Wes Cleveland talks about growing up on his family farm while managing Duchenne muscular dystrophy. He shares how he stayed involved in farming work despite the disease, and how his family kept their agricultural operation going together.
West Cleveland. This is Aaron, Katie, Brook, and L.W. wesley. I've been farming for 17 years. I enjoy it. I love it. Used to love it, maybe more than I do now. Too much work. But he's the main reason I keep doing it, I guess because he really loves it.
I'm 11, and I started farming when I was 5, when I got my little tractor to do the yard and the garden with.
He run the peanut picker, hare field.
Cultivator, do anything but run the cotton picker.
Everything but the cotton picker. He don't fool with this yet. He is the, I guess, the backbone of the operation now. If it wasn't for him, we couldn't. Couldn't get it all done. And Aaron helps do a lot, and Katie Brew, everybody helps out, you know, to make it all. Make it all slow. We grow cotton, corn, peanuts, on about 2,000 acres.
Wesley was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy at age 5. He was a toe walker, which I was a toe walker, so. So whenever he started learning to walk on his toes, we really didn't think much about it, because I'd always heard it was hereditary toe walking. But as he got a little older, he started having. The lady who kept said it was hard for him to get up from the floor, and so we took him to the doctor. We were in there about 10 minutes, and he said, made Wesley sit on the floor and stand up, and he said, I can fix his feet, his toe walking, but that's the least of y' all's worries. Y' all need to see a neurologist. So we went there into Dothan, and we got the diagnosis there. And, you know, it was kind of like, you know, he'll lose the ability to walk between, you know, 8 and 10 and take the steroids, you know, but we didn't stop there. You know, that wasn't. That wasn't good enough. So we kept on and went for a second opinion. And we've been in a lot, probably six study trials. We don't know if it has anything to do with the trials that he was in or if it's just because he never stopped, you know. Cause they told us, you know, he don't need to be outside. You need to kind of keep him inside. He don't need to bruise his muscles, you know, whatever. But we just. He loves it outside. So we just were kind of like, you look, you know, we don't know how long he'll be able to do it. So as long as he can do it we gonna do it? And so Here he is 11 years old and he can do anything he wants to do.
I do better. Better than any other tractor.
Fox fan says we can't drive anything else but. And I guess Sunsouth. We like to stay local and they got good people working there like Taylor Bridges.
I met him. I'm going in there with daddy.
You come in there. What was the first thing that we.
Dealt on a bush hog?
It was a bush hog.
Yep. That little track.
But it's just good to see the young people. I was raised up on the farm and did kind of like little Wes. I was driving a tractor but I couldn't even hold the clutch down. And then to see him loving it and doing it is pretty amazing.
Yeah, he definitely love it. What you gonna be when you grow up?
