Study the picture of a slab of soil carefully. In this case, soil compaction didn’t create the thin layer that held together as Brian Daggy hoisted it in the air. It was a frosty morning after subzero temperatures, and there was enough frost in the soil to hold this layer together.

“I held it up because it was a perfect picture of how many earthworms are active in these plots,” says Daggy, resource conservationist for the Boone County Soil and Water Conservation District. He helped put together a field day late in 2018 to show farmers and others what was happening on cover crop plots maintained by the conservation partnership in Boone County, Ind.

The plots were established in 2015, Daggy explains. He knew there were lots of earthworms active in the plots, but the visual picture created by earthworm activity in the frost layer he could slip off the surface and hold in the air showed just how much activity was present.

The goal is to show area farmers how tillage systems like no-till coupled with cover crops can improve soil health, even on the poorly or somewhat-poorly drained soils that are common in Boone County and much of central Indiana, Daggy says.

“There were certainly lots of holes penetrating into the underside of the soil layer, and they were all caused by worms of some sort,” he says. “Our goal is to build soil health here, and results like this are encouraging.”