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Restoring the vision
Fiscal and physical ailments stopped his father from farming, but David Martin has resumed the family’s agricultural tradition with his own row-crop o
| By Elizabeth Pafford and Allison Morgan Photos by Allison Morgan |
8/31/2012 |
Editor’s note: Portions of this story were originally written by Elizabeth Pafford, a senior ag communications major at the University of Tennessee at Martin and a 2011 Co-op summer intern.
Agriculture historians have compared the challenging 2012 growing season to the devastating drought of 1988. Charles Martin of Medina remembers the latter all too well. That’s the year he quit farming, and it’s why his 31-year-old son, David, has had to build his own farming operation from scratch.
“If the farm economy hadn’t gotten so tough, I would have stayed in it longer,” says Charles, who, at the time, was farming some 500 acres while driving a truck for Roadway Express. “I loved farming, but we were losing more than we were making. After three bad years in a row, I made the decision to quit.”
For David, his father’s decision to exit agriculture meant that choosing a farming career wouldn’t be as simple as stepping into the family operation. And when Charles lost his eyesight in 2004 from a rare complication of diabetes, David forever lost his chance to farm side by side with his father.
“I think a lot of farmers take it for granted that they got to farm with their dads,” says David. “I never really got that opportunity, and it caused me to face a lot of challenges that others in my field don’t ever have to face.”
Though farming was always on his mind, out of necessity David held several other jobs after graduating from high school in 1999. He worked for his uncle’s paving company, drove a truck, and spent a year at the University of Tennessee AgResearch and Education Center at Milan. But he always had some agricultural endeavor on the side — whether it was custom-baling hay or helping neighboring farmers harvest their crops — and kept working toward his goal of someday running his own operation.
“I always had in the back of my head what I wanted to do — farm — but it was just a matter of being able to do it,” says David. “I really count my first year of farming as 2004. That’s when I traded six cows for a combine. It wasn’t much of a combine, but hey, it worked!”
David quickly admits that it takes an immense amount of work to build a farm to full-time status today, especially when starting from the ground up. In his case, it took seven long years. In the last five years, he has almost doubled his production to more than 1,000 acres.
“I’ve been lucky to be able to gain 200 acres or so at a time, either buying farms or renting ground,” says David, who grows cotton, corn, soybeans, and wheat. “This year, we added 300. It has just steadily grown.”
Though blindness keeps Charles from physically helping on the farm, it doesn’t keep him from offering advice and guidance from past experience. The elder Martin says he appreciates the fact that his son is restoring the family’s farming tradition. While he can’t see how much David has accomplished, he can certainly share in his success.
“Farming is something David has always enjoyed, ever since he was little,” says Charles, who now owns and operates a portable storage building business with his wife of 39 years, Becky. “I’m proud he’s able to do something he likes to do and make a living at it.”
David says he’s fortunate to be able to grow his crops on much of the same land that his father once farmed around their homeplace near the Madison-Gibson county line, and he also has help from his uncles, Larry and Harry Martin. Harry moves equipment for his nephew in the spring, and Larry helps with bulldozer work or other types of excavating jobs that David offers as an extra income-generating endeavor.
“I am very proud to say that I have my dad and uncles there for me when I need advice or help,” says David. “They have all really helped me over the years and told me how they would go about doing something or how they fixed the same problem 20 years ago.”
Though he’s held a variety of jobs along the way, David says finally being able to farm full time is a dream come true. He says it also suits his personality.
“I like being outside, doing my own thing, without anyone standing over top of me,” says David, a customer of Carroll and Mid-South Farmers Cooperatives. “Plus, there are so many good people in agriculture. I really enjoy all the people I deal with. I’ve learned a bunch from them and keep learning every day.”
David says he recognizes the challenges of agriculture, especially in a year like this, but he’s determined to make his farming operation successful. He says diversifying his crops and having other ventures “on the side,” like his trucking and dozing services, help give him a safety net when times get tough.
“I’ve learned that you need to have more than one thing going because something will pull you along,” says David. “My dad’s always told me to do that. My uncles have told me that. And the other farmers I know have told me that.”
Children who grow up doing something every day often either hate it or fall in love with it. David fell in love with farming, and now his childhood passion is his lifetime career that he would like to pass on to his children one day.
“Farming isn’t easy, that’s for sure, and when the last stalk is cut in the fall, you’re proud for a little break,” he says. “But when February rolls around, you’re ready to go again. I can only hope that I have a son I’ll be able to work alongside and watch production agriculture increase to where it needs to be to feed and clothe this growing world population.”
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