Sunrise is approaching. You grab your morning cup of coffee and head out to your vegetable plot. As you hold your warm mug laced between your fingers, you muse and strategize about the day’s tasks. It is that time, just at first light, that the wind is dead calm, the nightly bug chatter has ended, it is still too early for the birds to start their musical chirping, and the rooster has yet to sound the alarm. You have come to love these special few minutes of each day for their intense vacuum silence. In between sips, you hear a buzz that you haven’t heard before. It is coming from the soil beneath the tomato and squash plants. The microbiology in your soil is having a meeting.  
Darron Gaus

Did you know you can do a soil health assessment on your own pasture without having to send in soil samples to a laboratory? And this assessment costs only your time because it requires no special tools. Using the senses of sight, smell, and touch, along with very simple hand tools — a shovel and a knife — you can determine the health of the soil in your pasture in less than 30 minutes.
By Justin Morris, NCAT Regenerative Grazing Specialist

Sunrise is approaching. You grab your morning cup of coffee and head out to your vegetable plot. As you hold your warm mug laced between your fingers, you muse and strategize about the day’s tasks. It is that time, just at first light, that the wind is dead calm, the nightly bug chatter has ended, it is still too early for the birds to start their musical chirping, and the rooster has yet to sound the alarm. You have come to love these special few minutes of each day for their intense vacuum silence. In between sips, you hear a buzz that you haven’t heard before. It is coming from the soil beneath the tomato and squash plants. The microbiology in your soil is having a meeting.  
Darron Gaus

Did you know you can do a soil health assessment on your own pasture without having to send in soil samples to a laboratory? And this assessment costs only your time because it requires no special tools. Using the senses of sight, smell, and touch, along with very simple hand tools — a shovel and a knife — you can determine the health of the soil in your pasture in less than 30 minutes.
By Justin Morris, NCAT Regenerative Grazing Specialist