I've have the hard copy of the soil maps for my county and I've used the online tool as well. It is pretty neat and is really nice to calculate acres by using the AOI highlighting tool for different areas on your land. I use it to calculate acres to know how much seed, fertilizer, etc. to buy.

I'm not so sure about how accurate the actual soil types are though. Many of these studies were done decades ago and based on working my land over the summer and fall I think some of it isn't correct on my property.

I'm not a geologist, but I sure don't thinkyou can draw a line in a field and say that the soil type on one side of the line is good and the soil on the other side of the line is bad. I have one field that shows up that way on the survey. I have another field that shows up as all one type of soil in the survey, but when I actually worked it this fall there is about 1/3rd of it that isclose to pea gravel,while the other 2/3rds of the field is nice soil.

I think the soil survey is a good place to start, and the AOI feature on the online tool to calculate area of odd shaped pieces of property is really good, but actually walking the land and putting a shovel or a tractor to work is better at actually determining where you have the best soil.

Here is an example of a very odd shaped field that I was able to map out and get the acreage on.



This is also the field that has some very different soil types when actually working it but on the soil survey it shows to be primarily all one type. (The rocky area runs pretty much north and south toward the middle of the field).