Celebrating the future of Ag in 2018
♦ Outdoor life appeals to Justin Womack, the 2018 Young Farmer of the Year
Justin Womack loves to be outside.
It’s probably the one reason why he is a farmer who went off to school and decided it was too far away from the fields he grew up working in with his family, and so came back home.
Womack, who just a few years ago was a senior at Cedartown High School walking across the stage and getting ready to go off to college, is now firmly rooted in local soil again and about to finish up an Associate’s degree in plant science Georgia Northwestern Technical College.
He is also the 2018 Young Farmer of the Year, and was celebrated earlier in the fall by family and friends who came to the annual banquet organized by the Polk County Extension Office. A couple months later, Womack was found hard at work on a variety of projects as the family also got ready to harvest their cotton, planted mainly around their home outside of Cedartown, but also in spots on Highway 27 south as well.
“Its my granddad, my dad and me,” Womack said.
He got started in agriculture at a young age, and remembers early on lending a hand.
“I just grew up around it my whole life. It always interest me when I was a little kid,” Womack said. “I’d go with my mom and grandma out to the field and take my dad and grandad lunch when they were picking cotton and corn or something.”
His interest in keeping with the family tradition grew in middle school, and in high school he would spend weekends at work or as soon as school was finished for the day learning as much as he could.
After graduating from Cedartown High, Womack went to Abraham Baldwin Agriculture College, but came back to finish his studies at GNTC. He has five credit hours before he finishes his degree.
He said it was just too far away. Especially for someone who has been working on the farm full time since he was 15.
Womack stays busy at home. Whether it be maintaining equipment for work in the field, or planting, spraying the crop or picking and loading grain trucks, there’s always something different for him to do.
“We have over 1,000 acres this year,” he said.
Now that he’s almost done with his studies, he’s already looking toward the future when he’ll be bringing up next generations, and what that might mean.
He said the farm might one day be home to cattle again, but for now is focused solely on cotton corn and soybeans.
Womack said that farming is something he’s always loved, and that those who want to pursue agriculture and don’t want a normal job should consider life on the farm.
“It definitely has its ups and downs, no doubt about it. But it is something different every day,” Womack said. “I don’t have to go to an office and sit down and do the same thing every day. I can come in and one day be picking corn and the next day might be picking cotton or fixing equipment. You always have something going on to keep you busy.”
He looks forward to a bright future in farming and continuing a family tradition, centered around daily life in Polk County.