(upbeat country rock music) - [Announcer] A Fork in the Road is brought to you by.

(gentle uplifting 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.

- [Announcer] 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 homegrown 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.

(upbeat country rock music) ♪ 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 everyday 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 result.

(gentle uplifting music) When traveling the roads of south Georgia, there's a smell of freshness in the air, fields of cotton on one side, and peanuts on the other, or green peppers, cucumbers, throw in squash, zucchini, cows, and of course, satsumas.

South Georgia's soil is rich and ready to grow an amazing variety.

Let's begin this episode way down south in Lake Park Georgia, where a long time farming family has successfully spread their roots all over south Georgia.

(soft piano music) The streets are lined with farmland, and from these farms come a variety of fresh citrus fruits and vegetables that have been feeding Georgians and beyond for decades.

Time to meet the Corbett brothers of Corbett Brothers Farms.

- [Justin] My name's Justin Corbette, and I'm co-owner of Corbett Brothers Farms.

- [David] You drive around these parts, there's a lot of things that say Corbett.

- I come from a long line of farmers in the area here.

My grandfather was probably one of the first ones to grow bell pepper in this area, and my dad carried it on from there, and myself and my younger brother started Corbett Brothers Farms in 2018, and we have grown from there.

We grow cucumbers, squash, eggplant, and especially peppers and cabbage just to keep a mix of everything, but bell pepper is our main crop.

This sandier soil that we're on drains well.

It just works out real well to growing a quality bell pepper crop.

(bright inspiring music) - [David Voiceover] Quality and consistency are key, which isn't always easy as temperatures fluctuate, but the brothers do their best to combine high quality, safety, and consistency, a mission that's no easy feat.

- The weather is constantly changing in south Georgia.

I mean, we're running a week or so behind schedule this year from some late colds that we had in March and April.

The weather can always throw you a curve ball.

- [David] Let's talk about the workers you have out here, the folks that are picking, the folks that are packing.

It's almost an art form.

- Oh no, these are some of the hardest working folks that I know, these guys picking pepper know exactly what they're doing, and do a great job of it.

30 years ago, everything went in a wooden crate.

Dad decided to build a packing house in 2008, and started packing ourself with others set on it, then in 2011, we started our own sales company, and we control the whole process from the growing to the sales to getting to the consumer.

Today, we pack pepper in 20 different kind of boxes and sizes, all to custom respects, and whatever they need, we can make happen for them.

(upbeat rock music) When the pepper comes in, it's all mixed sizes.

We bring it in, wash it, sanitize it.

Then it comes down, everything is separated by size, which all basically comes down to a count per box.

Everything has to meet a specific count per box to meet customer respects, and these guys are packing it, getting it ready to head out to getting to the grocery store.

My girls think this is an amusement park in here when they come in, it looks like a playground to them.

A lot different than the way they used to pack it out, out under the sycamore tree, and out of the washtub.

(gentle uplifting music) - [David Voiceover] As the Corbett brothers keep the veggies coming in the spring and summer, another Corbett crop is priming up for November, right along the Georgia-Florida border, the Besties stake their claim.

- It's citrus season in Georgia now, and you can see these are satsumas is what we have here.

A satsuma is a seedless mandarin, super easy to peel, and I can grab one piece, and I can just show you how easily they peel.

It's super easy, the peeling on it.

- [David] Oh, that's gonna help a lot of kids.

- And that helps.

That helps a lot.

This is one of my favorite characteristics on a satsuma.

We always say they peel like a banana.

They just, it just comes off super easy, then a fruit, it's a seedless piece of fruit, and super sweet.

When we're harvesting satsuma, we come through and we check the Brix content, which is the sugar level in the fruit.

And we'll come through, we gotta make sure we have the good color.

We can't have any green in the fruit, because what we want is a solid orange piece of fruit.

The sugar content in them is rising daily with this cooler weather that we get.

We ensure that customers get the premium quality that we produce.

(upbeat guitar music) - [David] All right, so I see some white on some of these.

- What we do to protect the fruit, and I can show you right over here, you can see the white on the leaves, that is a sunscreen that we apply on the tree, all through the summer, and that helps fruit from burning.

It'll sunburn that fruit, then it's an unmarketable piece of fruit.

- [David] And I saw you had a couple of windmills.

Tell me about what those do.

- [Jared] Oh yeah, we run those for frost protection on the cold winter nights.

We don't have to run them all the time, it's just only when the temperature dips down real low to help keep the wind blowing in the grove.

- [David] What got you Corbett brothers into satsumas?

I know it's not how you started.

- In 2013, our sister started a farmer's market in town selling our produce that we grow at her farmer's market.

Then we had a neighbor tell us about satsumas, and wanted us to try some, so we got some trees, we planted them, and we just saw how well they were growing, and how good they tasted as well, it was like, we can grow this and we can sell this right here in Georgia, so we planted our first trees in 2013, and we have been increasing acreage every year since.

With satsumas, and you can see them all right here on the tree, every single one has to be hand clipped, because if you pull it off the tree, it will plug the skin out around the fruit.

It'll completely pull it out.

So every single one, they have clippers, and they have to come in and clip the stem off, then place it in the box.

- [David] So it's like you're pulling the whole root out if you yank it out?

- That's right.

If you pull it, and kind of, you'll pull it, and it'll do that, every single piece.

If you pull them.

It's a very labor-intensive crop.

I mean, everything is done by hand, there's no type of machine that can come through and pick a satsuma, because every single one has to be hand clipped, so every single one you see has been hand-harvested.

- [David] And these guys out here, they know what they're doing, they've been doing it?

- [Jared] That's right.

These workers are very important.

We would close our doors if we didn't have the help that we have.

(uplifting guitar music) They're looking for full color orange fruit, and then they have a pair of clippers, and they are clipping every single piece of fruit, then putting it in their bucket.

Then will come to the trailer and dump it into the bins.

- [David] Tell me about the name Besties.

- Besties was a name we'd come up with to help market our fruit.

It was just a brand we'd come up with to be a name that people recognize, and it's growing, and a lot of people were going to the store asking for Besties.

- I saw it once.

- Right.

- [David] I saw that little cute face on the-- - [Jared] That's right, that's right.

- [David] On the Besties satsuma.

- [Jared] They all peel off into wedges, and the best thing about them is no seeds.

So they're very kid friendly.

- [David] They're your little vitamin C filled Bestie.

Can I try one of these?

- [Jared] Yes.

- [David] I love it.

It's almost softer.

- A satsuma is a softer piece of fruit, and as it gets riper, it'll get softer.

The fruit inside is fine.

It's just, what it is, the peel is separating from the meat on the inside, and that's what a lot of people will see it, and they'll feel it, and say it's soft, and everybody relates soft to rotten.

It's not any good, but that's, it's the other way around with the satsuma.

- [David] That's neat, because it is easier to peel.

- [Jared] Right, and that makes it super easy to peel.

I mean, you can just about open up and pop it, you can just pull it out of the peel, when it gets to that point.

(uplifting guitar music) - [David] I still smell green peppers.

- Yeah, we're still busy with peppers.

That operation's still rolling.

- [David] It's pretty neat.

It's the second round, I saw you in the spring.

- Yes, yes sir.

Yes sir.

- [David] Now we're back here, there's more peppers.

- Yep, yep.

It's a year-round project here.

This is the first step in the packing process.

The pallets come in out of the field, and these guys are putting them on the tote dumper.

Heading on through, just a long series of dryers, getting everything shined up, ready to go.

So here we are with the finished product at the end, the guys here are packing it, getting it put in the boxes.

This is ready for the grocery store shelf, all shined up, ready to go.

The shelf life on these things is actually, they'll last for five, six weeks.

- [David Voiceover] So this Lake Park team of Corbetts work hard to keep a fresh variety of crops coming your way, a southern variety that ensures quality, consistency, and of course, great taste.

(upbeat rock music) From one Corbett to another, six generations and counting, we remain in Lake Park for another chapter in Corbett family history.

(gentle music) - My name is Stanley Corbett.

I own a farm with my three sons.

We farm about 1500 acres of tobacco, corn, peanuts, some years soy beans, we have some beef cattle.

We're in a good area to grow tobacco.

Produce grows good on our topsoil.

I've been in the tobacco business all my life, and my granddaddy, great-granddaddy, I mean, like I say, we grew tobacco every year that I can remember.

So much pressure against tobacco, cigarettes, smoking and all.

We don't know what the future holds for our tobacco industry, you know.

But as long as it's here, it's our main cash crop on our farm, and we just gonna keep going in the direction we're headed til something else sings.

These plants start in January as a seed in the greenhouse, and we will finish harvesting them sometime in the middle of the end of August.

You look for worm sign, you know, worm damage.

When we get about 10% damage, we start spraying for bud worms.

But that's about the only thing we have to spray for.

- [David Voiceover] It was an absolute joy to explore Stanley Corbett's farms from the old farmhouse that triggers that old south country nostalgia, to the budding peanut plants, and the maze of corn stalks in the flowering stage that boasted all sorts of colors.

The cattle ranch was also impressive, seeing a few breeds that aren't quite as common in these south Georgia fields.

And keeping that variety of crops are important to Stanley Corbett, not just for financial reasons, but for the longterm health of his soil.

- [Stanley] Corn prices are up, all the commodity prices are kind of up, so that makes you sort of excited about growing something other than our tobacco crop, something that you can make a little money with.

(gentle guitar music) Corn is one of the best rotations that you can use.

It puts organic matter back into the soil.

Your peanuts, you don't get anything hardly put back into the soil every year.

So we use cover crops in the wintertime to help get organic matter built back up.

We usually follow tobacco behind the corn, and then we've put peanuts behind the tobacco.

- [David] The Corbett name is very prevalent down here.

- Yeah, there's a lot of Corbetts in Echols County, yeah.

And there's distant cousins, I'm talking about fourth, fifth, sixth cousins, you know it's like one big family, really.

We all go back to the same ancestry, but there's a lot of us that farm, and we try to do our part to help feed the world.

(upbeat country rock music) - [David Voiceover] From the farms of Lake Park to the fields of Tifton, a central hub of Georgia agriculture, and the site of Lewis Taylor Farms.

(uplifting piano music) Growing over 6500 acres of produce a year, 81 greenhouses offering 900,000 square feet of growing space, and 80 million pine seedlings sprouting up, not sure whose job it is to count those, but what I do know is that farmer Bill Brim has this operation down to a science, and has grown Lewis Taylor Farms into one of the largest privately-owned farms in the country.

- Lewis Taylor Farms has been here since the 1950s.

Myself and my partner, Ed Walker, bought it out in 1985 from my father-in-law and his father.

We got fields all around here that are full of bell pepper, cucumbers, squash, eggplant, tomatoes, cantaloupe, watermelons, you name it, we've got it here.

When you have multiple varieties, you have the ability to maybe one hitting the market and one not hitting the market, so it gives us a little variability on our pricing and our controls over what we're doing.

Also we have a greenhouse operation where we produce all our own plants anyway, so it's pretty easy for us to put our seed in the greenhouse, we're growing them out, we're growing for other customers as well.

We have just an outstanding crew of people that work for us.

We work seven days a week, there's no question about that.

But everybody that we have, they don't mind working seven days a week.

(gentle uplifting music) - [David Voiceover] Just spending time with Bill, you can sense the pride he has in his farm, from every kind of pepper, to the impressive nursery of pine seedlings, a setup that is quite fascinating.

- Well this is in the tour yet.

It would be, I'm not sure what variety this is, but it would be a solid red or a solid yellow, mini sweet, and they're just as sweet as they can be.

They're like candy.

Kids love to eat them.

They're good for them, and nutritional.

- [David] You said they change color, right?

- Oh yeah, this would be the yellow or red.

Absolutely.

But you see, the little bit of seed just right there in top, but if a kid, he's not gonna bite that anyway, so he's gonna probably bite it right there, and then that's gonna be it.

Jalapenos, serranos, poblanos, habaneros, all of those are hot, hot, hot.

And they will bite you.

I had a jalapeno for lunch today, so.

(David laughing) - [David] Was it a Lewis Taylor jalapeno?

- It was a Lewis Taylor jalapeno.

And this is Annaheims here.

This is a long green pepper.

It's a really good pepper.

It's got a little spice to it, but not really real hot.

It's not quite ready yet, but it's getting there.

That's a male bloom right there.

This is a female bloom.

Let me show you the difference.

That's the female bloom right there.

See it?

- [David] Yeah.

- And this is a male bloom.

A bee will come in here and pollinate it, and it'll hold.

If the bee doesn't pollinate it, then it'll fall off.

- [David] And how long til that one can be picked?

- Tomorrow.

It'll be twice that size tomorrow.

You don't believe it, but it will be.

We're in here every other day, and we're picking a new field, and we're picking the old field.

Picking the new field, and then we go to the old field.

So we keep some fresh product rolling all the time.

- [David] So how many days are you growing peppers every year?

- [Stanley] We'll start picking first of June, and then we'll pick until mid July.

So about six weeks.

- [David] Can you name all the varieties of peppers you have?

- Yeah, I can.

- Let's hear it.

- I have bell pepper, which is a green pepper.

And we have a Maximanus, which is a red pepper that turns naturally red.

Then we have all the special peppers, yellow sweeties, mini sweets, Annaheims, jalapenos, Cubanelle, long hots, Hunkies, serranos, poblanos, all the BellaFinas, the red, the yellow, and the orange BellaFinas.

- [David] Tell me what you do with the Hunkies again.

- Oh, we cook those Hunkies, and we slice them up in halves, put ground beef and onion, that we cook the ground beef and onions, let it cool, then we put cheese in with the onions and the ground beef, then we take a crescent dough roll and stretch it, and roll it across the top of the Hunky, all the way down, it covers it up completely, and then we put it in the oven at 350 for about 20 to 25 minutes til it browns real good, and cooks the crescent roll, and the peppers.

It'll be so good.

- [David] Where can people find Lewis Taylor Farm products?

- Any grocery store in the southeastern United States, we've got all the different grocery chains that we go to and sell to.

If you're talking about imports versus us here, our product's fresh everyday.

We get it to the supermarket probably in no less than three days after it's harvested and goes out of the cooler.

Sometimes it's mostly overnight.

We have great food safety here.

We have staff that that's all they do is monitor our food safety and what we're doing.

Some of those countries out there that are sending there product in here, they may be paying 80 cents an hour, and we're paying $12 an hour.

I work seven days a week.

That's what I do.

Hard work is not gonna hurt you.

If you find a young kid that really wants to work, he can make a good life with this kind of work in agriculture.

(upbeat rock music) - [David Voiceover] From Tifton, we journey back to where we started in Lake Park to meet a farmer from another family who's slinging fresh produce from the field to their own fresh market.

(gentle uplifting music) For over 20 years, Dee Ritter and the hard workers of Little Ritter Produce have been growing, packing, marketing, and delivering a variety of high quality squash, cucumbers, peppers, and zucchini, just to name a few, to customers all over the south.

- Probably 15, 20 years ago, we had a small cooler, and we was hand-stacking trucks, and working all night, and you'd see the sun come up the next morning, and a lot of work, a lot of sweat, and a lot of tears, but it works out at the end.

We grow green pepper, red pepper, zucchini, yellow squash, Gold Bars, tomatoes, eggplant, sweet corn, snap beans.

We pick the cucumbers in the field, and we try to pole raise most of our cucumbers.

Some of them are on the ground.

Bring them in in bins, by trailers or trucks, and then we run them on the line.

(upbeat rock music) It takes everybody, from a forklift driver to the guys making the boxes to the guys picking the produce.

It's not a one man show.

It's a team, and it takes a lot of work, a lot of effort, and just like everything you do in life, there's challenges, but it's rewarding at the same time.

If there's a crooked cucumber, it goes into a select for say a restaurant, salad bar type deal.

And most of the supers go to the chain stores.

- [David] I've never heard of crooked cucumber.

I like it.

- Crooked cucumbers, yeah.

- [David] Tell me about the bell peppers that grow down here in Georgia.

- We grow green and red bell pepper.

Right now we're harvesting green bell peppers.

As you can see, we run the bell pepper on this line here.

They go in RPCs, DRCs, regular box.

- [David] What is it about this Georgia soil, this south Georgia area, that's so special for farming?

- Well, I think it's the soil, I think it's the humidity.

I think it's the temperatures.

It started 30 years ago with some of my neighbors, and this just blossomed into a really big business in this area for a lot of farmers and a lot of my neighbors.

(gentle uplifting music) We got a food source here in Georgia.

All the way up the east coast, down back to south Florida.

If we lose that food source, it's gonna be worse than the pandemic.

We need to keep that in mind.

When the shortage of food comes about, it's a sad deal.

So we need to keep food capacity and food production in the States.

- [David] Yeah, and it tastes better, right?

- And it tastes better too, of course.

It's fresher.

- [David Voiceover] Most of their products are shipped to markets outside of their home town of Lake Park.

However, they still like to keep a few close to home, and those fresh fruits and veggies from their fields and other nearby farmers and producers are the reward for shoppers at Ritter's Fresh Market.

(gentle uplifting music) - We got a little produce store down in Lake Park on Lake's Boulevard.

Ritter's Fresh Market.

Me and my wife, and my mom and daddy, we got a part in it, and we just got basically anything you'd want in there from avocados to apples to peaches to pears to grapes to bell pepper to squash, we grow tomatoes, onions, Vidalia onions from over here, Vidalia, sometimes we source it out, sometimes we have it fresh from our farm.

- I'm Cindy Hodge, and I'm the manager of Ritter's Fresh Market.

The Ritter family has been farming in Echols County for well over 50 years, and last year they decided to open a fresh produce market here in Lake Park Georgia, which we really needed, because we don't have fresh produce, except for 10 miles away.

So it's kind of a trip to go get locally grown produce to feed our families.

A lot of our customers actually have been doing a you-pick out at the Ritter family's farm in Echols County for many, many years.

So this offers another alternative to them where they can come and shop not only what's local but also some of the things that we bring in from other parts of the southeast.

And one thing that we've also done here is incorporated the olive oil, the honey, those other type of grocery items that are locally grown here in Lake Park and surrounding areas in south Georgia.

(uplifting music) Right now, we're just starting to harvest out at the Ritter farm.

And when they're in peak season, all of the vegetables in here, which is the squash, the zucchini, green beans, cucumbers, they all come from the Ritters, or other families that farm here in south Georgia.

- [David] Has it been fun watching the community embrace a store like this?

- Oh yeah, we have a lot of regular customers.

They're a lot of fun.

They like to share their recipes.

We certainly ask, what are you cooking for supper tonight?

So, it's been a lot of fun.

We also serve eight flavors of bluebell ice cream, which is very, very popular, and something that we needed in our community also.

We are right off the interstate, and you just don't find ice cream parlors so close to 75.

- [David] I guess it's been kinda neat getting to know all the Georgia grown brands all over the state.

- It is, it's things like that that really do make it fun working here, and understanding really what's behind everything we eat, and how we get it.

(uplifting music) - [David Voiceover] And all that is just a sample of what goes on down here in Georgia, sprouting up goodness spring through fall, and even satsumas in the early winter.

These farmers know their craft, and understand through experience how to do it right.

Add a few modern day upgrades to traditional farming practices, and you've got a winning combination that's growing strong.

I'm David Zelski.

See you at the next Fork in the Road.

(uplifting music) (upbeat country rock music) A Fork in the Road was brought to you by.

(cheerful music) - [Announcer] 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 georgiagrown.com - [Announcer] Georgia FSIS provides efficient and accurate third party inspecting 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.