George Wilson used to tell his teammates how he had crawled in tobacco fields in the heat of a sultry summer day or how he had endured cold winters in the tobacco stripping barns. He didn’t tell the tales to boast. It simply was how he was raised and who he was.
“When it came to working out, running sprints, or practicing in the rain, that was fun compared to working on a tobacco farm,” Wilson said. “Enduring a hard football practice was easy for me.”
Those lessons learned from hard work on the tobacco farm helped Wilson develop a strong work ethic in his football career that took him from Paducah Tilghman to the University of Arkansas as a receiver, and then to a 10-year career in the NFL, where he transitioned to safety, a position he had never played before. And now he’s putting those lessons back into practice as the fourth-generation farmer and owner of Phonograph Farms in rural McCracken County.
Wilson, who ended his NFL career with the Tennessee Titans after the 2014 season, decided to buy the 143-acre farm from his grandfather, who was ill with cancer.
“It was my desire to ensure that it stayed in my family for another generation,” Wilson said.
He began cleaning up the land and doing the maintenance work that his grandfather, George H. Reeves Jr., couldn’t do after he became ill. Yet, it wasn’t until 2017 when Wilson decided that he needed to devote more time to the farm and to his ideas of making his family farm into an experience he could share with others.
He wanted others to feel the connection to the land and nature that he felt as a boy visiting his grandparents and extended family. The gentle breezes blowing through the countryside. The crows cackling in the distance. The cicadas serenading anyone who would listen. The smell of tobacco after it was stripped and hung in the barn. The bluegill in the pond jumping. Simply the peace of the countryside.
Being out in nature gives people that sense of peace and belonging that’s missing in the hustle of everyday life. It also reminds Wilson of his grandparents and ancestors.
Wilson’s great-grandfather, George H. Reeves Sr., worked for Illinois Central Railroad and bought the farm in 1941 from his father-in-law Jim Miller. He and his wife, Birdie, moved to the farm from their house on Olivet Church Road and began raising cattle, tobacco, and corn. George Sr. sometimes had five to 10 families on the farm with him and Birdie to help him raise crops. Their address was Route 1, Box 217. All the sharecroppers’ children and the Reeves children grew up together and attended the old Woodlawn School.
George Reeves Jr., Wilson’s grandfather, and his sister Frances bought the farm after the deaths of George Sr. and Birdie.
“I never had a chance to meet my great-grandfather as he passed away two years before I was born (in 1981), but I always tell my guys that knew my grandfather that if we’re doing something for the first time or maybe just finishing up another project that if my grandfather pulled up in his pickup truck, I could hear him just say, ‘Y’all up here doing it, ain’t you,’” Wilson said. “And that’s the way of complimenting us and respecting the work that we are doing. I know that they are up there looking down on this. I hope that they’re proud and that I continue to make them proud. Because they know that the steward of the property now values, cherishes, and cares about the property just as much as they did. I think that gives them great comfort in knowing that the property will remain in our family and is being used to help people.”
Wilson spent hours at the farm with his grandparents as a boy. After he played football on Friday nights at Paducah Tilghman, he went to the farm every Saturday morning for chores when other friends got to sleep in or hang out. Wilson recalled his grandfather teaching him how to drive a tractor and hitch up the tobacco trailer or how he taught him how to strip tobacco.
“My grandfather has put us through it,” Wilson recalled. “He was a firm man who knew what he stood for. When he told you to do something, he wanted you to do it the right way, the way that he had told you to. And because of that, you know, you want to teach you accountability and responsibility and being consistent. And so, those were all attributes that pay dividends. It’s my life.”
Wilson has always referred to the dedication and attributes that his grandfather taught him as the “gift that keeps on giving,” and so when he had to name his farm, he wanted to do something that honored his family heritage. He didn’t want to put his own name on the farm, so instead, he researched and found that the tagline “gift that keeps on giving” was first used for Victor “talking machines” or the Victrola or the Phonograph in 1925. He decided to name his farm Phonograph Farms.
“I’ll say that myself, as well as my other family members that either lived out here or worked out here, most of us didn’t appreciate it in the moment,” Wilson said of the land. “It wasn’t until we were into adulthood that we truly had the profound appreciation of those experiences but also of my great-grandparents and my grandparents exposing us to that. Because of that, it keeps me grounded. It gives us a sense of belonging. It gives us a platform to teach life lessons and family values.”
As Wilson has built Phonograph Farms, he has used those values to shape his vision. During the pandemic, Wilson began spending more time at the farm and refining his vision for what he hopes it can become. The farm currently produces eggs, organic vegetables, and honey.
“I said that I didn’t want it to be a traditional farm,” Wilson said. “I didn’t want to focus or limit the property to being all just crops. And so, while I respect, love, and appreciate that, I do want it to diversify the income to the property. Moreover, I wanted to create more opportunities that would incentivize or may get people to come out and see the property.”
Wilson said if he simply grew soybeans or corn year in and year out that no one would want to visit the farm. His grandfather grew tobacco and corn and raised cattle. That might have been the perfect farming set up then, but Wilson has bigger dreams of agribusiness and agritourism.
“And so, knowing where my end goal was, and that’s something I learned in business school and in life in general, is to start with the end in mind,” he said. “That’s been my approach to this, to my products, and to my property.”
To that end, he decided to raise chickens to produce eggs that he could use in a catering business one day, as well as farm-fresh vegetables for the catering business. Besides setting the groundwork for a future enterprise, the eggs and vegetables allow him to produce income.
Wilson, who earned a business degree from Arkansas, admits to not knowing much initially about how to grow vegetables, tend to chickens, or tend to bees, but like everything else in his life, he has studied and practiced. He admits that much of his education in farming, beyond the values his grandparents instilled, came from trial and error. He lost honeybees to cold weather, and he has lost chickens to coyotes.
“And that’s just something you’ve just got to adapt and adjust to as well,” he said. “These are constant lessons being taught and learned day in and day out. And that’s something that appeals to me.”
He learned that he couldn’t grow corn every year because it depletes the nitrogen from the soil, so he rotated soybeans to restore those nutrients. That little nugget of knowledge has allowed him to educate people who come to the farm and ask why he isn’t sticking with one crop every year.
To that end, he has worked with groups such as the Oscar Cross Boys and Girls Club. “We do gardening, and you let them get their hands into the soil. They come over to fish,” he said. “And so, if you think about it, we’re teaching them how to survive and not just how to eat for that one day.”
Wilson has a vision for growing his farm into a full-scale agribusiness and agritourism. He has already hosted events through his entertainment company, GW Productions, and he hosted prom for Paducah Tilghman and Livingston County high schools during the pandemic. He’s also hosted leadership retreats and meetings for various companies. Besides the farm element, he eventually wants to build ropes courses, ziplines, obstacle courses, and athletic areas, as well as a meeting area and overnight cabins. He said he wants to serve churches, businesses, and schools with leadership development opportunities.
“Our ultimate goal is to build an experience that has something for everybody in the family, from the grandparents all the way down to the grandchildren, and to be able to do it in a relaxed, safe, and friendly environment,” he said.
Family remains the theme in Wilson’s life and endeavors. Although the farm’s name is Phonograph, Wilson affectionately calls it Reevesville as a tribute to his family and the long-ago moments of the children gathering to play baseball on Sundays with his grandfather pitching or the children gathering around to eat homemade ice cream and visit with their grandparents and great-grandparents. “That gave us a strong sense of family,” he said. “And so that carries on this day.”
Wilson hopes to pass Phonograph Farms and Reevesville down to his son and nephews and keep his grandfather and great-grandfather’s legacy alive. “I just trust that God and life will lead one or a few of them to want to follow in our footsteps in being the next steward or stewards. It’s going to be different than when I found it.”
