Proud to Be a Farmer: Pete Wall
Pete Wall has been farming as long as he can remember thanks to a passion passed down through generations
SCREVEN COUNTY, Ga. (WTOC) - Pete Wall has been farming for as long as he can remember.
“I think it’s born into you,” Pete says.
Over those years this livestock farmer has had plenty of both good and bad days.
“Farming is a constant stress. I mean it’s not easy. There’s been several times I would’ve quit, and it’d probably been easier to quit. This is a hard way to make a living.”
So, why keep at it?
“I tell some people when you get to my age you ain’t got any choice. It’s too late to do something else,” jokes Pete.
Because of course, there’s a little more to it than that.
“I get bored real easy,” Pete chuckles.
See, Pete loves a challenge, which farming certainly provides.
“Ain’t nothing will keep you close to God like farming. It’ll bring you to your knees every morning if you ain’t paying attention.”
But even more than Pete loves a challenge, the truth is, Pete loves farming.
“You got to love it. If you don’t love it, don’t do it.”
A passion that constantly pushes him to be his best.
“I want every generation to be better than the last. I want every group of lambs to be better than the last.”
While Pete has continued to do that, successfully over the years, he’s never done it for attention but rather in hopes of the opposite.
“My granddaddy always told me, ‘The farmer will never be appreciated until people wake up hungry one morning.’ So, I think we’ve got to think far enough ahead that we never realize it, we never come to that place,” Pete explains.
Doing so by not just raising the next best generation of cow and sheep but farmers too.
“Part of what I do is, you reach a point where you’re not really doing it for you anymore. After a while you kind of get a passion for, ‘how is this going to help my grandchildren,’ and if not them somebody else.”
Now, as Pete has said, you can’t force someone to be a farmer, “if you don’t have a passion for the cow then you’re not going to do a good job with it.”
But he believes if you come out here and see it for yourself, that passion may begin to grow or at least something will.
“If anything, else the land will humble you and the land will keep you grounded. Even folks in town, you need find a place where you can go out and kick in the dirt a little bit and see that lamb when it’s born and see it when it’s three months old and understand what took place. That’s just my thinking.”
And who knows, maybe you too may one day be proud to be a farmer.
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