(gentle music) - [David] From the soil of our family farms to your table, there's something special about Georgia, something you can taste in every bite.

Fresh flavors, local farms, unforgettable experiences, Georgia has it all.

Support local, taste the difference, and make memories along the way.

Look for the Georgia Grown logo wherever you shop or visit georgiagrown.com.

(gentle music) - [Narrator 1] Community, learning, working, playing, celebrating, doing life is always better together.

At GPB, we aim to provide you with the tools to be able to do life together well.

Our mission to educate, inform, and entertain inspires everything from our wide range of programming to our stimulating radio conversations to our fun in-person events, we've got something for everyone.

Visit gpb.org/community to learn more about our upcoming events, - The fascinating and ever-changing world of agriculture.

Let's hit the road here in Georgia and meet the farmers, producers, makers and bakers who keep us all fed and keep us coming back for more straight ahead at the fork in the road.

(upbeat music) ♪ I came from the mud ♪ ♪ There's dirt on my hands ♪ ♪ Strong like a tree ♪ ♪ There's roots where I stand ♪ - [David] Georgia farmers, artisans, merchants and producers.

We depend on these men and women every day of our lives through the choices we make and the food we consume.

Their strategy and approach is always shifting, but the end game remains the same, results.

(upbeat music continues) (gentle music) Llamas, alpacas and Braves, oh my.

Include a tree house and a bamboo forest, add to that gourmet local cuisine, some of which has grown on the roof of Truist Park made available for thousands of baseball fans and there you now have a snapshot of this fascinating episode of "A Fork in the Road."

To sum it up, we explore a few unexpected farm related attractions in Atlanta.

(upbeat music) Let's begin this unexpected episode in Atlanta at Truist Park, where fans cheer on their local team and their local food (upbeat music) Chef Jaco is the man behind the culinary scene or scenes here at Truist Park and joining him are many other talented men and women who are all part of the Delaware North team.

(upbeat music) Delaware North runs food and catering operations at sports venues all over the world, London, Melbourne, St.

Louis, and New Jersey to name a few, but it's all about the Atlanta food scene here on "A Fork in the Road" and I quickly learned that Chef Jaco and his team go above and beyond to deliver fresh, tasty, and quite often local food to visitors of this remarkable venue.

(upbeat music) Back when I was growing up in the 80s, it was get your hot dogs, I don't even know if we had hamburgers, get your Cracker Jacks, and then maybe a soda drink and dad got a beer.

This whole culinary experience here has changed.

Tell me about that.

- I think people still have that idea that a chef in a ballpark can only cook hamburgers and hot dogs.

While we do specialize in making hot dogs, that's true, but with time, everything evolves and that's the great thing, so we wanna make sure that we serve something fresh, something healthy, something vibrant in all of our concession stands as well, so not just a hot dog and hamburger gig, but definitely we do have freemium spaces and great product that we utilize throughout the ballpark.

- [David] Yeah and you and the folks at Delaware North have a lot of creativity gets to go into it and there's a lot of different spaces that you serve.

- [Jaco] Absolutely, that process alone, just for planning, we utilize the off season, so that goes from me down to all my nine chefs that work with me.

We'll all come up with ideas, we'll sit around a table, and whatever ideas we think is best, we put that on paper and then we go to work.

We'll have the senior leadership team taste it and if it makes the cut, it makes the cut and we move on to the next project and we take our time to make sure it's not only relevant but it's in season, we can source the product locally to give a different type of culinary experience for all of our guests in the ballpark.

We ask our local rep to track down local farms for us and it's all about seasonality.

Does it make sense for this month or for the following month?

But we partner with local farms in our region and then we bring that into the ballpark and present that food for all of our guests and Braves country.

(upbeat music) - And if you make your way up to the Blue Moon Beer Garden at the rooftop of Truist Park, you'll see a spot where many greens and veggies that are used by the Delaware North team are grown and harvested.

- Welcome to the Blue Moon Beer Garden, call it the rooftop garden where I get to harvest herbs and some lettuces that we cross utilize in our premium spaces and the idea is to grow that into our concession stands as well.

With it being Blue Moon Garden, we thought it relevant to have our own little orange tree up here, so give it a couple more years and we'll harvest our own oranges, which I think is pretty cool.

- [David] That's cool, they could get the beer right here, get their orange right there.

- Right here and we do have the Blue Moon Brewery downstairs, which we make our own beer as well.

(upbeat music) This is what we call Towers Aquaponics.

The way this works is you have the pot on the bottom and then you have the tower and it's all with sensors and a little motor that is in there, so it runs for about eight minutes and then it will go off for about three minutes and what happens is the water gets pushed up and then gets distributed from the top down, so the plants is never submerged in water, but it gets just enough water for it to grow.

No chemicals, 100% organic and we like to pride ourselves that these lettuces and over here you got some chard is all for our guests inside of Truist Park.

Over here we have some romaine, we have some Swiss chard, we have some escarole, we also have some butter lettuce.

So once these are ready for harvest, we might take the butter lettuce and make a great sandwich or maybe a chicken wrap as an appetizer, so this really gives us that freedom of creativity and also something to be proud of for my culinary team as they know what it means to cook and make food that's been locally harvested right here in our building, in our club, in our ballpark, so very cool stuff.

(upbeat music) It's a relationship between us and the Braves and this is also something that the Braves wanted to see get done and again, me working along side of them, getting this up and going, I look forward to the future and expanding this garden out to where we can have our own lettuce on the hamburger and eventually I might have some garden beds where I can harvest my own tomatoes and onions.

That's something that we use throughout the stadium, so pretty cool.

- [David] From the roof, Chef took me on a tour of the diverse food stations within Truist Park from both sweet and savory options at the Delta Sky 360 Club to the even more exclusive Truist Club.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to Delta Club.

This is one of our biggest premium spaces inside of the stadium.

We have approximately five stations.

The Dish, The Dish is where you'll find your classic ballpark fare, so you'll find hot dogs, your fries, your chicken tenders.

So my idea for the season was to give each station and identity.

So for the cleanup, I kind of took the Asian approach with that, so I feature more Asian dishes, more seafood and lighter salads over there and from there we go to the Heart of the Order.

This is where you'll find your carving station, so we'll always have a protein, a vegetable, a starch, some dinner rolls, and some salads.

The next station is going to be Lead Off.

Lead Off, I try to have a little bit of fun over here.

We have normally two hot composed pasta dishes, one on each side.

So in the middle of the table is going to be the grazing station, sourcing items from a local business in the community, so over here we use a lot of products from not far dried cured meats, charcuterie items, and of course I showcase a bunch of cheeses, some spreads, some dip, some fresh honeycomb and some nuts.

Then, we are going to walk over here to Il Piatto.

That's our pizza station.

It's probably the most popular station, people line up for that pizza every day.

We make it from scratch, we stretch the dough, we process all the ingredients ourselves, put the dough through the pizza oven, cut it, and present it.

Whether it's a fresh salad, garlic knots, something that is Italian.

Last but not least with inside of Delta is our Sweet Spot.

We have your traditional cookie selection, the brownie selection.

Then we have cobbler, spice, more premium desserts and we get kind of creative with those as well< so yeah, that's Delta.

- [David] But you're all over this stadium.

How many miles a day do you think you get in?

- On a typical game day, it's pretty average for me to walk around 14 miles up, down, and around, just keep walking, make sure that the operation is smooth.

(upbeat music) Right now we're walking into the Truist Club.

Most exclusive premium club inside of Truist Park.

Each table have an identity.

We feed roughly 180 people in this club on any given ball game.

In this club, everything is scratch made, so very proud to say that.

- [David] And lucky for me, Chef Jaco came armed with a few Georgia grown ingredients and cared to share a sample salad, one of many tasty culinary options you'll find throughout the park.

- I'm gonna highlight a salad that we are going to make in one of our premium clubs today.

Watermelon salad with some sliced onions, cucumbers, feta cheese, mint, and a homemade balsamic dressing.

My watermelon over here that's sourced from a farm locally, also my cucumber and my red onions and my mint will be sourced local.

Put that into my mixing bowl.

Cucumbers, I'm gonna add in some red onions, some feta cheese, and then last but not least, I got my fresh mint.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna roughly pull it apart so it's nice and big and chunky to give that nice fresh burst of flavor when you bite into it.

(upbeat music) Once I have that all mixed up, I'm gonna add my, just a little bit of balsamic.

What I'm gonna do is show you how we do things at Truist Park.

We thoroughly believe that we have to layer our ingredients so you have something in each bite.

- [David] This is art.

- Just build up so people can actually see what they're eating, they can experience the mouth feel.

All right.

So from here we will walk this out to the club level for Truist Club and we will present it as such.

- [David] Feeding thousands of hungry Braves fans every game night is no easy task, but it seems like the Braves, like this Delaware North team, have found a formula that works for continued success.

Loaded with many local flavors offering high-end dishes along with the ballpark classics, Chef Jaco and the team are always ready to play ball at game time.

(upbeat music) From Truist Park in northwest Atlanta to a bamboo forest in East Atlanta where you'll find a friendly gang of llamas and alpacas.

Yes, you heard me correctly.

(gentle music) Kara is a lady full of ideas, some of which may have even been dreams.

Regardless of the origin, she just seems to follow through with it, no matter how difficult or out of the ordinary it may be and the result is a place that generates happiness, smiles, and an overall feeling of goodness.

Time to explore the extraordinary houses, tree houses, and furry friends of Kara O'Brien.

(upbeat music) - We are here at Alpaca Tree House in the Bamboo Forest.

My neighbor across the street said we are kind of a mullet farm.

Like we're city in the front and country in the back.

(both laughing) - [David] Not even this country, though.

- Right, yeah.

It's almost like you transported to Bali right when you're back here.

It's very strange and that bamboo we're pretty sure has been there since the 1940s.

- [David] Alpacas, llamas, which came first here to the Bamboo Forest?

- The alpacas were the first because alpacas are small, they're about half the size of a llama, and I didn't know what I was doing, so I thought, well that's more manageable, right, even though they're very strong and then there was a meme going around that basically said that llamas listen to death metal and will shive you and alpacas are like a fluffy bunny that just sings like rainbow songs and things, so I thought, okay, we'll do that.

Honestly, I think it's the opposite.

I think an alpaca will shive you way faster and listen to death metal more than a llama.

Llamas were like the dogs of South America.

They carried people's, well, I guess like a mule, but they carry people's packs.

You know, a lot of these towns rely on llamas.

You're not gonna get anything in.

- [David] And alpacas don't pack.

- Alpacas don't pack, no, and they're too small.

A llama will work and they're very smart.

Yeah, they're just under dolphin intelligence levels, which is good 'cause they're really easy to train with food 'cause they're highly motivated for treats like baby organic carrots are the fave.

So anything with the little sugar, they're like, woo.

- [David] That's awesome.

(upbeat music) Tell me about the Treehouse experience and the yoga experience, all the things people can do here when they visit.

- The Treehouse is kind of the main thing.

I built it for myself and my friends 'cause we thought it'd be a fun place to sip wine and feel like you've escaped to another country and then friend said, "Hey, you know, "it would really help your rescue efforts "if you had some income from that" and then it just exploded in the most fabulous manner and so it's allowed us to rescue a lot more animals 'cause we can go and buy them from the auction where they're decrepit, sick, parasite filled, a lot of them abused, have behavioral problems, and then work with them to get 'em rehabbed and then move them on to a permanent home and absorb all those veterinary bills.

We can do that thanks to the Tree House.

- [David] All right, came up the stairs through the Bamboo Forest.

- So now you're on our porch, which is a cute little porch in the middle of what feels like Bali or Vietnam or Puerto Rico or Thailand.

Somewhere tropical, right?

- [David] Yes, I mean we are surrounded.

- We're surrounded by bamboo.

This is where it all started.

This is my original baby.

The ceiling of this is from the 1840s and it's the old paint blue that comes from the Gullah tradition - [David] That keeps the spirits away.

The evil spirits.

- Yes.

Keeps the good ones in and the bad ones out.

- [David] And it's mixed in with beautiful wood like this.

- Yeah, this is an old cedar tree we saved.

This wood came off of a morning side porch from 1905.

This is old Victorian stained glass out of Ohio, probably from the 1800s.

This door is really cool because this was the mayor of Atlanta's back door, back at the turn of the century and being that it was a back door, it would've only been used by women, children, and servants and so I love now that this door has a whole new lease on life and it's now the front door and we welcome everyone.

(upbeat music) And on the inside, you have heart of pine floors.

These came out of an old church from 1905 and all the trim is a cedar tree that someone had taken out of their yard and I bought it from the sawmill and it smells in here like cedar, which is really cool.

- [David] That is what I smell.

- Yeah.

This is the old beaded board.

This beaded board dates back to probably 130, 140 years and it's all these different colors, so it looks really like a quilt almost of wood and I love that the ladder is made of cedar also and parts of old steel off of an old industrial building that was reclaimed.

You can see like how pitted it is and everything.

And one of the questions I get a lot is, "Hey, if I book in the winter, will I see the llamas?"

And I'm like, "Oh yeah, like they love winter "'cause they've got the coat for it" and when you stay here, you live in the middle of the herd.

I mean you do, you're part of them.

- [David] That is awesome.

- For good or for bad.

- [David] When you're here, you got electricity, you got a fridge, you have a Keurig.

And then when it's bedtime.

- [Kara] When it's bedtime, you climb up like a little kid, it's a queen.

There's another AC up there, so in case you're.

- [David] Oh, it is cool up here and, oh, the wood pattern's gorgeous.

It is like a quilt.

- Yeah, thank you.

(gentle music) Lama yoga was something we wanted to do.

If people live not far away, they could come and experience everything without like committing to staying.

When we first started yoga, people would say, "Are the llamas gonna come in and do yoga with me, and I was like, "No, that's silly, no.

"They'll be out walking around."

They immediately made a liar out of me.

Figgy went in and was like, I'm doing yoga.

Got a mat, did downward llama and all of a sudden we're like, this is crazy.

and then became this like, we call her one of the yoga instructors.

She became this regular and they show up to put down their mats and she's in there.

Next thing you know, you had Lira doing yoga and then Alfie Fave pickle Sprite, who's an alpaca, but she identifies as a llama.

She started to do yoga as well, she does.

She hangs out with the llamas and she's the smallest too.

- [David] That's awesome.

- Yeah.

She's so cute.

- And the name again?

- [Kara] Elsie Fave Pickle Sprite.

- [David] That's what I thought.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

(gentle music continues) - [David] So Figgy was dragged by her ears, so she's very sensitive to her head being touched or her ears.

She lets me, but I've had to really work on desensitizing her, but they like this, it's called T touch and it's something that started with horses and it just, you make little circles and it feels really nice.

(gentle music) And then Rio, the little guanaco who's not so little anymore, she has started to do yoga as well.

- [David] They just walk in that door right there.

- They walk in there and they, they kush, so they basically, this is kush.

(gentle music) - [David] Now we got an alpaca.

- Yes, this is Caitlin Tasty.

She's very, very old.

You see how the alpacas are more shy 'cause they're neurotic.

This is Campari, the supermodel right here.

Her eyes are ringed with like platinum, but that's Elsie Fave Pickle Sprite, who identifies as a llama.

You often see her with Campari.

They're very good friends and they hang out a lot.

You know they're having lunch together right now.

That is Lyra the Naughty.

- [David] That's Lyra, okay.

- Lyra, you see her eyes, she's threatening to spit at me right now.

Don't spit at me.

Oh, did she get you?

I hope she didn't.

- No.

- Okay, good.

The nice thing about her is I can put her in socks and scarves and things like that because I've had her since she was just a little baby.

- [David] And then you got the chickens back here.

- [Kara] I have chickens here.

- [David] And the chickens have nice stained glass.

- [Kara] They do 'cause I didn't and then when I built this barn, I had to put stained glass in it.

'cause I didn't want the alpacas and llamas to be jealous of the chickens.

- [David] And I see these balls.

Tell me about this.

- These are a farm blend.

My friend Nicole Taylor, she does our shearing for us.

She cards it, washes it, cards it, spins it, and makes it into this gorgeous yarn.

It's fun because people write me and be like, "I made a dolly scarf," you know, and then they have this little piece of an animal.

People will connect with different animals 'cause they're so radically different in personality.

I call 'em people wearing fur suits.

They're just incredibly intelligent and full of personality and uniqueness.

That's my book I wrote about Campari who adopted Lyra and came into full milk and made it official and they are mother and daughter and they fight like it sometimes too.

We have honeybees and honey.

I didn't know this about honey, but every season it's different, like this spring for example, the honey was very light.

This is the fall.

So you can see the fall honey is a much more of an amber richer and it's just based on what pollen is available, what are the bees harvesting, what are they bringing back to the hive and so every season you have just a different flavor, a different palette depending on what the bees found.

- [David] Now this is just one of many B&B overnight options that Kara offers.

Crossing just over the Georgia, Alabama border, we can explore even deeper into the creative home design mind of Kara.

Do we start at the steampunk house, the fairytale cabin or the incomparable Hobbit house that is finished by now, but was actually in construction during my visit?

I think I had you at Hobbit house.

What do we have here?

- This is the Hobbit house and you can see the signature round doorway from the bedroom into the living room.

This is a really cool old English reproduction tile.

These trees are from the property.

They're cedars and white oaks that hold up the entire roof and you can see that's a really intensive framing job because it will have around six to seven inches of dirt on top of it.

- [David] We're looking at the roof.

This will all be underground.

- This will all be underground.

This roof has so many different layers.

I think that we have nine layers with the 10th being the earth that we put back on top.

- [David] Right now we are in the steam punk cabin.

- [Kara] We are in the steam punk.

- [David] And I get it.

I'm looking at all this stuff here.

This is really cool.

How did this come about?

- It was a 1963 single wide trailer.

It was in rough shape, but we decided to create a whole new roof line and gave it a nice gable with lots of Victorian accents and reframe the whole building, reframe the whole floor, put in a whole new floor, put in this fun decorative ceiling.

Steam punk is basically Victorian industrialism, so I've never done steam punk before and finding things like these really cool light switches that are very Frankenstein, right?

- And they work.

- And they work.

And the Fairytale Cabin, which is our first one that we built around these old 1840s chimneys we found in the forest.

- [David] Seems like creativity has gotten the best of you here.

- It has.

I'm just out here having fun, honestly.

Like people say, it's a business venture and I suppose it is, but really it's just an excuse to play in the woods.

I've had people who've been sitting in the hot tub and there's a family of deer eating 10, 15 feet away from them while they're just soaking and having their beverage and that's what I want people to come away with.

I want them to come out here and they're gonna take away something different that they probably don't have at home and hopefully that restores them.

I would say it's very common that people tell me, I feel like soul refreshed.

I feel just completely restored and that was what I needed and I didn't maybe even know how much I needed it and that makes me so happy.

- [David] Part of the allure here is the serene woodsy escape that is offered in the sprawling hills, hiking to the magical beaver pond or taking a few minutes to just wind down and relax with the sounds of nature, you can't go wrong, but eventually it's always time to head home and home for Kara is with Figgy, Dalai Lama, and the rest of the Atlanta Alpaca Treehouse gang.

- [Kara] I love you, Sylvie.

- [David] So from Atlanta alpacas to Atlanta Braves, we go from a relaxing moment of zen to a tasty, thrilling win from the hometown team.

Yes, Atlanta is a city where you can expect the unexpected.

I'm David Zelski.

See you at the next "Fork in the Road."

(upbeat music) "A Fork in the Road" was brought to you by.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Community, learning, working, playing, celebrating.

Doing life is always better together.

At GPB, we aim to provide you with the tools to be able to do life together well.

Our mission to educate, inform, and entertain inspires everything from our wide range of programming to our stimulating radio conversations to our fun in-person events, we've got something for everyone.

Visit gpb.org/community to learn more about our upcoming events.

(gentle music) - [David] From the soil of our family farms to your table, there's something special about Georgia, something you can taste in every bite.

Fresh flavors, local farms, unforgettable experiences, Georgia has it all.

Support local, taste the difference, and make memories along the way.

Look for the Georgia Grown logo wherever you shop or visit Georgiagrown.com.