Back when I started my Southern Living series in the Summer of 2013 one of the first people I thought of that I wanted to include in it was my Uncle Wayne. The man is the type that just begs to be photographed, and who better to include in it after being a farmer all of his adult life?

He went to Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College to study agriculture right out of high school but told me he should have paid more attention while there. “All I could think of was coming home to see Barbara.” Barbara is my aunt – my dad’s sister. She and my Uncle Wayne will have been married for 51 years in June of this year. They got married right after he got out of college. “I’d do it again! She probably wouldn’t, but I would!” he told me in regards to marrying her. He told me he went over to a friend’s house one day, took one look at her, and thought, “She’s the one.”

After graduating in 1965 with a degree in agricultural science he married her and went into farming full-time and hasn’t stopped since. I asked him what made him want to be a farmer, and he said, “I just love it.” I followed that up with asking what he loved most about it, and he said, “Being outdoors and seeing God’s creation. Seeing Him at work.”

Farming is a labor of love, though. HARD labor. I ask what he disliked most about it and he told me, “dealing with the weather, the pest, and all the negative things that can go wrong.”

If you’re not familiar with the farming lifestyle – and it is a lifestyle and not just a job – you’ve got to realize that people like him literally live on a prayer. Their success or failure financially is dependent on Mother Nature – or God. I think that may have gotten a little better due to the insurance available to farmers now, but in years past it wasn’t. The profession was all about working like it depends on you, and praying like it depends on God – much like commercial photography can be as a profession.

Farming requires an investment in tractors that can cost a couple hundred thousand dollars – sometimes a few of them – with no guarantee of what your crop yield will be per acre from year-to-year. Then it can require you to work from dawn to dusk six and seven days a week – sometimes even longer. It is truly a faith driven profession – and my Uncle Wayne’s is strong.

Uncle Wayne planted row crops up until 1990 when he decided to switch over to planting hay only. He’s told me he’s glad he did. Today, he and his son, David, run the business together. Need some hay? They’ll deliver it to you, and their number is right there on the neck of that trailer.

He’s been a deacon of the church he grew up in for as long as I can remember. When I ask him if there was any insight or advice about life he’d like for me to share with the readers of this post, he told me one of his favorite Bible verses is Philippians 4:13 – “I can do all things through Christ which strengthen me.” and added to that, “ My daddy always told me “do what makes you happy. And he supported me in whatever that happened to be.”

It seems to me that Christ HAS strengthened him – through his profession and marriage, both of which have made him happy for almost fifty-one years now – all with his father’s blessing and support. Both fathers.