Rolling Hills Company, cover crop mixes and soil health

By Dusty Sonnenberg, CCA, Field Leader, a project of the Ohio Soybean Council and Soybean check-off.

There’s more rolling at Rolling Fields Company in Perry County than just the topography. When Keith Dennis and his wife Jane purchased the farm in 1976, the farm’s rolling fields had water flowing across them any time they received a heavy rain, cutting deep gullies. Erosion was a huge concern.  Since 2011, Dennis has planted cover crops and has begun utilizing the Haney Soil Health test.  Now the rolling fields are green all year and covered with a mixture of cover crops, and the main things rolling now are the numbers and data on spreadsheets from over a decade of soil health test results.

While Dennis has been stewarding the rolling silty-clay soils near Rushville for almost 50 years, he started farming in the late 1960s. “I actually started farming in 1969 down at Sugar Grove, where I grew up with my parents and my great uncle who lived with us and owned the farm,” Dennis said.… Continue reading