(guitar strums) (hands clap) - [David] "A Fork in the Road" is brought to you by... (gentle guitar strumming) - [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.

- [Narrator] Since 1917, the "Farmers and Consumer's 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".

("Howling at the Moon" by D Fine Us) ♪ 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: result.

(gentle country guitar music) Down here, the soil is rich, fertile, and has the ability to sprout a variety of fresh tasty results.

Different methods are utilized, both the new and the old, but in the end, it's the people that make it all work with, of course, the cooperation of sunshine and rain.

Let's meet a few Georgia farmers from the city, the country, and even in our schools that help deliver the harvest.

(humming) We begin this week in Atlanta at an unexpected farming location run by a creative and determined duo of hardworking farmers.

(sweet country guitar music) When you peruse the Atlanta city roads, you often see these cleared areas where giant power lines connect for miles, servicing our communities, but it's not often that you find a cornucopia of fresh fruits, vegetables, and ornamental flowers sprouting up directly underneath.

- Farmers Chris Lemons and Desmond Baskersville simply figured, why not put this land to good use?

So with the little work and help, they did, and Gratitude Botanicals was born.

(lively guitar music) - Both of us have been long enthusiasts of agriculture.

We both kept home gardens.

We have a history of agriculture in our family, and the opportunity came across with the City of Atlanta with the AgLanta "Grows-A-Lot" program.

One of my friends works in City Hall and said, "Hey, I know you're interested in farming.

"Here's an opportunity."

And I called my long term friend, Chris.

We went to preschool together, we graduated high school together, so we've known each other majority of our lives.

And I say, "Hey, it might be time to go into business."

And here we are.

AgLanta "Grows-A-Lot" is a program with the City of Atlanta, where they're trying to increase available, viable, healthy, nutrient-dense food to what is traditionally known as a food desert.

Now they call them low income, low access areas.

- We have about a acre and a half or so that has been under our management for the past three years.

And we've taken it and turned it into a lot of something.

(bright music) For us, we are a true urban farm.

If you hear some of the noise in the background, that's actually I-285 that you guys are hearing.

One of the things I always want to highlight about our farm and about farming in Atlanta in general is just some of the native things that we have that naturally just popped up.

This is an elderberry tree that popped up here naturally.

On our farm, we farm in alignment with nature, so you may look at it and see, may look a little more weedy than you think, but a lot of those weeds are actually medicinal herbs that we use.

We also propagate these trees seasonally and we help sell them, too.

So that's also something that we like to do, is advance some of the native species that are available here in Atlanta.

So what we have here is our Kentucky Wonder pole beans.

This is something that's really great for harvesting, number one, but it's also beneficial to our soil because it's affixing nitrogen back down into it.

For us, as Southern children, picking these and helping shell them and Grandma cooking 'em in the kitchen, it's always a great memory for me.

I know people kind of fall out of love with some of the traditional vegetable varieties, but these are ones that are super solid and that you can depend on.

You respect nature and farm in alignment with it.

Things like this dog fennel, they're beneficial.

We have golden rod that grows up in here, burdock, different things like that, that are medicinal herbs that people value a lot.

And if you allow them to grow into natural spaces, a lot of your herbalists and things like that, they actually look forward to coming and harvesting those things themselves.

Some of the fruits and things that people actually get to partake of in warmer climates, we actually have that ripen here in Georgia as well.

So what you're looking at is traditionally known as a maypop, but this is actually a passionfruit, Passiflora incarnata.

People, they turn 'em into all sorts of things and we love the experience that we get from our customers from it, because it's something that brings about nostalgia and it also acts as a educational piece for us here on our farm.

Some of the other things that you may notice around our farm is that we have a lot of different butterfly species.

Just us being in a forested area and being so close to water, those are some of the things that really bring me joy out on the farm and, for us to be a urban farm in Atlanta, I think we have one of the more beautiful sites in the area.

(bright guitar music) - [David] Farming with a purpose and a mission that's to educate, grow, feed, serve, and protect the history of the people of Atlanta, through the art of organic, urban agriculture.

And to make that happen, you have to be driven, resilient, and it helps to have community support.

- For the city of Atlanta, we actually have a goal of 85% of residents being within half a mile of fresh affordable food.

Communities such as this one here are considered low income, low access, meaning that residents are a mile or more from fresh affordable food.

So Gratitude Botanical Farm and others like it give that access to people who may not have a grocery store or a super center or things like that in their community, but can come here and get the freshest green beans, the freshest sweet potatoes, the freshest flowers, the freshest basil.

So you've got job opportunities, fresh, affordable food, outdoor weather, community-building, all of those things happening here and those are things that are pretty unique.

These guys are just lights-out and I would say one of the best farmers in the City of Atlanta right now.

- It's very interesting to see a child or something come out here and like, "Wow, I've never seen a farmer, "and I definitely didn't think a farmer looked like you."

So we are just trying to change that narrative.

There's a lot of small farms around the city that are doing the good work to try to provide people with an access to healthy nutrient-dense food right here in their backyards.

And I like to always say, "If you don't buy it from us, "we would rather you grow it."

And so our goal is to teach people to grow their own food, and that's what we do every day.

(humming) - [David] From Atlanta, we head to school, down in Milledgeville for a little Farming 101.

(bright music) When it comes to farming, so much of what we learn in schools comes into play: science, when it comes to genealogy and climate; reading, when learning about the tendencies of crops and their history; and mathematics, when designing the layout of the farm itself, and calculating results.

So here in Milledgeville, the Baldwin County school system has taken an educational interest in bringing the farm to the school.

And what they've discovered is that they are growing more than just the crops themselves.

Young minds are blossoming as well.

- We're standing in the middle of the Baldwin Grows garden for Baldwin County schools.

This is located at Baldwin High School, and we have gardens in all seven of our schools, even the primary schools and with the little bitty kindergartners.

This came out of a partnership with many, many community leaders and organizations, as well as our school system.

It was a desire to teach our students here, not only at the high school, but all of the schools, where their food comes from and how a working garden operates and how we can include this food in our daily diets.

When they pull a carrot out of the ground, the kids get so excited because they planted that seed.

So they're starting to make that connection and we want that to start when they're kindergartners and first and second graders, and go all the way through.

- We are also looking at how our teachers can make the learning in the classroom relevant, right?

So how can we bring what we're learning in the classroom and apply it to what's happening here in this school garden?

Bringing science to life has been an incredible process that we have seen evolved with our teachers.

(lighthearted whistling music) - Our mission is to educate our students.

We use the garden as a part of that educational process.

But when I tell you it took a team to get this started, we had to reach out to everybody in order to make this happen.

- It takes a lot of people to grow a garden, I have learned.

(laughs) - This was a piece of land that was sloped all the way down like this, And there was nothing we could do with it.

And we were like, "We wanna start a garden on it, "but how are we gonna do that?"

And so we had to call in people to grade the land.

That's why you see this three-tier approach here.

On the first tier, we have all of these row beds.

Kids are learning about square foot gardening.

"How many carrot plants can I put in a square foot "for them to grow?"

The unique thing about the Baldwin Grows garden is that everything you see here was donated to us.

- [Dr. Price] I am so thankful to be able to partner with Fort Valley State and Georgia College and all the partners, community partners, the farmers, the nonprofit organizations that have actually made donations so that we can make this a reality for our students.

- Take this bed, for instance.

All of the wood was donated by Georgia Power.

Georgia Power volunteers actually came out and worked with our construction students to actually construct all of these raised beds, and then they put them all in place.

But most of all, we have our students.

We have a wonderful ag teacher, Mr. Tommell Wilcox.

It is his vision to make sure that his students leave his classroom knowing how to grow.

- I'm mainly trying to teach them how to propagate plants, how to grow, how to be their own boss, in a sense, if you will.

Just trying to show them how we could take the small things in nature, such as collard greens or any type of plant that a lot of them probably are used to eating at home and how they can grow it and be successful at making money with it.

And I also teach a little ag mechanics, 'cause that's my love, and we've been working on trailers, we redo farm equipment for different local farmers around.

A lot of different farmers I've met in the time that I've been here, they've came on board and been very supportive of me and the program.

This is a sign that we actually made for one of the people that work at our school, and this is gonna be hung up on their door at their house.

The hands-on experience that they're getting in the shop, it comes out down here because we're running lawnmowers, we're running weed eaters, we're teaching kids how to fertilize, we're teaching kids safety, we're teaching them how to do a lot of things that can translocate from the classroom to out here in the lab and then into their future, wherever they may choose to go.

(bright music) - I'm an plant science major right now, at FVSU, and I'm the school nutritionist.

Straight from the farm, directly to the lunchroom.

What I do is regenerative farming, so I come in, after we harvest the greens, there's gonna be a nodule like this left and I wait a few days and that nodule's gonna turn a little lighter.

If you don't take it off, it'll turn soggy and a lot of gnats will come.

So what we do is, we take 'em off, like here and it makes the plant stronger.

So the plant won't actually think it's sick.

The plant will actually be happy and give you more of your produce.

These are my tomatoes that I'm gonna start.

They're actually the Cherokee tomatoes.

And, right here, nature decided to do a biodiversity type thing, so I decided to let it grow together.

And that is the lettuce, the Bibb lettuce, and the tomato growing together.

- [David] You have a salad happening, right?

- [Marisha] Yes, they're companion plants.

- And this garden has become more than just a class experiment.

They're feeding the students fresh fruit and greens from this garden and local farming partners.

- This lettuce is what I grow in my greenhouses.

It's a green Oakleaf, red Oakleaf, Romaine, and a butter-head Bibb.

And they got some of our seeds so they could grow the lettuce in their own towers, and then they also came and I sent some of the actual plants to go in the towers as well.

- I gonna take one of these out so you can get a good look at it.

You can see the root system?

The roots are growing past the nail and they're growing all the way down.

That's one thing I love about ag.

You always get to learn how to make things a little better.

- This is the kale that we are featuring in our high school cafeteria on Taco Tuesday.

And also, our culinary class has created a nice kale salad with grilled chicken for us to enjoy for lunch later on.

Collard greens!

One of my favorite is Collard greens.

These beds were full just a few weeks ago, but we were able to harvest about 60 pounds of Collard greens for one of our elementary schools and are going to use them as a part of their Thanksgiving dinner.

So I can't wait to eat some fresh Collard greens that came out of the Baldwin Grows garden.

- [David] I bet more kids are gonna eat collard greens, something that they may have been afraid to eat, or, "Ugh, I don't wanna eat the Collard greens," but now they see them, they're a part of growing it, so now they're probably excited to eat it.

- Exactly!

And that is the whole message that we're trying to get across, and as a part of that process, they get excited about the food that they grew.

"This is my Collard green that I grew "and now we're gonna taste what I grew in the garden."

And then, we also sell some of our produce to the community.

We'll have us a local farmer's, school-based farmer's market out here, and parents can buy fresh fruits and vegetables straight from us, right from the garden as they drive to pick up their children.

- The ultimate goal that we have, the dream, is to be able to produce enough fruits and vegetables that we can then give it away and feed those that are less fortunate in our community.

That would be absolutely awesome.

(humming) - [David] From the growing gardens of Baldwin County to a grinding mill in Junction City, where, luckily, not much has changed in the last 100 years.

(easy guitar music) A mill has been on this land since the 1840s and this particular mill has been grinding since 1930.

Folks often see the giant grinding stones as a relic of the past, but here at Fielder's Mill, it's just a part of the machine and the results are as fine as the grits themselves.

- My name is Mike Buckner and this is Fielder's Grist Mill.

My mother was a Fielder and my grandmother gave me the place if I would continue to call it Fielder's Mill.

She didn't have any boys, so she wanted the name to continue.

So I said, "Grammaw, I sure can do that!"

So she let me have the place and I've been running the mill now, 53 years.

I started running the mill after my grandfather died in '65.

At the time, my grandmother ran the mill and hired a man to deliver for her.

And I was 14 at the time she gave the mill to me and I continued with the gentleman.

He would do my meal route for me, but when I became 16, I had to let him go, and it's been a one man show ever since.

In the 1800s, and up into the 1900s, there were grist mills pretty much all over the county and state, I'm sure.

So you could almost walk from your home to a grist mill.

(upbeat drumming) - [David] Everything is mechanical, and powered by water.

A force from nature that is beautiful to witness.

- [Mike] The millstones we have out in front of the building here came from other mills.

Our stone, that we are grinding on today, I know is 90 years old, because my grandmother, grandfather could date it for me.

The ones you the out front came from other mills as they deteriorated or maybe burned and my grandfather collected those and brought 'em here.

- [David] Mike can change the grinding results from super-fine flour to corn meal or grits.

It's all about this rock grinding stone and its rotation.

- I'm gonna raise this wooden gate and it's gonna let the water flow through the dam here through a concrete pipe into the well.

That flow of water and the pressure that's gonna build up in the well is gonna turn the turbine.

It uses the tremendous amount of water.

When I used to get a lot of combine corn, it had a lot of trash in it, and this was the only way to get it out.

(grains rattling) Well, we looked at the cleaner a few minutes ago and how we clean the corn, and now the corn's been brought over to this pipe and it's a storage area, so that I can let it out as we need it, and then I check it, too, to see if the cleaner missed anything, but I believe it did a pretty good job on this.

On grits, we can grind 200 pounds, probably in 30 minutes.

- [David] Folks can swing by and purchase a bag of ground corn from Mike here at the mill, and some people bring their corn for him to grind.

- When I first started running the mill, nobody wanted grits.

That was just something we did as a novelty to give away to neighbors and friends.

But now, grits are one of my main products that I sell.

I sell about as many grits says I do corn meal.

Grits are coarse enough because they won't bind together.

Corn meal is more like that, a lot finer.

Well, we're tying it up.

We got it bagged in two pound bags.

And I use these little wires to tie it with, just because that's the old traditional way.

It stays fresh for maybe four or five weeks on the shelf in your house, but if you want to keep it longer than that, put it in your refrigerator or freezer, it'll stay fresh forever.

(light guitar music) - [David] The place itself is amazing to witness, not just the mill, but the entire property is a lesson in history, from this bell tower just up the hill that still boasts a resounding ring, (bell chimes) or follow the train tracks to his personal depot where a few locomotive rarities reside.

- [Mike] Marietta, Georgia.

- [David] It'll be the only one working?

- It'll be the only known running engine.

Yes, there are two or three more known Glover engines, but they're just static display, they're not operating.

- [David] What year?

- [Mike] 1916.

- [David] You got a half a mile of track here.

- Yeah, laid, I got another half a mile laid out and I just hadn't done it.

- [David] You never quite know what you're going to find when picking up a bag of grits.

The fun part now is following the instructions to cook the perfect bowl of Georgia-grown grits.

(humming) Let's now take the old tracks back to Atlanta where Georgia Grown executive chef Holly Chute gets creative with some Georgia ground grits.

(upbeat guitar music) - We are going to do a savory application of grits, since grits are our specialty here in Georgia, and we're going to take some Italian sausage.

This is mild, but you can also use hot if you prefer.

I've taken the casing off of these and broken them into little chunks.

Sometimes you need to add a little bit of olive oil to get them going, and then you can decide whether you need to drain any fat off before you add your other ingredients.

So this is a local olive oil.

They have found that olives grow really well in South Georgia.

It has climate very similar to the Mediterranean.

But I like being able to serve grits as an entree for dinner, rather than just for breakfast.

So now we've got that partially brown, and we're gonna add the vegetables, kind of in the order of how long they take to cook.

So we've got a couple of cups of thinly sliced zucchini, some slivered onions, and we've got some pretty colored peppers.

So we're gonna just lightly season this with some salt and pepper.

And we've got some dried oregano and we have some minced garlic.

So not only is this gonna be really tasty, it's gonna be pretty and colorful as well.

So we're gonna add our thinly sliced celery.

(lively rock music) And you can use whatever vegetables you like, there's no limitations.

It's, a recipe is just some place to start.

If your family doesn't like one thing in the recipe, you can just leave it out or substitute something else for it.

It's fun, as part of my job, researching and finding old recipes, testing them, and then also adapting them to our current tastes.

So we've got stone-ground grits.

They take about an hour to cook, depending on the coarseness of the grits.

So I've taken chicken stock and a little bit of half-and-half, and about a cup and a half of grits and a little bit of salt.

And as they thicken, you've gotta stir them a lot so that they don't stick to the bottom of the pan.

And as they start to thicken and cook, you may need to add a little bit more water to it, gradually, until you get to the right taste.

You're gonna add a cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

We're going to let them set for just a couple of minutes and then we'll plate it up and garnish it.

(bright country music) And here we have our Parmesan Georgia grits with vegetable Ragu.

(light guitar music) - [David] So from the field to the fork, or spoon, when it comes to the grits, a little education can go a long way, and as long as folks like this are willing to teach, willing to learn, and driven to succeed, our state's future in farming is as fresh as ever.

I'm David Zelski; see you at the next "Fork in the Road".

(bright music) (guitar strums) (hands clap) - [David] "A Fork in the Road" was brought to you by... (lively whistling music) - [Narrator] Georgia's 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.

- [Narrator] 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.