Reporter’s note: Every now and then, and I do mean just once in a great while, you meet one of those people who just seem to have that extra sense of personal blessing, who’ve been awarded for personal perseverance, having faced the adversities of history itself with a simple ethic of working hard and appreciating in pure humility all you have. Ruth Herndon Ivey, who was named Farmer of the Year by the Lakeland-Lanier County Chamber of Commerce this past February, is one of those rare human specimens who seem to quietly wreak of divine favor granted them for their humble way. Family and farming are in her blood, and at 92, she still walks with an uncanny swagger of perpetual vigor. Many from her era have passed before her.

One wonders if maybe she is still here to show the rest of us how to appreciate and be grateful for the gift of life we’ve been given. Honorably, meet Ruth Herndon Ivey.

LAKELAND — Ruth Herndon Ivey was born before electricity made its way to the extreme rural lands of South Georgia. Literally, she was raised in a log house on a family farm some 12 miles outside Lakeland, when a good road was one that didn’t ruin your horse’s shoe, didn’t eat the wheel off your Model A Ford or leave your truck stuck on a rain-drenched flooded country lane.

Born Nov. 29, 1915, to James Berry “Jim” Herndon and Dencie Herndon, Ivey shared strong recollections of those pioneering days when a pre-dawn early rise and a strong back were required to make it through each day.

Many who know her say she’s the hardest working person they have ever encountered. Maybe that’s why the Lakeland-Lanier County Chamber of Commerce decided in February to name Ivey as their Farmer Of The Year. The announcement was made much to Herndon’s surprise at the Chamber’s annual banquet.

Not one to rest on her laurels, Herndon continues to work on the family’s 3,000-acre farm that spans four counties and five family generations, occasionally driving a tractor to help move tobacco from the fields, cooking meals for her son Lee, grandson Andy Brogdon and their farmhands, and more.

But Ivey fondly recalled those primitive times when as a child, she wasn’t tall enough to be much help to anyone, except that she was. Because in her mind, she could help.

Early Memories

“The first thing I ever remember about farming was when daddy started farming tobacco,” Ivey said. “I wasn’t big enough. So they would put me up on a stool where I’d be high enough to get a hold of the tobacco and hand it to the one that was stringing. We had to do that for a long time, I don’t know how many years. Then I got tall enough to do the stringing. We worked like that until it got a little better (equipment and strategy wise).”

The Herndons started with 200 acres and the log house where Ivey was born and raised until the home burnt to the ground. “I remember it took a long time to burn. It burned for what seemed like days,” she said. “It was all dirt roads out here then. We had little three-path roads that used to run from house to house,” she said.

Farming in those days was totally unautomated and non-mechanical. In other words, it was physical.

“We did it all by hand,” Ivey said. “And they plowed with mules. Back then when we farmed, your neighbor would help you and you would help them. We didn’t hire anybody. They’d have a day of picking, and we’d help, and then they’d help us on our day of picking. We did it that way for years.”

Tragedy struck the Herndon farm when Ivey was a mere teenager, right in the midst of The Great Depression. Her mother caught “those bad old measles,” and she contracted pneumonia from that. “Mama died in 1930,” Ivey said. “Back then they didn’t have good medicines like they have today. The doctor doctored, but it didn’t do any good.”