(bright 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.

(bright pleasant 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.

- 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."

(singer vocalizing) ♪ I came from the mud ♪ ♪ There's dirt on my hands ♪ ♪ Strong like a tree ♪ ♪ There's roots where I stand ♪ - 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) Georgia is known worldwide for its juicy peaches, peanuts, and of course Vidalia onions.

But when it comes to fruits and veggies grown in abundance in Georgia, those are just the tip of the iceberg.

This week we explore a few other crops that grow beautifully in this fertile southern soil.

(singer vocalizing) Let's begin our adventures in South Georgia all the way to the Georgia-Florida line in Lake Park to learn all about carrots from the nation's largest carrot producer.

(upbeat music) Carrots are a solid vegetable with a hearty crunch.

(carrot crunches) But did you know that they are 88% made of water?

People have cultivated and enjoyed carrots for the past 5,000 years.

So now it's time to find out why.

And for that, we meet Jason Chandler, who is the director of Southeast Farming Operations at Grimmway Farms.

- So the Grimm Brothers started the farming operation in the 60s with a roadside stand selling sweet corn near Anaheim.

In the late 60s, early 70s, they incorporated the farm into Grimmway Farms, moved into the Kern County, Bakersfield area in the early 80s, began growing carrots.

The acquisition of Generation Farms here in 2019 in South Georgia kind of completed the last of Grimmway Farms as we know it today with production here in the Southeast.

We're the largest grower of carrots, certainly in the U.S.

with a little over 40,000 acres of carrots growing across the U.S.

- [David] What is it about the Southeast that grows a great carrot?

- Well, it's a good window.

The Southeast is in a little bit of a transition production window between some of the other major growing regions in the U.S.

There's good growing conditions, good sandy soils, and abundance of water.

All those things kind of come together to make it a very productive area here in the Southeast, primarily in the south Georgia and north Florida area.

(bright guitar music) - [David] What led you to this profession?

- I grew up on a small family farm.

We worked in tobacco and peanuts.

Working in tobacco was, was hot and tough.

I wanted to go somewhere and work still in ag, but maybe not directly on the farm.

So I went and majored in ag economics, realized that farming, that being out in the field after being away for a while was really where I wanted to be.

Went back to school to graduate school, got a degree in agronomy so I could understand a little bit more about how to grow things actually, and got back into production ag as a career, managing a farm probably about 20 years ago now.

- [David] What type of carrots grow well in this Georgia region?

- Really all carrots grow well in this part of Georgia.

You could grow pretty much any type of carrot there is, but primarily our focus is on the retail types.

So you've got fresh carrots, which are what I consider kind of the Bugs Bunny carrot.

They're the long full-length carrot that you'll find in a bag, in one, two, five, six pound bag sizes.

And then the baby carrots, you hear 'em called processing carrots, a couple of other things, but genetics have changed.

You know, originally we were making baby carrots out of the broken pieces of fresh carrots.

It was a byproduct that they created that niche market of the baby carrot.

And then as that market grew, the need to select varieties that would grow longer, more cylindrical, the size of your thumb or something from from tip to top that you could cut in two inch pieces and peel and not have a lot of wasted carrot or time in the peeling process.

So now we grow two main types and you've got multiple varieties on the fresh cello side to choose from and you've got even more probably varieties maybe on the baby or processing side.

- [David] How long does it take a carrot like this to grow?

- [Jason] Well, in the Southeast you really have one season, but we plant 'em over a period of several months.

The window is August to around Thanksgiving.

- [David] When we look at carrots, we see all kinds of different colors.

What leads to that and do they have different flavors when you have different color?

- I know we grow your typical orange carrot.

We've got whites, we've got yellows, we've got sort of a ruby red color and even purple, and each one of them have a little different flavor.

I think most people think of carrots as orange.

I don't think actually they were originally, if you go back in history, orange was not the original color, but that was the color that sort of geneticists I think kind of stuck with.

And everybody's used to seeing the orange carrot.

They're a great food.

They can be eaten a lot of different ways and they're loaded with vitamins and nutrients.

A low calorie, a high fiber type of food where you can get your feel of all these daily vitamins and minerals without the high calorie intake.

You know, that's a positive.

(upbeat music) So this is how it all starts.

This is essentially the same seed.

These are carrot seed.

These are raw seeds, so they have no coating, and these are what we call pelleted seed.

And that pelleted coating is essentially just put on there.

The only difference is the type of planter that you would use to plant them.

Some planters work operate better with the raw seed and some better with the pelleted seed.

If you're planting carrot seed at a half a million seed to the acre, you know, you're really only putting about 30 seed per foot.

So that will plant quite a bit.

The pelleted seed actually tends to singulate better and spaces out better in the row.

So if uniformity and size and shape is what you're after, the pelleted seed would generally do a little better.

Every seed germinates a little bit differently.

Temperature and rainfall in the first week have a lot to do with how well they germinate or how well they don't germinate.

And honestly, it kind of plays into your advantage because when you get ready for harvest, you really need carrots of all shapes and sizes.

There's some little ones, and the reality of it is every field's gonna have that.

And so you've got some smaller, maybe smaller packaged carrots, a little bit larger.

There's an opportunity for processing and juice in every field that's gonna exist.

And so it takes all kinds to complete the market.

We have to be very careful about traffic in the carrot fields.

You see how one of the machines had driven too close to the row here and pinched the edge of the bed.

If you pinch the edge of the bed when that carrot is young and growing, it'll cause it to deform, and these will turn into culls.

So it's very important for every trip that we make in the field after planting that we don't run into the edge of the bed and perhaps pinch where those young carrots are growing.

- [David] And is GPS the best way to coordinate it?

- It is, it is.

But if you're off by one inch and that machine or tire touches the edge of that row and the first 30 days as that carrot is developing, it's linked, if it pinches the edge of that row at all, it'll cause that carrot to be forever deformed to be a cull.

As they get a little older, you'll see these root hairs begin to develop.

Typically, with a younger carrot, that's 120 to 150 days of age, you won't see very many root hairs.

It doesn't take away from the carrot, it's just the carrot's way of trying to survive and put on new roots for water and nutrient uptake.

(upbeat techno music) So here in the field, the harvester, the machine's gonna grab the top, pinch the top, there's a blade underneath that's gonna lift those carrots, kinda help lift those carrots out of the ground.

So then the tops will come up through the machine pinched in belts like such.

And as they come up through the top, there's some fingers that are kind of run through 'em to shake any kind of dirt that's in the carrot and they'll run through a set of rotary knives that pull the top up through and basically pinch it off about like that.

And in some cases you may have, you may have some of the tops still be attached.

All of that will be removed at the facility.

So when they come into the facility, they get washed out, they'll run through some equipment that separates foreign material and debris, then they'll immediately go into a brush washer that essentially washes them, wipes all of this off, wipes all those root hairs and the dirt off.

And then they go through a cold water bath and then they'll come out and run through sizers that both size them for diameter first, and then through a sizer they turn and come through another sizer that sizes them for length.

You use the larger carrots like these for your larger package carrots and the smaller carrots for your smaller package carrots.

They'll be in a bag within two to three minutes and then go into a cooler.

So literally from the time they come out of a trailer to the time they go into a bag ready for the store, it's probably less than 10 minutes total.

(bright music) - [David] In that stalk, it looked really pretty with the stalk on, but we see 'em in the stores with the stalks on.

Is it for show?

- Yeah, you'll see some that are harvested with the top on and that's essentially for show.

However, the top is actually pretty nutritious.

I've never eaten one, but there's quite a bit of nutrition in the top.

You know, carrot is in the same family as parsley and cilantro.

So you know we eat the tops of all of those, but carrots, we pull it off and eat the root.

- [David] You have a smaller one there, that doesn't go to waste.

- Yeah, so when you see a carrot like this in a field that is being harvested for fresh, full-length carrots, this would be unmarketable.

But fortunately we've got, in our facility, we have the ability to divert this to other areas of the plant to either cut it in two-inch pieces and make a couple of baby carrots or possibly use it for small chunks for other processing uses in the industry.

So these carrots are the fresh carrots or cello carrots that you'll typically hear called in the market, named in the market.

And this is like what I always kind of call the Bugs Bunny style.

It's large shoulder, nice taper.

It's the full-length carrot that you'll find in the bag at your local grocery store.

- [David] What's your favorite way to eat carrots?

- You know, my favorite way to eat carrots is still gathered around the island at the house with the kids.

They'll have all kind of different dips out and just snacking on baby carrots there around the house.

- Cooked or raw?

- I like raw.

But now my mother-in-law's beef stew with the carrots in them is second to none.

- [David] Rabbits.

Do they like carrots?

- You know, I would assume so, but that's something we don't see a lot of around these fields.

I don't know that I've ever seen it rabbit in one of our carrot fields.

So it may make for good cartoons, but I'm not sure that that's real.

(chuckles) - [David] So it seems humans may like carrots more than rabbits, at least here in south Georgia.

And lucky for us, the folks at Grimmway and other carrot growers in America work hard to continue bringing this tasty, colorful, and healthy root vegetable from these fields to our homes and schools.

(singer vocalizing) Let's now set our sights on Cordele.

Just journey along Interstate 75 until you see the signs that tell you you are in the watermelon capital of the world.

(bright music) The first recorded watermelon harvest occurred about 5,000 years ago in Egypt and is amazingly still depicted in an Egyptian hieroglyphics on walls of ancient buildings.

From Africa, the watermelon made its way across the Mediterranean to Europe and eventually to East Asia and the Americas where our focus is today.

So let's journey to the current capital of Georgia watermelon country in Cordele where they celebrate this special fruit every year in high-flying fashion.

Cordele is also home to the Leger family who have been growing, picking and packing going on three generations.

Let's begin with third-generation farmer Cole Leger who's been working in these fields since he was 14.

(bright guitar music) - This is a great place to grow 'em.

They say it's the minerals and the soils that make the watermelons in Georgia sweeter.

It's the soil and growing practices of these growers and everybody does a really good job on their fields.

As you can see, it's clean and pretty and has a lot of watermelons.

We want it very, very dry.

We'd rather have to water 'em because we can't control the rain.

We can control irrigation and put what they need, but three inches of rain will over flood the field and spread disease and it's just not good to get beat, for the vines to get beat down by the rain.

So a dry season is the best season for us.

- [David] How do you know when these watermelon are ready?

- A lot of time you kind of just go through and you pick the ones that are sticking up out of the vines.

The bigger ones with a little bit of sun on top, like that one right there.

It's green.

It hadn't had any sun.

Whereas this one right here, you can see it's gotten a little wider on top, touched by the sun a little bit.

So if you're betting on one, bet on the one with the sun being ready.

- [David] You can still find seeds and watermelons you buy at the store.

But around 90% of the watermelon you'll find at the store are seedless and there's good reason for that.

- We got some 7197s back here behind us.

This is a really good seedless watermelon variety.

It holds up good for shipping and tastes really great.

And there are also some seeded pollinators that are used for the bees to cross pollinate.

So you got your seedless and your seeded varieties.

But in order for that seedless variety to make a crop, the bees have to take the pollen from the seeded pollinator, which would be the male plant, and take that pollen and pollinate the seedless watermelon.

It varies anywhere from three to five seedless watermelons to one seeded.

- [David] What is the advantage of a seedless watermelon?

- The seedless ships better, they kind of have a thicker rind and they hold up better and have a longer shelf life.

You have to pick 'em all by hand and be very soft with 'em through the whole process, or you'll have bruised watermelons and just not a great product.

So it's just all has to be hand done.

Nobody's come up with a soft way to pick 'em up by machine.

- [David] From the field to the packing house where we meet Director of Sales & Marketing for Leger & Son, Jordan Carter.

- Watermelon is so important in our community, but it plays a major role in the economy as well.

Crisp County is the number one watermelon producing county in the nation, and Georgia is the number two watermelon producing state nationwide.

Crisp County itself is so rich in agriculture, and watermelon just happens to be its star.

(upbeat rock music) Cutters come in, cut the fruit from the vine and then turn the belly side up.

So that's that nice creamy, buttery spot.

Pickers come through, load the fruit onto the bus.

That famous scene that you think about in the field with the workers and harvesters and the school bus.

And the fruit is brought to the packing facility unloaded onto a conveyor belt.

The fruit makes its way down, goes through a washer, which removes any dirt.

Then we have graders standing on both sides of the packing line.

And they're looking for any dents or scratches, bruising, sunburn, hollow hard, anything quality issue that we see.

They're kicking that back out.

When it's kicked back out, it either goes into a dump truck to go feed livestock, or we may repack that and send that out to a food bank.

And the U.S.

number one watermelons continue to make their way down the line and then they're graded and sorted by size, packed into a bin, and then they go to your local grocery store.

As a consumer, just trust that growers, shippers, farmers are delivering to you the best quality fruit you can possibly get.

- [David] An ancient fruit that's become synonymous with summer in the South.

The juicy watermelon, be it yellow or red, is a wealth of food history, fun food facts, nutrition, and of course great taste.

(singer vocalizing) It's time to learn more about the number one produced fruit in the state of Georgia, and no, we're not talking about peaches.

Let's head down and learn all about blueberries.

Georgia actually has a town that's been officially designated as a state's blueberry capital and rightfully so, welcome to Alma, also home to the Blueberry Barn and a friendly Alma resident known around these parts as the blueberry queen.

Meet Ann Wildes.

(gentle guitar music) - We're in the Blueberry Barn in Alma, Georgia.

We're known as the blueberry capital of Georgia.

We have the perfect soil for blueberry.

Blueberries like a low acid soil, sandy, 'cause they do not like to be wet.

Blueberries have very shallow roots, and so they have to have water, but they don't like to stay in water.

We call it wet feet.

Before blueberries, we had tobacco and we had pine trees, and both of those love the same kind of soil that blueberries do.

So this is rich soil for a blueberry.

They're very happy here and we're glad to have them.

Georgia, we grow two main types of blueberries.

One is called the Southern Highbush and one is the Rabbiteye.

Now what you need to understand is that under these two types, the Southern Highbush and the Rabbiteye, there are over 50 different varieties of berries.

So there's different tastes, different texture.

They all look like a blueberry, but they can taste very different.

Some are tart and some are sweet.

Some are almost have like a crunch, like a grape does almost a, it's got a tougher skin.

And then some of them are sweet, very sweet, and then some are extremely soft.

So the varieties make a difference.

(upbeat music) - [David] So now that we know all about the blueberries of Georgia's blueberry capital in Alma, let's head to a large-scale blueberry farm in the small town of Waresboro to meet Donald Mixon, who grows, sorts, and packs both Highbush and Rabbiteye blueberries.

(bright gentle music) - We're in Ware County, Georgia, little community outside of Waycross called Waresboro, and we're growing blueberries.

- [David] Tell me about the Georgia blueberry and why it's so special.

- Well, in my opinion, I'd say there's nothing to compare to it.

I know I'm probably partial because I'm standing in my blueberry field, but you know- - That's good.

Over 100 years in the making and growing stronger than ever, the tasty blueberries watched over by Donald Mixon and his hardworking team go the distance for these tasty blue morsels of goodness.

Not just a couple.

- Not just a couple.

- [David] (chuckles) Tell me about this place.

- Actually, we have about 900 acres in the ground.

About 750 acres are producing.

They're all contiguous except for 35 acres, about four miles from here.

The rest of 'em are right here on this farm.

(bright guitar music) - [David] You've got Highbush and you've got the Rabbiteye.

Just a couple of varieties of blueberries you'll find in these parts.

- Southern Highbush is the earlier varieties, typically your handpicked varieties.

Rabbit eye is an older variety that is more native to this area.

Typically, Highbush, we start picking around the middle of April.

This year, we started the 1st of April.

We'll run through the middle of July with our Rabbiteye to extend our packing season.

That's why we have both species.

(bright guitar music) I typically use (indistinct).

I use a lot of hand pickers.

They come out here and they handpick this fruit.

They put it in lugs, put it in a refrigerated trailer.

We bring it to the packing shed, unload it.

Typically, it stays in my holding area for 24 hours to cool down.

My holding area is at 60 degrees.

Typically, we bring it in today, cool it tonight, pack it tomorrow.

- [David] Tell me about what they're looking for.

It gets going through these machines.

Now, the machines are the first line of defense.

(upbeat groovy music) - We first dump it into a conveyor.

It goes up into a blower.

The blower blows what leaves and twigs, whatever little stuff that it can blow out.

It blows it out.

Then it goes through a color sorter, which kicks out the greens, kicks out the reds, then it goes through a soft sorter.

Now a lot of people run a color sorter and soft sorter.

On this farm, we run a color sorter, soft sorter, soft sorter.

We run two soft sorters.

As you saw in the shed, I had hand inspectors on the line.

If a green gets by, they can see the green and pick it out.

But if a soft gets by, they can't see soft.

So we elected to spend the extra money and put in dual soft sorters to try to eliminate soft fruit going into the (indistinct) shelf.

A berry could be split.

It could get by the sorters.

Their job is to look for a split berry.

A berry could be green on the back end, and the cameras could have shot into the blue part of the blueberry.

So I could have a berry come through on the line that is half green and half blue.

So my hand inspectors pull those out also.

- [David] I saw a couple labels that were printing.

Tell me about where people can find your blueberries, where they go.

- They go all over the United States.

We ship to Canada, we sell to Costco, we sell to Sam's, we sell to Harris Teeter, Kroger, Trader Joe's.

We sell to it everybody.

(tense music) - [David] Kinda looks like a graveyard, but it's quite the opposite.

- That's exactly right.

This is a new planting.

This winter we planted 150 acres.

(indistinct) is expansion.

Plus the fact that Southern Highbush, longevity is probably 10 to 12 years.

And to keep our production up, we planted this 150 acres.

When I do a new planting, I plant rudy cuttings, and I come back in and I put these milk cartons on top of the plant to cover the plant.

I do that for two reasons.

Number one, I can come here and spray my herbicide without damaging the plant.

Number two, it helps train the plant to grow upright so I can machine harvest it.

- [David] How long until these are bearing fruit?

- Two years.

On this farm, we do it all.

We don't contract anything out.

We clear our land, we put into irrigation.

- [David] So Donald will keep growing and packing while at the same time, keeping the colors in order and the firmness intact.

A tasty and supremely healthy final product delivered all around the country for all to enjoy.

(bright pleasant music) So from the fertile fields of Lake Park where carrots grow in bunches to Cordele, Alma, and Waresboro where two sweet and juicy fruits of very different colors and sizes reign supreme.

Georgia farmers prove year after year that they're up for the task, rain or shine, wet or dry, to deliver the fruits and veggies that we love so much.

I'm David Zelski.

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

"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.

(bright 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.