Screven County |
Ask Wilson, Waylon, and Weston Boyd who’s in charge, and nobody’s giving a straight answer — and that, it turns out, tells you just about everything you need to know about how this family operates. Spend a little time with the three brothers and what stands out isn’t what makes them different. It’s what keeps them together.
“When you do something good, you want to tell your family — because they were there with you, and they’re proud of you just the same as you’re proud of them,” said Weston Boyd. “I think that’s probably one of the most special things about us working together. When we do bad or when we do good, the first person you want to tell is your family — and hey, they’re right there with you. That’s special.”
For the Boyd brothers, farming as a family isn’t just a matter of convenience — it changes how they approach the work itself.
“It means a lot more because you win together and you lose together. You try a lot harder when you know who you’re working for and who you’re working with,” said Waylon Boyd.
That shared investment also translates into day-to-day efficiency. After decades of watching each other grow up on the same land, the brothers have developed an understanding that can’t be replicated with any other crew.
“We’re more efficient because we know exactly how each other works. We don’t have to go through the learning process of figuring out how to work better with each other,” said Wilson Boyd. “He’s twenty-two and he’s twenty-four, and I’ve known them every day of their lives. We know exactly how each person ticks and how to make each one of us more efficient — and how to make each other happy, I guess is the word.”
That closeness doesn’t mean things are always smooth. The brothers are quick to admit that working together this closely means disagreements come with the territory — sometimes loudly. But in the Boyd family, a fight in the field doesn’t follow them inside.
“We’ll leave it all out there, but let me tell you — we’ll take it to plow dirt. We’ll fight it out for a second, give it a little while, and we’ll be back good. We can fight like cats and dogs and be back to brothers in a snap,” Waylon said. “We’re all struggling, we all want the same goal, and hey, that’s frustrating sometimes. But everything works out. We have a good time doing it.”
“It’s really never a mad like you’re gonna quit,” added Weston. “It’s just a mad like, ‘Man, let me hit him real quick and then we’ll be done with it.’ And I think that’s kind of the special part of our relationship that you don’t always get to see.”
Long before these three were making decisions, they were watching — watching their dad, their uncle, and the generations before them — learning not only how to farm, but how to farm as a family. That foundation goes deeper than any of them can fully trace.
“We’re the sixth generation on this same dirt. There’s a lot of sweat from a lot of people we’ve never even known that’s been here fighting for this,” Wilson said. “It’s just something you can’t let go when you’ve been given it — because not everybody gets this opportunity. But along with this opportunity comes a lot of work, sweat, and it’s a lot to take on, especially in today’s world.”
For Waylon, that opportunity is something he doesn’t take lightly — even on the hard days.
“It’s just a really cool lifestyle that we get to live. Not a lot of people get to do it. We get to wake up and go outside. You never do the same thing twice — every day I wake up, I’m going to do something different,” he said. “It’s just a pretty neat life to live.”
Now, Wilson, Waylon, and Weston are writing their own chapter of that story. The equipment is different. The technology is different. The challenges are different. But the reason for doing it together hasn’t changed at all.
“The generation before us — we have tripled in size since they started farming. For us, it’s about keeping our name going here on the farm, because it really is special,” Weston said. “It’s important that we work hard and try our best to make it for us and for the generations coming also.”
“I just hope people say that they were good people and that they helped someone through the years,” Wilson added. “If we were successful, to be able to go back on that success and say, ‘He helped me get here, and I’m going to help the next generation get to this stage.’ That’s kind of what I would like to do.”
Out here, the question of who’s in charge matters a lot less than the answer to a better one: what keeps these three brothers coming back to the same farm, day after day? For Wilson, Waylon, and Weston Boyd, the answer has always been the same thing that brought them here in the first place — family.