FORT JENNINGS, Ohio – Matt Miller husked an ear of corn and counted the kernels; 16 around and 40 long. He turned to Gregg, his dad, and said: “This is going to be a good corn crop.”

This father and son farming team believes that they can’t keep doing what they’ve been doing. There’s always a better way coming down the line. Sometimes they have to spend money to make money.

“Our goal is always to get bigger,” Matt said. “To grow your operation, you have to have more ground available. Everybody farms here. To get ground to farm like the Suever’s (they farm 100 acres of land managed by Emmy and her daughter, Cheryl Suever), they see something in you that they like. We’re always trying innovative things to make it better. We’re good stewards of the land; we’re trying to leave it better than we found it.”

Mel Suever appreciated that attitude, Cheryl Suever said. Gregg Miller worked as a mechanic at a farm dealership. Suever, now deceased, took his farm machinery there for repairs and, later, just to visit with Gregg, whom he liked and respected. He eventually asked Gregg to farm his land.

The Miller family has been farming on their Putnam County home farm and in the surrounding area since Joseph, Gregg’s father, came over from Germany in 1900 and settled there.

“Putnam County is very rural and very flat,” said Sarah Rieman, Putnam County Soil and Water Conservation District administrator. “That proves to have its advantages and disadvantages. We’re mostly corn, beans, and wheat rotation with a few tomato farms in the area.”

The Millers use a corn, soybean, soybean rotation, Matt said. They farm 500 acres on the home farm and about 800 total. A neighboring farmer chops the corn from the home farm for his cattle and chickens. Almost everything else goes to the ethanol plants. The soybeans go to Bunge in Delphos to get turned into a soybean meal feed supplement.

Much of the land they farm drains into the Auglaize River, then to the Maumee, and finally into Lake Erie, so the Millers use conservation practices. Putnam County is eligible for H2Ohio funds.

“H2Ohio signups started in 2020 for the start of 2021 crop year, and Matt Miller has acres enrolled,” Rieman said. “It is a water quality program to help incentivize producers in the area to use Best Management Practices; there’s money that’s associated with completing those practices.”

The Millers have adopted cover crops in the last 10 years, Matt said. This year they’re trying a rye, radish, and pea mix after corn. They use herbicide on the rye; the winter will kill the radishes and peas.

“The H2Ohio initiative is helping pay some of the costs to offset the investment,” Matt said. “We just bought a new $125,000 tool to put the cover crops on, so being incentivized a bit helps. Without those programs, it becomes hard to spend that money.

“We no-till to minimum-till – in some places we have to because of soil types,” he said. “We test our soil every three years on three-acres grids. We apply what (fertilizer) it calls for and nothing more. Actually, we do less because it feels right. All the fertilizer that we put on is subsurface, so in the ground; it’s not on top where it could be washed away.”

That’s quite a change from when Gregg farmed with his dad. They used complete tillage.

“We plowed, sometimes he’d (Joseph) work the field three times before he would plant it,” Gregg said. “We’d work all day in the same field. We didn’t have the big equipment like we have now. Change is not hard if you can see how much it improved things.”