“I can’t think of another job that I’d enjoy as much and take pride in as what I do here [on the farm]. It can be tough, but I can’t think of another job I’d rather have.”—Lee West, Fremont, NC
Farmers are eternal optimists. The saying goes, “they have to be, or they wouldn’t still farm.” Bad weather, low commodity prices, a pandemic...farmers all over the country are still farming with a flame of hope and pure grit that is rarely seen. The West family is no different.
Lee West, a sixth-generation farmer, and wife Madison live in Fremont, NC, on their family’s third-generation farm, where three generations still work. “It’s definitely a family farm,” Lee says of West Farms. The family is hands-on every day. Each does their part to grow crops and livestock.
Together the family works to grow sweetpotatoes, corn, soybeans, tobacco, cotton, peanuts, turkeys, pigs, strawberries, sweet corn, and other produce.
Lee, his dad Craig, uncle Brad, and brother Luke, focus on the crop side, while Lee’s mom, Nell, looks after the turkeys. Madison is your go to girl for strawberries. Lee’s Aunt Lynn handles a lot of the office work, and his grandmother, Audrey, who says she’ll retire every year but never does, also heads to the office every day—something that’s good for her and the rest of the family.
Working together 80-90 hours a week with your family is not for everyone, but for Lee it means a whole lot.
“Running the big John Deere tractors is nice, but the thing that probably means the most and is the most important to me, and I enjoy the most is the legacy. The same farm my grandaddy worked, my dad worked, and now I work, that just really means a lot to me—being able to work with my family and spend time with them,” Lee shared.
For Lee, farming is all he’s known, but for wife, Madison, the same cannot be said. Madison grew up in insurance as the family business.
“I knew nothing about farming at all until about nine years ago when we started dating,” Madison said. She got thrown into farming from the start. On their first date, Lee picked her up and went straight to move a piece of equipment before their date officially started. Nine years later, Madison and Lee are now married, recently celebrating their first wedding anniversary.
As her Instagram handle @talesofanaccidentalfarmgirl suggests, Madison didn’t mean to become a farmer, but here she is, loving it and “wouldn’t trade it at all.” Although, she works off the farm at a financial institution Monday-Friday, she runs the family’s strawberry patch. March-May is strawberry season and top of mind for Madison. You can find her at the strawberry barn during that time with their dog, Millie, selling strawberries.
Taking the Good with the Bad
Of course, farming hasn’t been just strawberries and tractors for the Wests. They’ve been hit with some hard times, especially of late.
Lee points to the last day they had pigs on the farm—January 2021
Two months before Madison and Lee’s wedding, they got the call that Goldsboro Milling was shutting down their hog operations. It was news that shook farmers and communities across eastern North Carolina. For the Wests who had just bought a 2,000 head sow farm less than a year before, it was an extremely hard blow.
“It was stressful. We didn’t know what was going to come of it. I was at work when I read it, and didn’t know what to think,” Madison said.
Today, their barns stand empty. The silence is eerie. The emptiness swallows you. There are dusty boots in the farm office, abandoned. Birthday balloons lay deflated from better times. The calendar shows January 2021—the last days.
They wanted to diversify their farm and income with the pig farm. Now, they must rely on turkeys and crops to pay for empty hog barns.
Lee is quick to say that this wasn’t just a blow to them, though. This impacted families across the community, especially those that worked at the hog farm.
“When you have a group of 10-11 workers that are what I would call, cream of the crop, it’s hard to turn them loose. Some of those guys have been here 20 years or more. That’s their career. That’s tough on them,” said Lee of the team that worked at the hog farm, most of which stayed on from the previous owner when the Wests bought the farm. “You wonder, will they be able to find a job? It’s not just our farm that’s shutting down; it’s the whole industry around here, so the job market for those guys is minimal.”
The Wests tried to find jobs for the hog farm employees elsewhere on their farm, but it wasn’t the same. Losing a career that you loved and did for decades is hard. For a family that considers their employees extended family, it was an added heartbreak to already devastating news.
And yet, despite all of this, they are hopeful for the future. They aren’t giving up.
“We’ve got to take the hand we’re dealt and do the best we can with it and hope something comes along soon,” Lee said. “We bought a hog farm. We’re serious. We want to be in the hog industry.”
So, they continue. They’re still farming. Still planting and harvesting. Still praying and hoping.
While they wait for something to come along, they are providing grain through their crops to feed mills across the state. That grain will ultimately be fed to other farmers’ poultry and hogs. So, while they currently don’t have pigs, they are still very much a part of the hog industry through the crops they grow and their hopeful hearts.
Farmers are optimists. Really, it’s the only way to continue farming. As Lee said, “you have to take the good with the bad.”
As Madison decorated their Christmas tree this year, she snapped a photo of a pig ornament and posted it online with the caption: “Some cultures believe that pigs bring good health and good fortune. We hung this special one on our tree again this year with the hopes that it will fill our hog houses back up in 2022.”
Here’s to hoping. Here’s to taking the good with the bad. Here’s to farmers, the eternal optimists.
