A clan for all seasons
Carl and Mickie Yeates, along with their children and grandchildren, were honored at Quincy Farmer-Consumer Awareness Days as the Farm Family of the Year.
A new generation of farm family was recognized by the Farmer Consumer Awareness Day (FCAD) committee, and not a moment too soon as the face of agriculture changes seasons and a new generation of farmers begin to teach the last.
The family
Carl Yeates accepted the 2014 FCAD Honorary Farm Family of the Year with wife Mickie by his side and family behind him.
Carl Yeates met his future wife in Tri-Cities in 1977, and promptly brought her back to Quincy, where he hopes the next generation of Yeates family chooses to stay.
"We love our family," Mickie Yeates said, they are "very much talented and exceptionally bright."
"I didn't have any of these kids 'til I met Mickie so I guess it's all because of her," Carl Yeates joked at the FCAD award ceremony.
The eldest Yeates son, Bart, and daughter Tanya's husband, Jarod Rollins, farm alongside Carl Yeates. Tanya Rollins is working to raise her two children, and has one on the way. Son Scott Yeates lives in Quincy and works for John Deere. Daughter Tiffany is studying for her accounting degree at Bringham Young University, after which her father said he hopes she comes home and finds a nice local boy. The youngest Yeates son, Brett, is serving a mission in North Carolina and already missing the farm, Carl Yeates said. Carl and Mickie's numerous grandchildren take turns enjoying the tractors and other perks of a family farm.
The farm
Carl Yeates is a second generation Quincy area farmer who still farms the 300 acres his parents, Evert and Marybelle Yeates did, plus 1200 more. Mickie Yeates also grew up on a farm near Moses Lake with her parents Floyd and Maxine Winder.
As per the name sake, the Yeates family deals mostly in fruit, namely apples, and maintains an apple tree nursery to supply their and other's apple. The Yeates family also has a few head of cattle and grows wheat, corn, beans, alfalfa and you-name-it-they've-farmed-it if it can be grown in the Columbia Basin.
The Yeates family farm was built row by row by Evert Yeates, nurtured and expanded under the diligent work of Carl Yeates, and now looks toward the future in the hands of Bart Yeates. Once the teacher, Carl Yeates now takes a turn as student as his son teaches him the ins and outs of a new generation of farming based on GPS and other precision technologies.
"It's pretty amazing looking at trucks from the 1950s to today," Carl Yeates said, "And it's pretty neat seeing the next generation taking over and accepting it so readily."
Mickie Yeates takes care of the books and answers e-mails. Her role in the family farm has been changed by technology over the last few decades, as well. She has gone from farm wife who chases kids around, keeps the accounts, runs for parts and drives a truck every once in a while, to a farm wife to keeps the accounts, runs for parts, drives a truck every once in a while and answers e-mails. She said it is a job in itself to keep up with new options and industry recommendations, all which reach them by e-mail.
The fruit
The Yeates family is not all work and no play.
According to Peter Romano, a member of the farm family selection committee, the Yeates family are remarkable not only because of their work on the farm, but because of their work in the community.
"I love Quincy," Carl Yeates said when he accepted the award on the FCAD main stage.
He shows his devotion to the community with service in the Rotary Club, as a Boy Scout leader and Grand Columbia Council Vice President. He and Mickie Yeates are also active in their church and hosted exchange students for several years.
"When you live in a small town you can be involved in everything," Carl Yeates said.
"It was no question, Carl and Mickie have been well respected in the community for a long time," Romano said. "The award is not just about farming, it's a broad spectrum of what they do in the community," he said.
"We were flattered," Mickie Yeates said about receiving the award. She said the best award was the kind and wonderful congratulations from her neighbors.
The family was "very honored people would feel that way about us," Carl Yeates said.
It is not the first time the community has rallied behind the Yeates family, either. Mickie said last year tragedy hit their household when they lost a son, and the community rallied around them. She said it is a quintessential part of the small-town American culture to take care of your neighbors, help your community and grow together.
Today, Carl Yeates said he is "grateful for the challenge each day to get up and take another day."
"Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 says there is a time to plant and a time to harvest, a time to weep, a time to mourn and a time to dance. We're gonna take this time to dance and be happy," he said.