- [David] "A Fork in the Road" was brought to you by: (gentle music) - [Narrator] From produce to people, the best things are grown and raised in Georgia.

Even in tough times, we come together, work hard and grow strong.

When you purchase Georgia-grown products, you support farmers, families, and this proud state we call home.

Together, we will keep Georgia growing.

(mellow music) ♪ Picture perfect ♪ ♪ Hang the picture on the wall, oh ♪ ♪ I see your shine from afar ♪ ♪ Yeah, to me you are the star ♪ ♪ All right, baby ♪ ♪ Hey ♪ ♪ Feels good, feels fine ♪ ♪ Take the feeling, pass it on ♪ ♪ Just pass it on ♪ ♪ Na-na-na-na-na-na ♪ - The fascinating and ever-changing world of agriculture.

(gentle music) 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."

(energetic music) ♪ Mm, mm-mm ♪ ♪ Mm, mm-mm ♪ ♪ 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.

(gentle rustic music) This episode of "A Fork in the Road" is all about creating.

From tasty, sweet soda with all-natural ingredients to seasoned pickles, a farm-fresh market, and a family-run business that creates the food to feed our farms in Georgia and all over the southeast.

Let's begin this creative episode at a fairly new soda works factory in an old turkey hatchery just outside of Watkinsville in the town of Bishop.

The small-batch craft breweries are quite easy to find these days, but 20 years ago that wasn't the case.

Well, next on the list of small-batch boomers may very well be soda.

And the folks here at New Creation Soda Works are bringing fresh, natural, local, and creative flavors into the mix that result in, what some say, is the best soda creation on earth.

- What we wanted to do was to not only make them healthier and more exciting, but have really unique flavors and make sure the quality is super high and we place a lot of value on finding the best ingredients we can find.

We use real strawberries, we use real ginger, we use real habanero peppers that we grow ourselves.

Basically, what we're trying to do is do the same thing craft beer did 20 to 25 years ago where they were making a high-quality product to change the norm of big beverage.

And they blazed a great path for us to follow and that's what we're trying to do with soda.

(gentle music) This is a building that hatched most of the turkeys in the southeast, especially Georgia, from the 1950s to the 1990s and we're using that building to make our soda today.

We started selling our syrups in Watkinsville, Georgia at the farmer's market on Saturdays in 2015.

Since then, we've grown to over 500 locations, mostly in the southeast, but we sell direct wholesale to companies in Canada, in the UK, and we're in the Georgia Publix stores now.

So we've gone from selling syrups to making 18,000 cans a week.

Strawberry Habanero was our first soda that we made.

That's still my favorite.

We use real strawberries, real peppers, and there's just a few ingredients in it.

It is very clean, very clear, very refreshing.

The flavor of the strawberry is up front, you get a little bit of tartness in the middle and then the habaneros give you a little warmth at the end.

So it's really a three-tier flavor profile and it's fantastic.

All of our sodas are very versatile.

You can drink 'em on their own, you can drink 'em with ice cream, you can mix 'em with spirits and we also make margarita mixes, we think the best margarita mixes in the world.

And then we have our sparkling hop water, which is a non-alc, no sugar, no calories, kinda like a cross between an IPA and a seltzer water.

Our root beer is our number one seller, though.

We worked about two years on that recipe.

My grandfather used to make root beer for my mom when she was a kid, so that's a special soda for me.

It's called Root 42 because of her, she was born in 1942.

And we think it's the the best around.

We took a lot of time and care to make it just right.

(driving music) Making some strawberry habanero syrup.

What Alex is doing here is he's adding real strawberries into the syrup.

We put about 360 pounds of strawberries in every kettle.

Turn the kettle twice, meaning two batches to go into our 25-barrel Bright tank.

Of the 720 pounds, 460 of it will go into that Bright tank for our strawberry habanero soda.

The other strawberries will go towards our strawberry habanero margarita mix.

So we're doing two things today: we're making juice for soda and juice for our strawberry habanero margarita mix.

- [David] All right, so the strawberries are cooking.

- So now what we're gonna do is we're gonna take the strawberry juice, transfer it to a different kettle where we can mix the sugar and other ingredients for our soda.

And now he is just putting in pure cane sugar in there.

We don't use high-fructose corn syrup.

Pure cane sugar, 50 pound bags at a time.

Now that we've made the syrup, we combine it with water, we chilled it, we carbonated it, and now it's ready to can.

But we always like to taste it first to make sure it's perfect before it goes in the cans.

You wanna try?

- [David] Oh yeah, yeah.

I was wondering if I'd be able to volunteer for this part.

- Absolutely.

- All right, this is the fun part.

- So we got 620 gallons of good stuff in here.

- All right.

So a little foamy coming out.

- A lot of carbonation brings out the brightness of the soda.

So there is a lot of foam, lots of great head, so you know it's gonna have a good mouth feel on it.

- This is beautiful.

All right.

Cheers my friend.

- Cheers.

(rustic rock music) - That's fantastic.

Yeah, yeah.

I love the habanero comes after.

You get the strawberries and then boom.

- Yep.

You can see why it's still my favorite.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

You got any for sale back there?

- Absolutely.

- All right, good, good.

- All right, David.

So now we're gonna take that 600 gallons and we're gonna put it into containers to get to our customer.

We put it on what's called a whale's tail.

You can see how it's shaped like a whale.

It's got a little vibration mechanism on it that shakes the cans through this twister and then it goes through a UV light.

This UV light kills any kind of bacteria, any kind of germs in these cans.

It comes through the canner.

We do six at a time.

At this canner we'll do about 55 cans a minute.

It goes through this rinser.

We go through the labeling process, we're gonna put some can collars on them and load 'em on for our distributors to come and pick 'em up.

(bright energetic music) - [David] Something else was happening at the soda works today.

Bring on a few good friends and fire up the griddle.

Smash burger time.

- [Paul] We opened our place up to the local community on Saturdays from 11 to 2.

We have smash burgers, we have our floats, all of our sodas you can make floats with, specialty floats.

We have a friend, Farm 441 across the street, who makes all of our ice cream for us.

We wanted to really get to know the community and say "Hello" to the people that are drinking our soda.

And Saturdays are really fun.

- [David] Paul believes in partnerships and also believes in a bonafide product that truly brings together good people and good fellowship through great taste.

(upbeat music) ♪ Mm, mm-mm ♪ - [David] Let's now make our way along Georgia Grown Trail 341 to a farm in Roberta where a couple, new to retirement, decided to change paths into the world of farming.

(gentle rustic music) If you do it the green way, it's all about the soil.

From the pigs and the cattle to the chickens and eggs, they all play an integral role in rebuilding healthy soil on these chemical-free pastures.

- The basis for our style of farming would be what grandparents did years ago in that they used what they had and they regeneratively grew their crops and their animals.

We've started practicing a method of farming called natural farming, specifically, Korean natural farming.

It's a way of reintroducing biology into the soil 'cause we kind of feel like everything starts at the soil.

- You have healthy soil, then you'll have healthy plants, healthy animals, healthy product from those.

- And healthy people.

So we have three pastures here that are roughly 25 acres each and they all go into our cattle working system.

So every morning we bring them in here so that we can see them and put eyes on them and they can put eyes on us, just to keep them calm when we have to do things like tag 'em.

And then we always have a pasture at rest.

- [David] Owners Steve Hunt and Joy Thomas-Hunt live on this 114-acre farm that has expanded from the original 22-acre hobby farm.

They manage the day-to-day operations for this full-time working farm, which any farmer will tell you, is no easy task.

Y'all aren't originally farm folk.

(Steve laughs) What happened?

- We were both widowed.

We met, we both had an interest in where our food came from.

Getting married, we knew that we didn't want our children to go home for Christmas or Thanksgiving or whatever to a home that wasn't their home.

- We both had two families and we both had separate lives before.

But this gave us a chance over the last five years to, this is what we've done and what we've built.

And I think all five of our kids are proud of that.

But it also gave us the opportunity to build something that was ours.

- [Joy] It has become home for them, which is what we wanted more than anything.

- [David] So why did the original retirement hobby farm go all in?

- You know, ultimately we want the farm to provide us with the lifestyle that we want and we want it to provide for us.

- And by lifestyle, open air, open sky, sunshine, a place for our kids to gather, a place for eventual grandkids to come.

It gives us a purpose, something we can say is ours.

- Yeah, and the purpose, for us, really goes back to health.

We had spouses that didn't have that luxury of good health.

All that we are trying to do is kind of get back closer to nature.

We're not gonna feed the masses, but we can feed this community and we can feed our families and loved ones and those around us.

We would love to be inspirational to other people that would want to do the same things that we are doing.

- And do anything we can to help 'em.

(bright western music) - [David] And beyond the regenerative farm and rotating farm animals, Greenway had another idea that quickly gained steam due to the demand.

Time to make some pickles.

- [Joy] So this is how we make our spears just like that.

Our original farm founder, she had a knack for making pickles and anything canned and after her initial retirement wanted to just go to the farmer's market and make it and sell some pickles and then came to find out they were supposed to be licensed.

You're supposed to have correct mechanisms in place to make sure that your food is safe.

As we came along and started looking from the business point of view, because they had a great brand go and great product, but as we looked at it we realized that's a great advertisement on a small safe purchase.

You're spending a few dollars on something, that if you don't like it, you're out a few dollars.

But it's a great little billboard on a jar and a great way to get our brand out there and build that brand.

- And it's a good revenue stream.

- A good revenue stream.

That there's times when we can turn the light off and shut the door and walk away from it.

We can't do that with animals.

- When I purchase a steer and raise it out over 12 to 14 months, I'm invested in that steer for that period of time.

We can buy jars and get cucumbers and the spices and put 'em together and have, on a Monday, and be sold out on Saturday.

(mellow jazz music) - We'll just go back jar to jar, making sure like as they've softened a little bit, that we've got a good full jar because the brine will soften 'em and they'll settle.

When they're inverted the next day, you come in and there's brine at the top and you think, "Did I not put enough cucumbers in there?"

- [David] They're all overflowing here.

- [Joy] Mm-hmm.

- These are the spices and seasonings that we use for our brine.

- [David] I like the color.

- Yes.

- It's all secrets, right?

- Yes.

- Got the secrets in there.

- [Morgan] Yes.

Can't give away the recipe.

(David laughs) So this just tells us the pH of our product.

- [Joy] We calibrated our pH meter already this morning.

It has to be calibrated weekly.

- [Morgan] So we're at 193.

For the tint it has to be over 180 degrees.

(mellow rock music) You cannot detect botulism in canned goods at all.

So that's why you have to make sure that you're using proper canning practices.

- So it's bringing it to temperature to kill anything in it, as well as get the air bubbles out and then seal the jar as well.

- And one important thing to remember if you decide to can at home is that you can only water bath can high-acid foods, you cannot water bath can green beans or vegetables like that unless you're pickling them in vinegar.

The vinegar in the pickles is what makes this a high-acid food in order to be able to water bath can.

- [David] These tasty Greenway Farms pickles, sauces and jams can be bought online and found at many stores all around Georgia, including the one and only Greenway Farms Market in Roberta, located right along Georgia Grown Trail 341.

- [Joy] At first, we just had our products on the shelves and then I realized I couldn't keep the shelves full because our product was moving out so fast.

And then we realized we could make more of a draw here for other products that would enhance our own products.

Whether it's a barbecue sauce or a cheese straw to go with the pickles that you're serving on a charcuterie board.

- We've probably focused a little bit on the meats, the beef, the pork, and the eggs, because of the farming practices we wanted to farm.

And then the canning and the pickles and the sauces and the jellies and jams, it's just another opportunity for a good business to help kind of fund the lifestyle that we wanted.

These are just some samples of the beef and pork products that we have.

Over here is mostly our pork where you see everybody knows our bacon, we leave the skin on our bacon.

Some people makes the crackling.

This is a set of pork chops that come from our pork and some just regular ground pork that's in here.

So we have our ground beef, which is pretty lean ground beef.

We have a chuck roast here, which is a big kind of a Fred Flintstone chuck roast.

And then we have a smaller chuck here and then our steaks are individually wrapped and packaged.

Little smaller cuts than you would see maybe in a grocery store.

We raise our beef to around 1200 pounds when we process.

And what that allows is for us to have a level of fat content that is kind of optimal for our financial picture so that we're not processing and cutting off a lot of fat off of our beef.

(bright gentle music) - We never thought that we could do this, but if we open the door and people can understand, "Yeah I can have backyard chickens," that they could find, like you said, inspiration.

If we can add to the life here in the community, that's probably what we're geared more to.

We want it to stay, we want it to be, and we want it to thrive but we want it to be something that gives back to the community.

- [David] So sometimes it's good to just hang up your boots and relax for retirement.

But the Hunts seem more on the path of rewirement and have found a nice second semester in life down here on the fertile farming grounds of Greenway.

(upbeat music) ♪ Mm, mm-mm ♪ - [David] Let's now head down to the charming city of Madison, Georgia, right in the heart of downtown where a sixth-generation farming family continues to feed a long-time tradition.

(jaunty fiddle music) Madison, Georgia is well known by historians as one of the few towns that didn't burn during Sherman's March to the Sea.

Now, even though Sherman himself never passed through this town during the March to the Sea, the left wing of his army did and the town was spared from destruction.

Some of those civil war-era buildings remain, and right in the heart of downtown on West Jefferson Street, along the railroad tracks, you'll find the place of business operated by the Godfrey family tree since the late 1870s.

Once a cotton warehouse that also sold fertilizer and coal has now changed focus due to agricultural demand and has transformed into a state-of-the-art mill that produces high-quality seed and feed for farmers all over the southeast.

(gentle rustic music) - Godfrey's started in the 1870s.

I'm the sixth generation here.

Started as a cotton and coal warehouse and my dad and uncle really turned it into what it is today of more of a feed mill.

When the boll weevil came into Georgia, a lot of the cotton farmers went out of business and a lot of them went into the dairy business.

And at that point, we transitioned from being a cotton warehouse into manufacturing dairy feed and it's grown from there.

We manufacture a lot of different feeds.

Anywhere from show cattle, dairy goats, dairy cattle, regular beef feed, backyard chicken feed.

If you've got something to feed we can feed it.

So cattle feed mainly is based off of byproducts and most of the byproducts are the result of some process that humans are using the grain for.

And then we're using what's left over after the process.

We're using corn gluten feed, we're using soy hulls, we're using hominy, we're using canola meal, soybean meal.

We are opening up a retail store on the other side of town and we've also have a second location in South Georgia in De Soto that we're shipping feed out of now as well.

(driving music) So this is Terrence and he runs this mixing room in here.

He makes sure it stays clean and he makes sure everybody gets their hand adds added correctly.

As we manufacture products, it pops up on the screen exactly what hand adds he needs to put.

So when we're custom mixing these feeds, we've got the 22 ingredients for the hand adds here, plus another three out back plus these two hands right here, especially the medications because we don't want any contamination with medications.

And so we'll actually put those in by hand.

And so Terrance looks after that and keeps everything steady in here.

- Right.

(upbeat music) - So we bring these ingredients in from all over the east coast and unload 'em here, put 'em overhead, mix 'em in our automated batching system here.

So all the feed is actually made by computer.

The bags come down, we sell everything in 50-pound bags and it works its way down the system here.

Where they're closed here, we've got a sewing machine.

This system will do about 14 bags a minute and we can make about a ton of feed a minute through our system so we can run with best of 'em.

I think I counted it up yesterday and there's eight different scales that feed back into our mixing system.

So that allows us to put multiple ingredients together in the mixer at one time so we can really get the process going fast.

Back here, these are our microsystems.

So the computer actually controls these bins here, these motors and weighs out our hand adds.

And the hand adds would be anything that we put in there at less than 10 or 20 pounds.

And so instead of having somebody there that has to physically put that product into the mixer, the computer controls all 22 of these bins and weighs those ingredients out individually, puts them together, then it's carried over it by drag chain and put into the mixer over there.

Bags, up the conveyor and back here to where the robot actually is.

We put the robot in in 2021 and it has honestly been a lifesaver for us.

It can keep up with the automated system and it stacks 'em perfect every time.

Well, I stay perfect every time, it'll mess up every now and then.

- Does it have a name?

- Yes.

One of my ancestors is Captain Godfrey and the ladies here in the office named the robot Captain Godfrey.

So Captain Godfrey's spitting out a pallet for us right now.

The whole process is automated from the, you can see the pallet coming in back there.

We're fixing to a put a piece of, a slip sheet of cardboard on top of it.

It'll swing around, set it down, and then the system will go back to stacking pallets.

(cheerful music) We bag all these feeds.

We kind of stage everything along this wall over here.

Most of our bag feeds, when they are ordered, they're made within 24 hours of the order and then are delivered, certainly, within 48 hours of when the order was placed.

We really pride ourselves on our customer service and we pride ourselves on keeping these feeds fresh.

When our customers get something from us, it comes from the mill and it's just been made.

- [David] The mill and feed packing machinery is fascinating in its own right, but it's also worth a visit to swing by the store and even check out the old rail depot that's been restored for business operational purposes.

- The depot, that's actually the oldest brick depot in the state of Georgia and we have some of our offices in there.

- [David] It's gotta be kind of special being in the heart of the historic district here.

- Well, it is.

It's neat that I think this is what all the towns used to be like.

You know, there was some kind of a mill, some kind of something in town that was agricultural, whether it was a cotton warehouse or feed mill or whatever.

And I guess we've been fortunate enough to stick around, that we're still right here in the middle of town.

- [David] What do we got here?

- So this is one of the old safes that I guess we inherited and there's all kinds of stuff.

There's some of those ledgers that I was talking about in there.

- [David] Wow.

Little different now.

- And this is not that old.

I don't know, 40 years old, probably.

Feed was a little bit cheaper back then.

You can see that we've got a real high-tech security system on here.

This is so that nobody changes the combination 'cause nobody knows what it is anymore.

- [David] You're gonna find your keys.

- This says 1874, but would that be right?

- Yeah.

- That's so cool.

Everybody had great penmanship back then.

- Yeah.

What does that say, 1903, maybe?

(gentle music) - One of the things that I think makes us unique as well is that we're in the cattle business and most of the people work here are in agriculture and raising some kind of livestock.

And so we use a lot of the products that we manufacture for our farm and sell it to other customers and it kind of gives them a little bit more confidence in what they're doing.

If it's what we're doing, it's probably what they need to be doing.

- [David] It's always fun learning how family businesses like Godfrey's prosper generation after generation.

Technology changes, methods of operations drastically shift.

But the drive and determination to succeed usually rises to the challenge.

And the folks here at Godfrey's Feed are tried, tested, and proven at doing just that.

(bright upbeat music) So from feed and farming to tasty soda works from an old turkey hatchery, these Georgia creations, both the new and the old, are inspirational to say the least.

I'm David Zelski.

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

(bright upbeat music continues) "A Fork in the Road" was brought to you by: (gentle music) - [Narrator] From produce to people, the best things are grown and raised in Georgia.

Even in tough times, we come together, work hard, and grow strong.

When you purchase Georgia-grown products, you support farmers, families, and this proud state we call home.

Together, we will keep Georgia growing.

(gentle music) ♪ Picture perfect ♪ ♪ Hang the picture on the wall, oh ♪ ♪ I see your shine from afar ♪ ♪ Yeah, to me you are the star ♪ ♪ All right, baby ♪ ♪ Hey ♪ ♪ Feels good, feels fine ♪ ♪ Take the feeling, pass it on ♪ ♪ Just pass it on ♪ ♪ Na-na-na-na-na-na ♪