An afternoon on 18-year-old Billy Hedrick’s farm

By Lauren Rodgers, RealWV

Billy Hedrick’s family has been farming the same plot of land in Crawley, West Virginia for more than hundred years. When Billy was 5 years old, he began to join the ranks of the Hedricks before him who had kept the land — including his father, his Papaw Fred, and his uncle Charlie. 

When Billy was 10, he began to take farming seriously, and by 14, he had withdrawn from public school to pursue his passion for agricultural work. He enrolled in an online school program and fully threw himself into life on the farm. 

The older men in his family still work on the farm to this day, but Billy Hedrick, now 18, is the farm’s primary caretaker. 

“I don’t miss a day. You’ll catch me here 365 days out of the year,” Hedrick said. 

In Crawley, Billy tills the land and plants the crops, which will be sold locally in a few months. He and his father sell their corn, peppers, pumpkins, potatoes, and other produce at the Sam Black Church Shell Station on the weekends, where some of his customers have been coming  to buy for the past 10 years. 

“There’ll be older folks that met my grandpa 10 years ago and still remember the sweet corn he sold them. That’s cool, you know, little things like that,” Hedrick said.

In addition to managing the crops, Billy also takes care of pigs, chickens, and 10 long-eared rabbits that he shows at the West Virginia State Fair. Free-range chickens roam the property, bits of corn littering the grass behind their coop. 

Billy’s chicken feed, a mixture of sweet and Indian corn left over from last season’s harvest, is ground in an old feed grinder that Hedrick has rigged up to a tricycle tractor. The feed grinder, a rusted metal contraption from decades past, saves Billy thousands of dollars a year.

Though it’s common for many kids in the area to do agricultural work, show animals at the fair, or help out on their family’s farm, Hedrick stands apart — his leadership, drive to expand his family’s business, and daily dedication to the land seem like uncommon qualities for other people his age. 

Billy says he can only name about five other kids he knows who work their farms to a similar level. 

“I can name on one hand the kids my age who really farm. Everybody’s family can have a farm… I got plenty of buddies whose families own hundreds of acres of land, but not many kids who are out there every day working the whole thing,” he said. 

A large reason Billy is fully involved on his family’s farm is because of his withdrawal from public school, a decision he now regrets. 

“I left in the 8th grade, and I didn’t look back,” he said. “But it was after COVID, and I didn’t like school and whatnot. But I think I lack some social skills,” he said candidly.

Hedrick is a talented fisherman, works on his truck in his spare time, and enjoys cooking with his family. He likes to travel and hopes to complete a cross-country camping trip in the near future. 

Remarking on a recent visit he and his brother made to Los Angeles, Hedrick said, “It was the coolest place I’ve ever been to, but I just couldn’t picture myself having to wake up every morning in a place like that.” 

And while Billy knows there’s more to experience outside of West Virginia, he has no intention of leaving his family’s farm in Crawley for good. He aspires to expand into cattle and sheep farming someday, and wants to raise a family on the same land where he grew up. 

“I plan to stick it out until I can’t anymore,” he said.

Billy believes that social media, which he doesn’t use, is a large part of why many kids his age desire to leave West Virginia. 

“Social media has ruined a lot of kids my age. Kids see these people living out their lives on social media and instantly think, ‘Oh, that’s what I should be doing, that’s the life I want to live,’” he said. “They don’t seek out their true potential in a place like this.”

In a month, Billy will graduate from his online school program, giving him even more time to do what he loves — working the farm. 

Sitting on his truck bed, he shows me a collection of flint chips and arrowheads collected from the fields he recently tilled. Next to us, fat rats run in the beams of the pig stall. Billy’s older brother pulls out his BB gun to shoot them down; a 4-foot-long black snake slithers at his feet, awaiting its next meal. 

The late afternoon sun slowly makes its descent, casting new shadows. A cool breeze runs through the tree line. Billy is preparing for his next fishing excursion, which he’ll make later that night.

“I could never leave forever,” he said, stringing his fishing rod on the truck bed. “I’ll always have a reason to come back.”