Hewitt Farms Inc. of Minnesota!

Today we welcome a great farming family from Minnesota! Meet Sara and Mark Hewitt!

Welcome to life as a young farm wife in rural, southern Minnesota! My name is Sara Hewitt and I farm with my husband, Mark, his brother, Ray and my in-laws on a 3,000 acre corn and soybean farm called Hewitt Farms, Inc. in Le Sueur, Minnesota. My husband and I were just married in September so we are still newlyweds on the farm!

I am a 5th generation farmer, growing up on a soybean, corn, cattle and hog farm. My husband and I currently rent the land that my parents used to farm. My parent's farm has been in our family for over a century now and was inducted into the Century Farms program! In fact, my family lives in the same house my great-great grandfather built in 1906! My husband is a 3rd generation farmer growing up around crop farming. Farming has a special place in our hearts as we continue the traditions our grandparents and great-grandparents started.

I grew up with all kinds of animals. I don't think my mom was too happy that I insisted this baby lamb come into the house with me.

Both my husband and I have jobs off the farm. My husband is a diesel mechanic for Ziegler CAT, working on farm equipment and heavy machinery. I work as an intern for the Minnesota Farm Bureau. My job at the Minnesota Farm Bureau involves working on the Ag Cab Lab. It is a tractor cab and a combine cab that allow children to get in and virtually plant or cultivate a field. It is really exciting to watch the kids interact with the game and the discussion that is sparked with their parents. Hopefully one day, some of these children might find themselves working in agriculture too!

This is an applicator, a piece of equipment we use to help combat weeds and bugs in our fields. We also do custom application for other farmers.

Something unique out about our farm, is our agriculture business that we have too. Hewitt Drainage Equipment specializes in water management for farmers all across Minnesota. We sell tiling equipment, Golddigger tile plows, tile stringers, and do custom tiling. We do a lot with GPS technology and mapping tile lines as well, making it a lot easier for farmers to know where their tile is and fix it when a problem arises. We think it is pretty cool that through agricultural tiling, we help the soil act like a sponge, soaking up more water preventing run-off, soil erosion, and reducing flooding. 

Our jobs on the farm change on a daily basis. I do a lot of marketing and media for both our farm and for Hewitt Drainage Equipment. I do everything from managing our Facebook pages, to updating our blog Hewitt Farms, Inc., to designing banners and flyers for the many farm shows we attend throughout the year. I also help during planting and harvesting season by driving combine, tractor and rock picking with the skid loader. My other job during those two seasons: professional sandwich maker. I can pack a lunch or supper for the guys complete with hot coffee and fresh baked brownies like no one's business.

One of my jobs on the farm is driving the combine.

My husband does a lot of upkeep on all of our equipment on the farm. He does routine maintenance work, but also fixes the combines, tractors and planters when they break down. During planting season, he is usually out cultivating fields. Planting takes us about two weeks if the weather is cooperating, and three to four if Mother Nature decides to throw some rain our way. During fall, he is often driving combine, working to harvest our crop.

Ray, can often be found driving semi and hauling our crop to be sold to the local elevators. A lot of our corn crop goes to the local ethanol plant to be made into fuel. Ray also has his applicators license so he is our fertilizer and crop protectant guy on the farm. Ray also sells seed corn, so he is out delivering seed to local farmers to help them get their crop in the ground.

Kevin, my father-in-law, is usually busy with our agricultural water management business. He does many farm and trade shows throughout the year selling tile plows and other tiling equipment. He drives all over Minnesota and often into other states, delivering Golddigger Tile Plows. He makes his way into the tractor during harvest to help pull the grain cart.

Last summer our U.S. Senator, Amy Klobuchar visited our farm to learn about our farming operation, agriculture business and some of the issues and problems we face today in agriculture. Pictured are Mark, Kevin, Jeanette, Ray and our hired-hand Nathan with Amy.

No farm is complete without animals. We raise a small flock of chickens so we have plenty of fresh eggs for our own family and friends. We also raise a pig or steer every other year to help feed our family. We take very good care of our animals making sure they have fresh water and plenty of food at all times as well as adequate shelter. We also have three dogs running around the farm: Cass, Denali and Charger. We have one Lionhead rabbit named Waffle. We also have plenty of farm cats.

We are constantly checking our fields, soil, and crop. Crop health is very important to us.

I am currently working on my Masters degree in Agricultural Education and Communication. At Hewitt Farms, we never stop learning. We are always looking to improve our practices and become more efficient and effective. We embrace technology on our farm because we know it is an important part of our overall farm's operation. Technology allows us to be even better stewards of the land because we can pinpoint areas where our soil needs more nutrients or reduce overlap or only use a select amount of fertilizer.

My favorite thing about farming is being able to work outside and always being busy. I don't have much down time and I enjoy that. I have to be productive with my time and farming allows me to do that. I love being outdoors so being able to work in an environment I love means a lot to me. I love looking out the tractor cab window to see a bright blue sky with a hawk soaring back and forth in front of me and a doe with her fawn standing off into the prairie grass curiously watching while I cultivate the dark, rich soil beneath me. There is nothing better than the views you get from the seat of a combine or tractor.

This is my husband Mark & me with one of the many dogs running around our farm. His name is Charger and he is a chocolate lab. The tractor in the background is a 1949 D Case that we are working on restoring.

You can find us on Facebook both at Facebook or Facebook.com/HewittDraingeEquipment. You can also follow some of my stories about farming, life and work at www.hewittfarmsinc.wordpress.com.

Signing off from rural Minnesota! Don't be afraid to stop by for a visit!

Thank you Mark and Sara for this great feature! Thank you for all your hard work! Good luck with the 2013 crop year!!

YOU could be the next FOA feature! Contact us today!!!!

Chad & Anna - Feeding pigs & the world

Please welcome Chad & Anna Wastell who share with us about their unique family business and love for agriculture, family & pigs. 

Hi! We’re Chad & Anna – Team Wastell – and we feed pigs to feed the world. This is our story.

I’m a small-town Kansas girl. Population 1200; wheat fields and milo as far as the eye could see. My high school had a nationally recognized FFA program and the school parking lot filled with farm trucks each morning. But I was a town kid, a drama and music kid, and I never participated in 4-H or joined FFA. I loved the county fair mostly for the snow cones and cute cowboys.

I attended a small liberal arts college in Kansas and lived in Eastern Europe for a while. I climbed the corporate ladder in the hospitality industry wearing high heels and a suit, and my marketing skills were further developed through a job as Director of Communications at our megachurch. But I always loved visiting my hometown; staring out at a wheat field and open sky filled my heart with a sense of total calm. 

My husband grew up in suburban Omaha. He was raised in the family business selling Crystal Spring hog feeders. From a young age, he spent time in hog barns, sat in on manufacturing meetings with his parents and celebrated his birthday each summer at World Pork Expo.

Chad left for Northwestern University in Chicago to pursue the field of computer engineering, but after graduation, he decided to come back to the business and his family in Nebraska. It wasn’t an easy choice; his classmates were transferring into jobs with glamorous, fast-paced consulting firms, and more than a few friends and mentors flat out told him he was crazy to choose the family business.

But it was the right choice. Armed with a desire to rebuild his relationship with his parents and fueled by the passion that drives everything Chad does, he threw himself into the business of feeding pigs to feed the world. He committed himself to extensive training, completing an internship with a hog production company and traveling to Europe and South America to understand of the needs of an international market. His engineering background provides the right skillset for product development with Crystal Spring Hog Equipment and the complex technical service of the Pro-Sort large pen auto sort system. He knows his products inside and out and is passionate about the benefits they can deliver to a producer.

As Chad and I were falling in love and getting married, I once (or twice…) declared that I would never work for the family business. I want my own thing, we need work/life balance, hog barns are really smelly, I’m just not gonna do it. No thank you.

But when Chad was offered an expanded Business Development role that would require him being on the road several nights a week to meet with dealers and customers, we remembered all the conversations we’d had, all the "If Onlys". If only we could travel together, if only we could spend time together out on the road.

It became clear that I could fill a role at Gro Master as Director of Marketing, handling advertising and developing training materials for dealers and redesigning the website and blogging and all the things I love to do. And I could travel with Chad. I should probably learn not to say “never.”

Now, as we travel around the country and solve problems for farmers and producers that use our products, I meet the people and families that work so hard to care well for their animals and provide safe, nutritious food for the world. I have learned so much about the industry visiting hog farms and talking with the growers. The barns are still smelly, but I want to learn as much as I can about how pigs are raised and the needs of our customers so we can provide the best products and the best solutions for them.

I love traveling with my husband. I love rural America and the small towns and big skies. I love that through blogging and social media, I get to help tell the story of feeding pigs to feed the world. At the end of the day when we're tired and smelly and road-weary, Chad and I love being part of the bigger story of agriculture.

Thanks Anna for the fantastic feature! To learn more about Chad and Anna and their family business you can check out their website, blog, & twitter! 

If you or someone you know is interested in becoming the next Face of Agriculture please contact us today to learn more! 

Brandi in John Deere Green

Today we welcome Brandi who shares with us about the mechanical and repair side of agriculture and what it takes to keep her family's business running year round. Welcome Brandi! 

My name is Brandi and I am the blogger behind In John Deere Green… I blog about my life in smalltown Iowa.

I haven’t always live in the country, but I’ve never really lived in the city either. I spent most of my life on a small acreage right on the blacktop outside city limits. We didn’t farm or raise cattle or hogs. We did however have a couple of horses and cows throughout the year and baled about 20 acres of hay. We never owned and new or fancy equipment because it wasn’t necessary. We cut, raked, & baled our hay with a JD 70! My grandpa used to farm before my grandma wanted to move to town so I’ve been around farming for most of my life.

I met my boyfriend in 2010 and we fell in love. I was working on a nursing degree and he was right off the farm working on a degree in ag power technology. He is now a fulltime ag mechanic at the family shop and helps out with the family farming operation and hog buildings. I am a part-time RN and secretary at the shop. In 2012 he bought a house so I moved to the country to live with him. We also adopted a black lab-mix puppy who has become a big part of our life. I’ve live in the country for over a year now and have learned so much. I love living out here and wouldn’t change it for anything.

Since moving to the country and moving in with my boyfriend I’ve “joined” a 5,600+ acre corn & soybean farming operation, hog building operation, and ag repair shop business. I do help out with the farming operation but it generally doesn’t involve operating the equipment, I pick up parts, drop off food, and move trucks around to different fields. I do however enjoy riding in the tractor or semi with my boyfriend. The operation owns the hog buildings, but not the hogs. We rent out the buildings. But that also means that we are responsible for repairs. And I have spent far too many hours helping weld gates and slap-patch the floors in the hog buildings. The ag repair shop is what takes up most of my time. I am a part-time secretary at the shop, besides all of the bookwork, phones calls, etc. that means service calls, getting parts, and helping work on tractors. My boyfriend also has an ag repair business on the side, so I do all of that bookwork, taxes, etc.

Tractors have now become part of my daily life. And although I’m not in the tractor farming daily or out feeding cattle at 5am, agriculture is still a big part of my life. During the spring and harvest the shop gets VERY busy. Often I am there on my own taking phone calls and helping customers, while my boyfriend is off on service calls. During these times my boyfriend is in charge of the shop while his father is in a tractor. It’s a busy job and takes a lot of work. During harvest we get much more field time then in the spring, that’s just how things work out.

I’m definitely an agvocate. It’s important that farmers get the public’s support. People don’t understand how much work farming takes or how farmers are the reason they have food on their plates. I hate when people say how farming is easy and a lazy person’s job because you only farm a couple months out of the year. This isn’t the case at all though. In fact in our case, everyone besides one person who is in-charge of all off-season farm related stuff, has a job outside of farming: mechanic, business owner, manager, nurse, jailer, lawyer, and some others! It’s nice to see kids that are just graduating high school going into farming or ag-related industries.

Thanks Brandi for the great feature! Be sure to check out her blog, In John Deere Green, and also be sure to look her up on Facebook! 

Small Town Girl - Rosie Sanderson

Today we welcome small town girl and farm kid Rosie Sanderson who shares her family's proud farming history and tells her story with the hope of educating others about farming and agriculture. 

If I told you I grew up in a town with a population of 48, you would probably assume that I grew up with that typical “small town girl” story… and you would be correct. Anything you can think of to insert into a small town girl story could probably be applied to my childhood: I learned how to drive a Super M tractor before I learned how to drive a car, I crashed a go-kart or two into my dad’s grain bins, I spent my summers showing cattle, was constantly begging my parents for a horse (which I still haven’t gotten, by the way), and I had decided by age 4 that I was going to be a veterinarian when I grew up!

I was raised on a livestock and grain farm in northern Illinois. (No, not all of northern Illinois is Chicago! Population 48, remember?) My dad farmed with his dad and brother, so I was lucky enough to grow up with my dad, uncle, and grandpa at our farm every day. When I was little, we always had pigs out on the pasture at our house. I can remember riding out to the pasture in the truck with my dad to check the piglets, but he always made me stay in the truck (much to my dismay) because sows are very protective.

My brother Trent and I checking pigs with dad.

As I got older, our farm shifted from pigs to cattle. I got my first bucket calf when I was 7, and I was in love! I named her Wise-Guy (don’t ask me why, I don’t get it either). To this day, my grandpa tells the story about how sick my Wise-Guy got when she was just a small calf, and how I would lay in her calf hutch and sleep with her because I didn’t want her to be alone. As an experienced livestock farmer, of course my grandpa thought “Great, she is going to get attached to this calf and it’s not going to survive.” Well, she did! In fact, she is the cow that started what is now our herd of over 50 cattle. 15 years later, she is still on pasture at my parent’s farm. 

Me with my 15-year-old cow Wise-Guy.

With the help of Wise-Guy, I started showing cattle in 4-H when I was 8 and continued to show calves from our farm until the summer of 2008 when I moved to central Illinois to attend Illinois State University. Moving to college was a huge change for me. Not because it was away from home, family, friends, and grandma’s cookin’… but because these people had no clue about anything agriculture!

As soon as people found out I was an agricultural animal science major, the first question was always “Wait, you are from a REAL farm???” I thought to myself “Who are these people and where did they come from!” Where I grew up, everyone I knew was another farm kid. I had never met anyone that hadn’t seen a cow before. I thought I must have met the only people on this earth who had never been to a farm. People would ask me about chocolate milk coming from brown cows, brown eggs being healthier than white, if cow-tipping was a real thing… and all I could do was laugh! Were these people serious?

As I made my way through college and met more people, I realized that this wasn’t an exclusive group of people who had never been exposed to farming. In fact, I began to feel like the weird one because I HAD experienced these things first-hand. I started to realize that people wanted to know about farming, but they didn’t know where to go for the information. They didn’t have access to farming like I did growing up. This was a problem, and it was here that my passion for discussing farming and food production with farmers and urban folks alike. So I quit laughing when people asked me what I thought were silly questions, because I was their closest connection to farming. If they couldn’t ask me about these things, where did I expect them to go for their answers? 

My family in front of the house in Norway that our ancestors
left 170 years ago!

In 2011, my family had the amazing opportunity to travel to Norway and go to the farm that our ancestors left in 1843. We feel so lucky that we got the experience to stand in the house that they lived in and explore the farm that they left to bring us to where we are today. Farming has been in the family for longer than record books have been around! It is hard to wrap your head around how far we have come but how much has stayed the same, too.

I still have some cattle on pasture at my parent’s farm today, but I hope to move them to my own farm someday, just like all of my ancestors have done. When I have my own farm, I know that I will take with me the important lessons that I learned growing up on our family farm; including the importance of sustainability. Both crop and livestock production are jobs that come with a responsibility to conserve the environment, and that is a responsibility that my family has always taken seriously. Today our farm is more sustainable than ever with the help of new technologies. If that interests you, you can learn more about what we do at our farm’s website: www.sandersonag.com. In 2010, our farm even received an award for Illinois Soil & Water Conservation Family of the year from Orien Samuelson!

My family receiving a conservation award from Orien Samuelson.

One thing I wish people understood about my farm family is that we want to answer your questions! Farming is our livelihood, our history, and our passion. We take pride in what we do. If you have a question about agriculture, why not go straight to the source and ask a farmer?

I love what I do, and I think most farmers would say the same thing if you asked them. I feel so blessed to have been raised in “God’s Country” where I learned the importance of hard-work, responsibility, and most recently the importance of sharing what I know with people like you! 

Riding my mare, one of the many perks of living in the country!

If you ever have a food-production related question but don’t know where to start, visit my blog, Unpolished Boots, or facebook page and ask me! I will always be happy to answer your questions or get you in contact with someone who can!

Thank you Rosie for the fantastic feature! Remember - if you or someone you know is involved in farming, ranching, or the agricultural industry and would like to share your story here please contact us! YOU could be the next Face of Agriculture! 

The Road to Ranching

Today we welcome Shelli Mader. She writes to us about her parent's road to ranching and how agriculture has been part of her life. Her story is one that I think a lot of people can relate to in agriculture. She also offers advice for beginning farmers and ranchers.

Like a lot of young couples who grew up in the country, my parents wanted to farm and ranch when they got out of high school. Unfortunately, even though both sets of my grandparents farmed, neither place was big enough to support another family. My parents had to find a way to start farming on their own.

The summer after they both graduated high school my mom started work in town while my dad helped his dad farm. That fall my dad started working with mom’s dad and her brother on some construction jobs. What was supposed to be a few days ‘work turned into a few years’ worth of construction for him.

My dad was focused on saving up for his farming goal, so when he wasn’t doing construction work he picked up odd jobs roofing, pouring concrete, digging basements and hauling hogs. In 1980 my parents got married. Just over a year after that, my mom’s dad and her brother stopped doing the construction work to start a dairy farm. My parents joined them.

My dad thought that having a dairy might be the best way for him to get into farming, so he was excited about the prospect. I was born just a few months after they started and it became apparent pretty quickly that even though my mom was working, my dad needed to get another job too. He called up a guy that was in the oilfield and started contract oil well pumping on the side.

The dairy lasted for about 2 years until my uncle and grandpa decided that they wanted to sell. My grandpa sold everything for just enough money to pay off the note – less than a year before the big government dairy cattle buy out that would have gotten $3,000 a head. My parents walked away from the dairy a few years older, but not any closer to their farming dream.

Thankfully, my dad had started the contract oil well pumping, so he had a decent job. He and my mom bought some dairy heifers with the goal of getting back into the dairy business someday. But that summer during wheat harvest, when my dad was helping his dad work on a combine he got a piece of metal in his eye. He was laid up for almost a month and lost most of the vision in that eye. He was able to keep his contract job with the help of some other pumpers and my mom driving him around to the wells.

But by the time he healed, oil field production and his contract work slowed some. Just after that though, a local gas plant hired him for 2 weeks to overhaul an engine. The work at the plant continued and he was able to keep his contract work too.

My folks decided to sell heifers with the plan to use that money to make a down payment on a place. Unfortunately, that spring taxes took all of the money they earned from the sale. But, like most of my parent’s story, there was another opportunity waiting for them.

About that time my parents found some pasture to rent, so they were able to get a loan to get their first 12 cows. The day they bought those cows was one of their most exciting. I was only 6, but I still remember it. They bought some black and red Chianina cross cows. We named them all and spent a lot of time driving around the pasture admiring them.

About a year later, my parents bought their first farm – a place in Lyman Nebraska. I think we were all excited about moving up there (my folks had 3 kids by then) and we were even trying to figure out which bedroom in the house was going to be whose. But, the place turned into more of a headache than a blessing for my folks. Problems with the rental house and irrigation were a financial drain. Worst of all, we couldn’t move up there – my dad’s job wasn’t easily transferred and he couldn’t find another good one in Nebraska.

Owning a farm and yet not being able to farm it wasn’t my parents’ idea of being farmers. Yet, once again, there was another, unexpected opportunity waiting for them at just the right time.

During the late 1980s my parents bought their first farm – a place near Lyman, Nebraska. Though they were excited to own their own land, they spent the rest of that decade and the early 90s trying to find a way to actually farm their own place.

Meanwhile, back in Strasburg, Colorado my parents rented a little country house about 15 miles from town. My dad continued the contract pumping business he’d started during his dairy farming days and my mom did his business paperwork and stayed home to take care of my sister, brother and me.They continued to rent the pasture land they’d found a few years earlier and built their cattle herd up from 12 to 20 head.

In 1991, just after my third sibling was born, it worked out for us to move to another rental house about 10 miles south of Strasburg.My grandpa and grandma lived just a mile up the road from it and my grandparented and farmed the place the house was on.

By 1993, it was apparent that it wasn’t ever going to work for my folks to move to the place in Nebraska –my dad couldn’t find a decent job there – so my parents decided to sell it and look for another farm. 

The selling process took three years, but they finally found an unexpected buyer – a foster family living in downtown Denver. The couple bought the place, pending the sale of their house near Washington Park.

About that time my grandpa decided to retire, and the landowner’s son planned to take over for him and farm the place our rented house sat on. My parents knew that they were going to have to move soon, so they eagerly searched for a new place to live.

They looked at several farms to buy in Nebraska and Kansas. Our favorite (well, the one I actually liked best was near Great Bend because it included a horse with purchase) was a farm near Smith Center, Kansas. The place had a big, beautiful, older two-story house and some crop and grassland. We were all pretty excited about it – so much in fact, my parents wanted to put a contract on it. But, the seller wouldn’t let them put any kind of claim on the place until the sale of their Nebraska farm was final.

The house and most of the land on the Smith Center place sold just 2 weeks later. We were all bummed about it, but in hindsight it turned out to be a blessing.

It took a few months to find out why so many things hadn’t worked out for my folks, but later that year my dad got an unexpected call from the landowner. Her son no longer wanted to farm the place, so she offered to lease it to my folks.

My parents graciously accepted the completely unexpected offer. And thanks to the sale of the Nebraska place, they had money saved to make a down payment on machinery.

Now it’s been nearly 17 years since my folks started farming the place south of Strasburg. They both acknowledge that they never could have begun or expanded their operation without the help of friends, neighbors and other area farmers who offered them support, help and opportunities to rent land. My folks always wanted to move out of the busy Colorado Front Range area, but looking back, there was no better place for them to get a start.

Today, my parents’life isn’t ideal – my dad still has to work a full-time job contract pumping oil wells in addition to running the place (he’d love to just farm and ranch) and my mom works full time too – but they are both grateful to get to be people who are living their dream.

Lessons I learned from my Parents’ Road to Ranching
My parent’s farming and ranching story gives me hope that the ranching dream is still possible. My folks didn’t start out with much, but today they are doing what they always dreamed they would do.

Here are some things that they did right:

Live Below Your Means
Though my parents admit that they haven’t always been good savers, they’ve never spent more than they’ve made. Overspending is a serious problem (and ranching roadblock) for many people – especially those my age and younger. Whether you are religious or not, if you have ever been in consumer debt you know that the Proverb “the borrower is servant to the lender”is so true. Staying out of unsecured debt helped my parents more than anything else.

Make Sacrifices
When I was growing up my parents rarely took more than a weekend vacation and they usually drove older, used vehicles. Instead of buying a house, they lived in old, inexpensive rental houses so that they could put money towards their goal.

Live by Farming Family or Friends
My parents always wanted to move out of the Strasburg, CO area, but ultimately living in the area they grew up in was the best way for them to start. My grandpa lived nearby and helped run the tractor when my dad had to check oil wells. Neighbors knew my parents, so that gave my parents a better chance of getting land to lease from them.

I didn’t follow this advice, but I wish I would have. Staying by farming family or friends (if you can get along with them) is the best way to get a start.

Don’t Dwell on Mistakes of the Past
My parents will tell you that they’ve made lots in mistakes in life. There are places they wished they would have bought, things they wish they wouldn’t have bought and opportunities they missed. Ultimately though, today they try not to focus on all of the “what ifs” and just look forward.

Take Your Dream the Way it Comes
If it would have been up to my dad he would have started farming right after he got out of high school. Instead, he was in his 30s before he got his farming start. Today he’s in his 50s and still has to work a job to support the farm. His road to ranching isn’t what he would have chosen, but he’s wise enough to focus on the fact that he is getting to live part of his dream.

I encourage you enjoy whatever part of agriculture you are in now (even if it is just reading The Fence Post!) and have hope that if everything aligned for my parents to get a start, it can for you too.

Thanks Shelli for this important story. The road to owning a farm and ranch is often full of trials. It takes hard work and perseverance to make things work!

You can follow Shelli and her family on their road to ranching on her blog. You can also check her out on Facebook.

Trevor Smith

Today's feature we hear from Trevor Smith of Georgia. He is doing what he loves - farming and raising his family!

Greetings from the Deep South! Our farm is tucked away right in the center of south Georgia, about 15 miles north of Douglas. Tobacco was king here until the '90s, and at one time Douglas had the largest tobacco market in the state of Georgia. Times have changed however, and though there is still some tobacco grown in our area. The local farmers have greatly diversified. Now our area is known for its broiler houses, cotton, and blueberries.

My name is Trevor Smith, and I grew up on a small row crop/tobacco/hog farm. My dad and mom grew up farming; all my grandparents, great-grandparents...basically as far up the family tree as you can climb; they've all been farmers. As the saying goes, farming is in my blood. All I've ever wanted to do was farm. God blessed me to be the valedictorian of my high school class, and many doors were opened to me. After much thought and prayer I decided to forego college. Through it all my focus and desire was the same - to farm and to raise a family on the farm. So, my dad brought me into partnership with him (and later, my brother as well), and we've grown into a mid-sized farm for our area. This year we have 1,200 acres of cotton, 1,100 acres of peanuts, and 150 acres of watermelons. We are also members of Osceola Cotton Co. a cotton gin owned by a group of farmers (I currently serve as a board member), and Tifton Quality Peanuts (more on that below).

In 2002, I started dating Christy, a local girl I had known all my life who had also grown up on a farm. After seven weeks of dating, I popped the question, she said yes, and nine years and two kids later we are still going strong. We both grew up with strong Christian beliefs and have kept Christ at the center of our marriage, our life, and our farm.

Christy's dad was a watermelon farmer, and with her knowledge of the produce industry we were able to add watermelons to our operation in 2007. They are marketed under the name of Smith Quality Produce. We have upped our acreage every year since we began. Christy oversees the watermelon production and also serves as our broker. Watermelon harvest is the main focus of Christy and myself during the summer with my dad and brother taking care of the cotton and peanuts.

Watermelons are still harvested the old-fashioned way - by lots of manual labor. First the cutters go through the field, cutting the ripe fruit off the vines and rolling them belly-up so the loaders can see them. The loaders pass the watermelons onto a trailer filled with empty boxes, where they are packed according to size. The trailers are pulled to our packing shed, where we unload them them with a forklift, and then load them directly into a semi trailer. This year, we loaded over 200 semi loads of watermelons from late May until early August.

There is no such thing as a typical day on our farm. Things vary so much from season to season, even from week to week. However, since we are about to enter peanut harvest, let me hit the highlights. Many people are unaware of this, but peanuts grow in the ground, not on trees. So the first step to harvesting peanuts is to get them out of the ground. This is done by an inverter, which digs the peanuts up, then flips the plant upside down so that the sun can dry the peanut. After the peanuts have dried sufficiently (usually 5-7 days), we run them through a tractor pulled combine, which separates the peanut from the vine. The vines can be rolled for hay, or left on the ground for fertilizer. We haul the peanuts in bulk a peanut mill, which cleans and grades them, and then ships them to Tifton Quality Peanut. TQP is a farmer owned shelling plant with 100+ farmers owning shares. There the peanuts are shelled and shipped to domestic and foreign customers.

I can't imagine living any other way than on the farm. It's all I've ever known and all I ever hope to know. There is no better place to raise a family, to instill a good work ethic in your children; to see the mighty hand of God at work, than right here. Sure, there are tough times. In 2011, we experienced the worst drought this area had seen in many, many years. In times like those, I think back to all those farmers before me, and I know that if they could make it, with God's help, I can too.

Thanks for reading, and now you can say you know another peanut farmer besides Jimmy Carter!

You can follow my blog at gafarmer80.blogspot.com, and follow me on Twitter @GaFarmer80.

Thank you Trevor for a great feature and teaching us more about peanuts and watermelon production!! Be sure to check out his blog and if you would like to be a feature - please contact us!