Page 44 - Spring 2021

We are proud to be locally owned and operated.
Courtesy Timothy Coolong
Serving the Area Since 1989 Athens • Bogart • Danielsville
Coolong enjoys traveling every couple years and helping farmers around the world. Several years ago, he worked with growers in Senegal.
At first, Coolong couldn’t seem to settle on a major. Then, he met horticulture professor Tim Smalley, who got him fired up about plants and nursery management. The very next day, Coolong changed his major to horticulture. Along the way, he met another mentor, Bill Randle, whose area of expertise was Vidalia onions. Coolong became a “triple Dawg,” earning his bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. in horticulture at UGA.
Shortly after completing his doctoral studies, Coolong took a position at the University of Kentucky. After six years there, he returned to his alma mater and worked at the UGA Tifton campus, where he did business with large commercial vegetables farms. As his interest and expertise in the area of organic farming grew, he relocated to Oconee County to work at the Durham Horticulture Farm. He is now a leading researcher in the area of vegetable farming, organic farming practices and most recently hemp production.
Coolong expanded organic acreage for study and outreach to those interested in employing organic farming practices. With the 2018 Farm Bill, he added hemp production to his list of research. His goal is to provide farmers with the newest research to give them an edge over producers in other parts of the world and help them develop more resilient and profitable crops.
www.lordandstephens.com (706)546-1587
Coolong is also the UGA coordinator for the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. When the pandemic is over, he will help lead an international trip to provide farmer outreach. Whether he’s working with farmers near Mandalay in Myanmar to grow watermelon or supporting growers in West Africa’s Senegal, Coolong is always happiest in the field.
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Coolong has been honored with the Donnie H. Morris Award of Excellence in Extension from the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, five Blue Ribbon Extension Communications Awards from the Southeastern Region of the American Society for Horticultural Science and the Service Award from the Georgia Association of County Agriculture Agents. Coolong is also proud to call Oconee County home. He and his wife, YunYong, have a son, Hudson, who is a second grader at Oconee Elementary School.