[Narrator] A Fork in the Road was brought to you by: [Narrator 2] Georgia soil is rich.

Its climate, agreeable.

Its agricultural variety, exceptional.

That's why we're nature's favorite state.

Georgia grown supports the farmers and producers who work the land, and keep us fed.

Because we all grow better together.

Find out more about Georgia agriculture at Georgia Grown dot com.

[Narrator] Since 1917, the farmers and consumers market bulletin has been Georgia's primary resource for all things agriculture.

From thousands of classifieds for livestock, farm supplies, equipment, and home grown goods, to the latest and most important farming news.

- 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.

(rock/country music) ♪ I came from the mud ♪ ♪ There's dirt on my hands ♪ ♪ Strong like a tree ♪ ♪ There's roots where I stand ♪ [Narrator] 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 banjo music) This week we journey from the coast, up to Macon exploring the amazing, agricultural, scientific, and succulent wonders, growing and flowing through the peach state.

We begin this week on one of Georgia's most amazing, yet lesser known islands.

And what's growing on here is simply remarkable.

(sweeping orchestral music) The hands of the Bailey's are a part of what makes and shapes this island.

For generations, this family and others in the small, Hog Hammock community of less than sixty people, have called this island home.

They live in harmony with the fascinating creatures that inhabit this sandy terrain, and they nurture the crops they grow from its nutrient rich soil.

- And I usually just cut of a ring around it, like-so, and it breaks up.

[Narrator] Maurice Bailey is a direct descendant of the saltwater Geechees, a group of enslaved West Africans who were brought here and forced to grow similar crops to what is growing on the island today.

However, now they grow here for a different reason.

A different purpose, in self-driven goals.

- Our crop will be the new face of the Geechee people of Hog Hammock community.

[Narrator] And they are not alone.

Nik Heynen is a geography professor from the university of Georgia and has been working alongside Maurice and the Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society, to protect this precious land from development, and simply bring dollars into the community in doing so.

- So, I was recruited to come here initially by Doctor Merrill Albert who's the director of UJS Marine Institute.

I'd never knew anything about this place and came, and eventually reached out to someone named Jasper Watts, who said he wouldn't talk to me until I had the blessings from Miss Cornelia.

She brought me into the history of SICARS, and previous efforts to get agriculture going, and asked if I would help do that, and I said yes.

- I don't know when that really happened, but I know my mother dumped him on me.

He then started growing on me, so that's how our relationship pretty much started.

It started with my mother, then I got into it, but I'm glad they stayed persistent, because I wasn't grounded yet with this project.

So, but everybody keeps saying, this is your calling, this is your calling, you got to do this.

Now I'm here doing an agricultural project with, with Nik, and I think of it as a great success, so far.

Red peas, to sugarcane, to garlic that we getting, into the indigo.

These are the crops.

You yield more for these crops than the other crops, so we chose these crops also cause we can easier to manage, and we can yield more from these crops once we harvest them.

The history of the crops, for me, goes back to my family.

You know, we had these red peas for generations that we always say the peas seed them and replant every year.

And I remember my grandfather's story, my mother's story, I grew up with sugarcane.

So we all had our sugarcane patch, we all went down to Allen Green to grind our sugarcane.

They produced the syrup, we sitting there eating corn bread and hot biscuits.

That's the women cooking down the syrup this year, and now we're going to market it off island to an individual farmer's market that's asking for it, restaurants asking for it.

So, we'll have a market for this product, we just got to get off the island.

I grew up with sweet potato.

I grew up all the natural herbs, because we didn't have medicine.

We didn't have doctors available.

So a lot of times our job was to go through the woods and find these different herbs to bring back home, so in winter time, when we have illness, then we have our natural herbs on hand.

So the crops are very important to me, because I experienced it personally, in all the stories of my grandfather and mother, throughout the years of how they preserve these seeds, and these crops for the next season.

Cause there was no going to the grocery store, so we had to bury our sweet potatoes, burying various things, burying our sugarcane, just to make sure that, during the winter time, we can just dig it up and have fresh sweet potatoes or white potatoes, and we had to do it to survive.

I don't want to let this part of our heritage just go, cause once it's gone, it's not going to come back.

I'll leave my blue cup as a marker that we've been here.

(Nik laughing) - A flag?

- Yeah.

- And we just kind of, both think about the history of the island, what has been grown, but also then, what do we think we can kind of build traction with?

And what could we be successful with?

- It will benefit the community because, it will be our new face.

We got right at thirty descendants left in the community, but if we got a crop with a story behind it, a heritage crop, that is our new face.

That's what's gonna keep us on the bat.

That's what's going to keep you remembering that, "Oh, Sapelo's still here.

Oh, Hog Hammock is still here.

Oh, the Geechee people are still here."

[Narrator] The only way on and off this island is by boat, or small aircraft, so needless to say, it's an incredible feat to make this all work.

Hours of planning and dealing with logistical roadblocks, sometimes having to transport heavy farm equipment to the island.

They often use the island's ferry to transport goods and equipment.

This being the same vessel that transports visitors who want to explore the unique island, or simply relax on an undisturbed beach.

It's never an easy task but they are seeing the fruits of their labor pay off.

- People are starting to recognize that we're doing something great.

Initially, they just saw a bunch of people out here, pulling weeds and cutting trees, so they didn't see which direction it's going.

We knew which direction it was going.

We knew how it could grow and become a strength for the community.

So now that people are aware of what we're doing, I think we're on a great path to be successful.

[Narrator] Now, while we were wandering through the tall crop of purple ribbon sugar cane, Maurice actually stumbled across something that brought him back a few years, and something they didn't know was growing in these parts.

At least, it hadn't for years.

Magically named life everlasting.

- Life everlasting tea is an herbal tea that we still drink on the island.

Would be good for any kind of ailments you have.

Arthritis, colds, fever.

- It was coming up, right here.

- Yeah, life everlasting.

And they like clear areas like this.

If it was still wooded, this wouldn't have grown here.

So the fact that we cleared this out, this life everlasting is growing, so we got to figure out how to the harvest this and replant some more.

Cause we thought about doing it and selling it, but we don't have enough growing in the wild to do so.

So, we're going to deplete it if we do that.

But, if we can use this, and get seeds from it, and plant our own, then we won't have to worry about going into the wild, depleting what's in the wild.

We have our own crop, life everlasting, growing.

[Interviewer] And people would buy life everlasting?

- Oh, a lot of people love it.

- Yeah, if you google it, it's like crazy.

(talking over each other) They depend on it for their whole kind of healthcare system.

- Yeah.

So, we got a crop for next year, Nik!

- Yeah!

- Yeah, life everlasting.

[Narrator] After the discovery of life everlasting, the guys took me to Maurice's home, where they were beginning to experiment with a new crop of indigo.

- We've already started to see a lot of interest in it.

[Narrator] They aim to take this green plant, and turn it into a brilliant blue powder.

They had not tried it before.

But with the tutorial and notes from an expert, they took a stab at it.

And this is the moment I realized that these two have a special bond and comradery that is a big part of why this whole project is coming together.

- You know what, I can't get no dye on my hand because I got to go to a wedding on Saturday, and I can't be going up there.

- When you give a toast it would make a good story.

- No, I've been working with this guy from UGA, called Nik.

He likes doing experiments.

- Uh-huh, oh man!

- Hey, why don't you do a quick taste?

See what it tastes like?

- Yeah, yeah, I will.

Let me get a little sugar to put in in.

(Nik laughing) [Narrator] First time's the charm or simply beginner's luck, they nailed the indigo.

- Just winging it myself, you know what I mean.

[Interviewer] That's what you want.

- Yeah, that's what we want.

From a green plant to a blue dye, all natural.

- There's been a lot of off island, wealthy folks, starting to develop parcels.

I think having that land in agriculture, and hoping to preserve it so it doesn't get developed, it feels like an important goal for me.

- That's something my mother always said, also, that.

Put something on that land, use that land for something, don't let it just sit there.

So when people come the yield is already established.

So yeah, by doing these crops we're utilizing the land, so it makes it harder for people to come in and just try to take over because we were still here, and still trying to protect our land.

[Narrator] It's a magical place, with magical people, continuing a family born project, with an inspiring mix of pride and persistence.

From Sapelo Island and Macintosh County, we hop on a boat to the mainland, to take a ride one county north to Midway, Georgia, home to Liberty County's first brewery, Split Fin Brewing.

(electronic music) Jeremy and Doctor Kristin Boucher aren't your average brew masters.

These two former army officers met in service and soon realized they had a common passion.

[Kristen] My background is in chemistry and biology, and Jeremy has some chemistry education as well.

I've taken a lot of chem, organic chem, biochem, microbiology, all of those courses.

So, it all starts with reverse osmosis water.

So we start from scratch, blank canvas, and then we build up the water profiles from there.

Some of the characteristics of beers in other regions and other countries come from their water in that region.

So what we aim to do is recreate those water profiles' characteristics of those beers specifically.

We had to actually get the ordinances changed, Midway had no ordinance for a brewery or anything of that nature.

Jeremy went to multiple town hall meetings.

They voted on it and then they ended up passing it.

[Narrator] So they're trailblazers here in Liberty County, and the locals have responded quickly.

Embracing all sorts of experimental flavors, and to better appreciate the brew itself, Jeremy takes us through the science of brewing in this aquarium-like atmosphere.

- All right, so everything here starts with reverse osmosis.

So every single one of my waters, I base it down to zero properties, parts per million for zinc, calcium chloride, calcium hydroxide.

And then I build up all of my water, well before I start the brewing process, to match a country-specific water profile.

So this is called your mash ton.

This is where I put all the grain in, and I will be able to convert the starches to sugars.

Once I convert the starches to sugars inside the mash ton, at that point it becomes wort.

I'm going to end up moving that wort over to the boil kettle.

That's where every different beer style will have a different hop schedule.

Different hops added at different points of the boil.

So once I'm done with that and I've cooled it, I'm moving it over to one of three of my fermentors.

Once I get done here, for about 12 days, it moves over to this tank right here, which is called your bright tank.

That's where it gets its carbonation from.

From here it goes into kegs and then I move it over to the walk-in cooler to be served.

- So you brought out a flight and the little fin, that you guys made, I love this, and the taps, those are so cool.

Tell me about these beers here.

- All right, so the first beer in the going from heel to toe.

- This one is a Kolsch, nothing too fancy about that one, but this next one, a lemon Hefeweizen.

Now I actually created my own yeast strain for this lemon Hefeweizen.

There is typically a Hefeweizen yeast strain, however I wanted to dry it out a little bit, so I added a little bit of a different yeast strain into the mix to get more of those residual sugars to dry out the beer a little bit.

- That's awesome.

I feel like I'm in Germany.

All right, we move on.

You know, I'm an IPA guy, but I'm willing to try something different.

This is different.

- All right, so a raspberry Goza.

A Goza is a German sour, however, it's not as sour as most American sours.

So the German Goza is sweet, it's sour, and it's got a high salt content.

- That's one of the best ones I've had.

Seriously, that was great.

- That's actually the most popular beer.

- Yeah?

- Oh yeah.

- Coming off the water, this has gotta be awesome.

It's refreshing at the same time.

Then we get, it's nighttime, now we relax by the fire.

- Right now yeah, now we're over to the winter.

Me, I'm a big dark beer guy.

I love my stouts, my porters.

That is a chocolate stout.

- Oh yeah, I taste the chocolate.

That's dessert.

- Oh yeah.

- Well Jeremy, thank you so much.

Appreciate it, Split Fin, great name.

Smart people doing it, that love the science behind it.

You know, sometimes it doesn't take a scientist to make it, it takes two.

- It takes two.

[Narrator] From tasty, coastal brews, to scrumptious, coastal crab cake cuisine that's making waves up in Macon, Georgia.

Chell and Jason Walker seem to have this seafood thing figured out.

- You taste everything that went into it, the love, the seasoning, the hard work, everything.

[Narrator] They know what people want, and they know how to do it with their own "Louvenia" flair.

But, who is Louvenia?

- Louvenia's.

Louvenia is named after my grandmother-in-law, Miss Louvenia Simpson.

She had a good old, southern name.

She was living with us at the time, when we were going through this process, and we thought it'd be a great way to honor her.

[Narrator] This innovative couple runs a successful seafood restaurant and food truck, that tens of thousands of social media followers track on a daily basis.

And it's easy to see why.

- The food truck is awesome.

My husband built the food truck, actually, in our backyard.

It took him about maybe, two months maybe, to build it.

It's been wonderful.

We've been embraced from county to county.

We get a rush every time we pull up in the city, and service our customers, they're like our family.

They're coming all the way from Augusta, Atlanta, to Macon to visit our pull up stop, so it's great.

We offer fried alligator bites, and the gators actually come from South Georgia.

You can actually get those at the restaurant, or even on the food truck.

They're really good, we serve them with seaport sauce.

They're actually a big hit.

- I love the lobster platter, that's my favorite.

I love all of it, but the lobster platter is my favorite, because, you know how you go to a restaurant, and you have a lobster?

More than likely, it's gonna be tough.

This is never tough, you pick it up, and you've got all of this aroma, and seasoning, just, I want to bite it right now, but I'm supposed to be talking to you.

- I used to throw away the eggs and my husband was like, "why are you doing that?"

And I said, because I liked my eggs just boiled.

And then a friend of mine, we worked together, and she was like, "girl, don't throw those eggs away, that's the best part!"

And I bit into it, and me and my three-year-old almost wrestled each other over the last egg, because it was so good, the egg is the best part.

If you throw the egg away, you throwing your whole plate away, and you shouldn't.

Don't throw the egg away.

Whew!

I would offer you a bite but, you can get your own.

[Narrator] After mastering the low country boil, plus that ridiculous edible egg, Jason and Chell decided it's time to focus on crab cakes.

So, Louvenia's Crab Cake Hut was born.

- At the farmer's market we actually have the crab cake hut.

You can come in and place your order, and you can actually have a seat underneath the breezeway.

Me and my husband kind of go back and forth in the kitchen sometimes coming up with different ideas, different sauces, kind of how the "Oouuiee Shoot" sauce came about.

We get in the lab, we try to cook up different things and see who comes up with the best item.

So the crab burgers were one of those things where I said, "hey, let's do a crab burger, and I want to do several different variations of crab burgers."

And he said, "you want to put all that stuff on there?"

And I'm like, "yeah."

We kind of have one that I particularly like, the Hustler burger, and it has our famous seafood salad, topped on a crab burger.

We have a Straight Shooter burger.

It has caramelized onions, jalapenos, tomatoes, bacon, it's fully loaded.

We also have Plain Jane because not everybody wants a lot of stuff on their burgers.

Plain Jane comes with just lettuce, tomato, our crabby sauce, of course, you gotta have the crabby sauce.

If you don't have the crabby sauce, you're missing out.

Actually, right here in the farmer's market, we try to source some of our vegetables from local farmers over here at the market.

So, Georgia Grown has been a big help with providing us information on manufacturing and distributing our sauces, and it's also been a great help in connecting us with local vendors.

[Narrator] Creative, trendy, tasty, and altogether talented, this seafood duo is making the Macon area feel like the Georgia coast is just a short drive from home.

Our final fork in the road keeps us in Macon.

Just a few miles from Louvenia's, to the home of some classic southern sauce.

Since 1935, this bottle has been creating memories for barbecue lovers all over the South.

The recipe is old, but every bottle is fresh, and it's a perfect blend of mustard and tomato base, making it neither South Carolina or Texas style.

Roland likes to say, it's perfect for Georgia.

- The Mrs. Griffin's style is really unique.

It's so old, it's the story that the barbecue regions were written about.

The original Griffin family was from Columbia, South Carolina, and they moved to Macon, and on 4th of July's they would have picnics where the Macon crowd and the Columbia crowd would come to Macon, and it kind of was a little bit of a hybrid mustard sauce.

They started adding a little bit of tomato paste, getting away from the Columbia group of the family.

So it kind of brought mustard and tomato paste, mustard and ketchup type sauce into Georgia.

And we're very, very proud of that.

Mrs. Griffin's was originally sold in 1935, but it was made previous to that and just given around to friends and neighbors.

But after 1935, it has continuously been sold every day.

So, we believe ourselves to be the oldest, continuous barbecue sauce in the United States.

This is a Mrs. Griffin's shake, made from the same basic ingredients that the sauce is made from.

So you shake a little bit of this on what you're cooking, and it's not gonna get any better than that.

[Narrator] This is Edda, named after the founder's wife, Edda Busby Griffin.

- Well, that is very important, as Mr. Griffin, he was going to call it Mr. Griffin's barbecue sauce, but then he thought about it a little while, and thought it'd sell better if he called it Mrs. Griffin's barbecue sauce.

So the mascot's name is Edda Griffin, we named that proudly for her.

The label says, Mrs. Griffin is good on everything, especially pork, chicken, a little beef, and it can also be used as a ketchup, like a mop sauce.

We've got original, hickory, hot, and our newest, sweet.

[Narrator] And just for the cherry on top, there's a top-notch catering kitchen that shares this building with Roland and the Mrs. Griffin's team.

Meet chef, William Foshee, of cast iron catering.

- Today, I'm going to make a little bit of a barbecue with a little Cajun twist.

They've got this new barbecue rub right here, also it's really good on fish and other fried items, toss it like a seasoning salt.

The coleslaw is just kind of a little red wine vinegar, some of the dry rub you have right there, raw onions, and let that sit overnight, and it is jam up.

A little dash of lemon juice, toss and go.

We're going to go ahead and take this pork tenderloin right here.

Cook it from room temp.

Now you just sear it and firing it.

We're just getting a good, even sear.

This is where we get a good char, really seal that skin up, let the sugar caramelize and just do its thing.

- Twenty minutes at three hundred, you don't want to really finish it at high heat, we want to keep those juices in there.

And then you come out with a nice, roasted, pork tenderloin, with Mrs. Griffin's famous marinade and dry rub.

[Narrator] So the chef, and the sauce combined forces, to make an ever so special dish.

Georgia made, and of course, Edda approved.

- So from coastal crops and hops, to seafood and sauce that's all made in Macon, this tasty and creative tour of Georgia has been a pleasant mix of what's been around and what's around the bend.

See you at the next fork in the road.

- A Fork in the Road was brought to you by: [Narrator 2] Georgia soil is rich.

It's climate, agreeable It's agricultural variety, exceptional.

That's why we're nature's favorite state.

Georgia grown supports the farmers and producers who work the land, and keep us fed, because we all grow better together.

Find out more about Georgia agriculture at Georgia Grown dot com.

Georgia FSIS provides efficient and accurate third-party inspection services to members of the industry.

We inspect various fresh commodities, including peanuts, fruits, vegetables, and pecans.

The use of the inspection service ensures the shipment of high quality products, and enhances Georgia's reputation as a supplier of superior agricultural products.