Jackson County honors row-crop farm family
PENNINGTON — William Tate is carrying on the family tradition. He is a farmer, as was his dad, grandparents, uncles and cousins.
William operates Tate Farms, where he raises rice and soybeans, as well as secondary rotational crops of corn, milo and wheat, on approximately 1,500 acres.
Tate Farms is the 2021 Jackson County Farm Family of the Year. The family includes William, 36, and his wife, Courtney, 24, and their children: Noah, 11; Billy, 2; and Presley, 1.
William is a son of Angela Rutledge Tate of Newport and the late Billy Tate. William has been farming for 15 years. Both sets of his grandparents — the late Fletcher and Myrtle Tate and the late Leon and Jesse Mae Rutledge — also farmed.
William’s great-uncle the late C.C. Buck Lowery, uncle the late Steven Rutledge and cousin Jeff Rutledge of Newport have all received accolades as Farm Family of the Year in the past.
Courtney, who is a daughter of Billy and Kristie Stanley of Bay, has been farming for three years.
“Her father is a crop duster, so she is familiar with agriculture life,” William said.
“Being named Cleburne County Farm Family of the year is an honor,” he said. “We’re just trying to do the best we can.
“We want to be good stewards of the land and teach this to our kids. Our priorities are God, family and then farm. Without God and family, the opportunities that we have been blessed with wouldn’t be there.”
William said he hopes to grow his farming operation, adding that most of the land he farms now is “family land.”
“Growing is always good as long as it is a good fit economically,” he said. “I hope one of these days that one of my three kids may possibly be interested in farming. If not, that is OK, too, but we are going to raise them to have knowledge of the ins and outs of agriculture.”
Courtney graduated from Bay High School in Craighead County and from Arthur’s Beauty College.
“I am a cosmetologist, but I gave all that up when I married William,” she said.
William graduated from Weiner High School in Poinsett County. He attended Harding University in Searcy, then Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, where he received a bachelor’s degree in agri-business with an emphasis in marketing and management.