LINCOLN COUNTY, N.C. — A rural North Carolina farmer is excited to have broadband internet in his neck of the woods, giving his family and others broadband in the area.

Farmer Jerry Wyant and his wife were in talks with lawmakers for three years to make it happen. 

Wyant loves farming. "I just get a thrill out of planting seed and seeing it grow and then harvesting the crop," he said.

He grew up on this farm and learned everything from his grandfather.

"My granddad used to have milk cows. He milked cows and they sold milk. They did all the milking by hand," he said.

They don't milk cows here anymore and they have changed a lot over the years, but Wyant's love for farming runs deep. He left home when he was younger, went to college and worked in accounting. But after seeing someone die in a car accident, he decided to return to farm life.

Wyant says he went around a curve and a tractor-trailer was coming. The car in front of him slid in front of the tractor-trailer and he took the driver into his car after the accident. He says that driver died in his arms.

Now, the farm is a family business with his sons working side by side with him.

"We raised wheat, soy beans, corn. We bail around 42,000 bails of straw every year," Wyant said.

He was just named North Carolina's farmer of the year. He says it's because of all the changes they have made to stay with the times, like adding a machine that rotates the wheat.

"Every year we try to do something on the farm to improve it," Wyant said.

They have also added a GPS on top of the sprayer, which is why they need internet.

"He just mashes a button and it automatically drives it and it doesn't overlap but one inch. It does a perfect job and some places he goes, he don't have it and he's got to do it manually," Wyant said.

He says his wife reached out to state Rep. Jason Saine three years ago asking to get broadband in their area. After years of working behind the scenes, Spectrum is now installing lines on their street.

Wyant says his grandkids will finally have internet in their home for school and his machines will be easier to work.

"We can take that off and put it on tractors like that tractor out there and that big one up there. We can put it on it and it will do the driving itself so you wouldn't lap over or nothing," he said.

Wyant met with Saine and Spectrum this week for a roundtable talk about the positive impacts of having high speed internet access in rural communities. Projects like this one are subsidized by state grants as well as the federal government's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. It's called R-DOF.

R-DOF is awarding more than $20 billion over 10 years to private companies like Spectrum and others to subsidize the cost of bringing broadband service to underserved areas.

Saine helped secure the grant award for the project helping Wyant's farm.