drones LLC, demonstrated with a flight showcasing aerial seeding of cover crops and spoke on how modern drone technology can help identify crop stress early, map fields, and provide producers the ability to apply inputs with pin-point accuracy compared to traditional methods.
Barry Fisher, Fisher Soil Health LLC, gave the soils health talk. Barry is the retired Regional Soil Health Specialist with NRCS and shared his years of experience working with the key principals of soil health (minimize disturbance, maximize soil cover, maximize continuous living roots and maximize diversity). Barry demonstrated soil stability with a slake test and spoke on different strategies to implement in order to improve soil health.
Zoe Robinson, team member with Purdue Extension's Farm Stress Team and Wayne County 4-H Educator, shared insight and local resources to help farm families manage stress, build mental resilience, and support one another.
And finally, big thank you to everyone who came out to spend their evening with us, by sharing your knowledge and asking questions you made the field day a great success!
