RAYBON — Odie Crews fires up his New Holland tractor and gets ready for yet another planting season on the farm.
This year marks his 57th year tilling and tending the land.
“I keep telling myself I am going to give it up and ease out and retire, but I don’t,” he says with a chuckle. “If I did, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. I’ve got to stay busy.”
It’s a struggle every farmer knows all too well. The worry about the weather, the cost of inputs including seed and fertilizer and whether at the end of the season, there will be enough profit, or enough credit and enough faith to keep going another year.
While Crews has been actively farming for 57 years, it really has been a lifelong vocation for him.
“We worked on the farm growing up, because that’s just what you did,” he said. “It was the family business.”
After high school, Crews took a job at the old Gilman Paper Company in St. Marys working there for four years. He still couldn’t quite get away from the farm, however.
“I would help my Daddy when I got home from work,” he said. “As he got older and transitioned to retirement, I basically took over.”
Crews’s father, Vornie, and his mother, Beatrice, lived on and raised their family on that very land. It provided what they needed for his folks and his siblings.
The family has deep roots in the Oak Grove Community near Raybon.
Crews and his late wife, Eula, raised their three children, Janet, Scott and Charolette, there as well.
The Crews have a modest farm, never tending more than 200 acres per year. Many of their fellow farmers have expanded their operations in an effort to increase profits.
Odie Crews says he began helping his father with tobacco and corn crops.
Once he took over the farm after his father’s retirment, he eventually grew the operation to 50 acres of tobacco and 100 acres of corn.
Currently, Crews’ daughter, Janet Herrin, has joined her father in the farming operation, marking the third generation working their family’s land. Janet’s husband, David, also helps with the chores when needed.
Together, they farm about 100 acres of peanuts and 50-60 acres of corn.
Crews says farming doesn’t leave much spare time for leisure.
“There’s always something to do,” he says.
Crews says that steady stream of work was a form of therapy for him after he lost his wife of 57 years.
“It gave me something to get up and do to stay busy,” he said. “Every person deals with it differently, and it was my way of coping with the grief.”
Crews said that constant routine adds structure to the life of any farmer.
“Farming is a gamble each year,” he said. “Some years you do well and others not so good. It is a profession that needs a lot of prayer, too. Prayer helps you get through things.”
While the ebb and flow of the work are constant, he admits there have been positive changes to the profession over the years.
“I am thankful for air conditioned cabs on the tractors now,” he said.
Crews relates when he was growing up farming it was hot, dusty work.
“Everybody knows it gets hot and humid in South Georgia — I think it is more hot and humid out in the fields,” he said.
Additionally, the equipment — both tractors and implements — have advanced over the years.
The Crews family runs mostly Fords and New Hollands in their operation, but they do have at least one Massey Ferguson.
“The economics are certainly different from when I started,” he said.
Crews relates that in the old days you could make a living off what you made on the farm, but doing so is a challenge now.
“I remember when you could buy a ton of fertilizer for $40. That might buy you 100 pounds now, if you are lucky,” he said.
Commodity prices are another big change.
“You could get $2 a bushel for corn back then and that was a good price. You could make it. Now, you get about $5 a bushel, but it’s a tight margin to try and cover your costs and make a little money,” he says.
Still, Crews said he loves farming and will keep doing what he loves for as long as he can.
“I can’t just sit idle,” he said. “I’ve got to have something to do.”
With that, he is back on the tractor stirring up dust — in the air conditioning, of course.
