Meet Phillip Tomlinson, a finalist for the Louisiana Farm Bureau Young Farmers Award

The Louisiana Farm Bureau Young Farmers and Ranchers Program strengthens the state’s ag industry. Today, we meet one of the finalist, who’s operation requires the whole family.

Mornings start very early on the Tomlinson Family Farm. They check the chickens, feed the sheep and harvest the corn crop for a sweet return.

“You want it be to ready all the way through,” 6-year-old Weston Tomlinson said.

He learned the lesson firsthand from his father Phillip.

“The joy to me is having my kids out there is having my kids out there in the sweet corn patch because not only are they learning how to work hard, how to sweat,” Phillip said. “We have picked ear, ear after ear, after ear and delivered them to friends and family so they’re actually getting to see that we’re really feeding the world, we’re doing our part to feed and our part to give.”

From their father, the children have learned farm life requires a ton of hard work, but it can also have rewards. Encouraged by Phillip, the children have begun selling eggs together.

“They all get the money if they do to work,” Phillip said.

Phillip grew up on the very same very farm and he always wanted to farm. He says now, 30 years later, he is living his dream.

He has goals to make the Tomlinson Family Farm more efficient and more profitable.