(upbeat music) - A Fork in the Road is brought to you by.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] 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 GeorgiaGrown.com.

- Since 1917, the "Farmers and Consumers Market Bulletin" has been George'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 music) ♪ I came from the mud ♪ ♪ There's dirt on my hands ♪ ♪ Strong like a tree ♪ ♪ There's roots where I stand.

♪ - This week we're growing and grinding all over Georgia.

From fruitful hibiscus creations in Lithonia and an oyster mushroom growing couple in Gainesville to a grinding business that boasts natural nuts and buttery fashion.

But our first Fork in the Road takes us down to Albany to explore the source of Pretoria Fields Collective.

(upbeat music) In the land of Pretoria the farm takes center stage.

Beer around here flows like the Flint river itself and the taste is doctor approved.

Meet vascular surgeon Dr. Tripp Morgan, and his succulent side hustle turned successful business that puts Georgia farmers and the spotlight.

- The Pretoria, Georgia's where my farm was or where the forum in Dougherty County was.

And so that was the first place where we were actually making a few of our quote unquote experimental beers.

So it resonated with everybody.

So Pretoria became the name.

We're helping the smaller guy, heavy the guy who's not farming as many acres is as you would think about what those things it's maybe trying to get involved in some other products, besides corn, cotton and peanuts.

(upbeat music) - The Praetorian brewmaster then took me around the brewery.

Step-by-step sharing the details of what it takes to bring this all together and why it's a special project for him.

- So the process begins in the middle room, rye, barley, or wheat.

We use our brewing process.

We've come through this grain mill.

It wont lightly crush it.

We want the husk broken open, but not just obliterated.

We're not trying to create flour.

We will mill that through these auger lines here and everything is auger to our brew house.

Hot liquor tank, cold liquor tank.

Liquor's a brewing term that just means water, no liquor inside those.

The entire recipe will be held here in the grist case.

Bull candle to place we're going to add hops for bitterness, flavor and aroma.

We brew German styles.

We make lagers we make ales, belter style brewing.

And then we're doing things that the market asks for and new style.

So we make sours here.

Right now we have four brands, four seasonal and four sub seasons, as well as seltzers.

When you're doing organic farming I mean, you have issues.

You have crop failures you have some things that just don't necessarily work out.

We've changed some varieties of barley and Ryan.

I think we finally stumbled on things that are disease resistant and pest resistant and hopefully this is something that takes hold and we can actually bring back barley farming to Georgia because that is absolutely something that can be done.

And I think all of this is supporting Georgia agriculture.

- Our long term goal is to continue to promote organic agriculture, sustainable farming, appropriate use of natural resources and do that in all of the Southeastern United States (upbeat music) - Dr. Morgan and his team see this farm-based brewery making a difference.

And he says, it's healthy.

And he should know, after all he's a doctor.

- It has a chemical properties similar to that that we always talk about, which is good in wine.

So they did find it in beer.

So that's the thing.

- And speaking of health how about meeting one of these Pretoria field collective farming partners who is bringing one of George's latest hot crops into the ingredients.

Let's meet Handy Kennedy at his hemp farm in mether.

- This legacy of this farm been in the family 1869, Right out of slavery my great grandfather Handy and Elizabeth Jane mom bought 175 acres from a guy by the name of Cobb which Cobbtown and basically named after him.

His son grew it to like 1700 acres.

And then when my father and grandfather split it up amongst his 13 kids, my father bought a thousand acres of it.

And this is where we sit right now is on a thousand acres that my father bought from his father Martin Kennedy.

My father built those barn back in 1972 for tobacco.

And to be able to use the barn here in 2022 to dry hemp as amazing, that's kind of keeping the lineage and the history going on with the farm.

(upbeat music) I believe that hemp within revolutionary crop.

And I knew that it was going to bring some opportunity for small farmers of like ourself to give us the opportunity to make some extra revenue.

And when I really started researching and learning about the different aspects of it and what you can really do with hemp with the CBD with the seed and with the fiber, I knew that this was going to be a crop that we'd have to really invest in on the ground level.

When Georgia passed the law to allow us and start growing I started researching and processes 'cause I really had the best inches of small farmers in mind and I ran across Victoria field.

They had a couple of presentations throughout the state.

And so I threw I'm going to a couple of their meetings and listened to their leadership team and explaining to them what they were trying to do.

I realized they were gonna be the best fit as far as processes in Georgia for HK farm.

- Because of my background in medicine we try to promote health and we're promoting health through organic farming and we're promoting health through sustainable farming.

If I can get people to think about thinking that way then maybe we can get them to think about how cannabis is a sustainable performing product.

(upbeat music) - To be honest, it feels a little different here on the hemp farm for obvious reasons, but the cannabis variety they're growing here is hemp not marijuana, even though it's the same species of plant, the variety is different.

It's all based on the level of THC in the crop.

And it's all calculated.

(upbeat music) - Just for simple understanding the hemp varieties that we grow the THC genes are the genes that make that would make it marijuana, quote unquote they're not doubt.

They're not activated in that particular plant they're grown and everything has to be as far as the state law under 0.3% THC.

And the other thing that people need to realize is that we're growing it for our a high CBD content and the increase in the CBD actually suppresses THC effect.

So there's several different reasons that hid both has the beneficial effects and it also doesn't have the euphoric effects.

- It's about respecting the land and the consumer and bringing all these things together into one unifying Georgia Grown drink that is both doctor and farmer approved.

From the Pretoria fields to the pride of Lithonia where a creative family has tapped into a magic variety of hibiscus creations.

(upbeat music) A tropical plant producing a radiant fruit bursting with flavor.

The Georgia hibiscus plant has yet to reach the world renowned fame of the Georgia peach.

But with this family at the helm of the hibiscus a new sweet player in the fields of Georgia is making waves with a variety of hibiscus based products.

- The base of our products is hibiscus based.

We literally go out into a hibiscus fields and we grab our ripe hibiscus calyx, cut off the base of the calyx.

And it gives us this product that we in turn do couple of things, get into a stable state and how you do that is out of freeze it, dehydrate it or just make it into juice.

And each one of those different processes make a different product.

- We start with our seeds.

These are actually high hibiscus seeds and they are, there are a variety of hibiscus that we grow.

So we normally get together as a company at the beginning of the year and we plan our season out to define which types of hibiscus we're gonna grow and how much hibiscus we're gonna grow.

(upbeat music) - Hibiscus tea, sparkling hibiscus, chutney, jelly.

Najeeb, Millie and the family just keep the creative coming.

- You learn just eat this thing right off the branch.

It has been known to have acidity ecoladia cranberry.

So it has a tart taste to it.

We marry up the hibiscus with the leaves and it almost like settles that the tastes out that tartness off just a tad bit.

- We always tell our customers during the holiday or anytime you wanna try something different that you would normally use cranberry sauce for then try our chutney.

- There are tons of as far as medicinal health benefits factors as far as hibiscus is as far as rich in antioxidants it helps out as far as... - Hypertension, reducing hypertension.

- And the closer we get to that as far as our different teas that we have.

- The bottom line is we have a product for where you are in your health journey, right?

So we have small children.

So they like their peanut butter and jelly.

So we're gonna give them a jelly.

At least we know that we've produced something that's natural that we've controlled the process.

My mom's diabetic and so she absolutely loves the tea so that she can use whatever alternative sugar substitute that she prefers.

And so we have something for everyone, right?

I think everything's great in moderation.

(upbeat music) - Hibiscus is a labor-intensive crop.

It currently has to be handpicked and has a relatively short shelf life.

And every fruit has to be cored carefully as Millie and Najeeb demonstrate - In order to get started, to get that fruit into one of those stable states.

we utilize currently just a tool to core out the seed pod as it process wear gloves on and whatnot and you literally just push, twist and pop out the other side.

It's like a magic trick.

(laughs) Now you see it and now you don't.

So, and this is a seed pot that believe it or not it sets us up for the follow-on season.

So we take this Kellogg's set in a bucket and we move on to the next and we just let it sit until it naturally blooms open, drops out seeds for the follow on season.

And we just keep going on with that process year after year, after year.

- Najeeb's father Yasin known around here as 'Big Ya' has years of experience with the hibiscus plant when he lived down in Louisiana.

That home street is actually where the name Pride Road originated.

These days he continues that farming passion and closely watches over their crop.

This batch is tucked away on some property near stone mountain.

- We were right off of the yellow river The line between Gwinette County and DeKalb County is right over here to our left.

And we have Katrina evacuated.

In a community where I lived on pulled out some Pride Road and Zachary we had about 12 farmers that work with us when my wife and I growing this hibiscus.

And that's basically how we got started with that.

This was a family farm.

And when we started this project this year they hadn't farmed in this area for what, 20 to 25 years.

So we had no well with no problems with fertility and cell quality and that kind of thing.

If we clip all of the calyx and don't clip the ones that we want that's the right size.

Then the rest of them just come right back just like Oakland.

So we can get about 10 pounds off for each one of these bushes.

And we could do that at least three or four times before the fros.

(upbeat music) - We are unique in that we grow, we harvest, we produce our own products.

We own our entire process.

We don't outsource any of our process to anyone so that we can control what we are providing to our customers.

- So let's give a hand to the Georgia hibiscus and the proud family that grows, gathers, cores and creates this brilliant red fruit into a variety of sweet and savory Pride Road products.

(upbeat music) Let's now take the Fork in the Road that leads us up to Gainesville.

Home to the tasty and artistic green box mushrooms.

(upbeat music) The blue light creates more than a relaxing mood.

It's the source of life for these ornamental yet tasty oyster mushrooms.

Being grown courtesy the moons of Georgia.

John and Elizabeth Moon that is.

- It started out with me and my husband looking at what do we do for our retirement?

I told him I'm not gonna go ahead and dig in the dirt and be a farmer.

So he looked at from an automation perspective or kind of a farming with more of a hydroponics of the business or even something that doesn't require a whole lot of labor.

He came with a mushroom farming.

- This 30,000 square foot growing facility is quite impressive.

Container after container filling the space and sprouting hundreds of pounds of mushrooms every day.

John walked me through the operation sharing the technology, hardware hands-on care and science that makes this all happen.

- And this is a substrate we're using to mix wheat brand.

And this is about 1600 pound bag.

And we use one bag a day that we mix three times a week.

This is a machine both peanut hulls and the wheat brand go inside.

We initially mix without water.

We call it dry mix and then start adding about 300 gallon of water into this tank and then mix both again hour and a half.

And this machine takes substrate, fitting it in and then shoot it down to the box put it into the hole and fill up each bottles.

Once we fill up this alter clay we heat it up with a boiling steam for five hours.

At the 45 days of inoculation, the bottle transport to here and get ready for the groin.

As soon as we have a pinning we will start flipping into the up position.

It takes about 10 to 15 days to grow, to be harvest.

(upbeat music) - So this room is where it's actually grown.

And then we go ahead and harvest to deliver it out to our customers.

Health benefits of the oyster mushrooms are actually with our immune system.

So it provides a lot of protein fiber without all the fat, without sodium.

So it's actually really good for us to keep us healthy.

My son who graduated from Kennesaw State University with a biology major came across an article that was done by his school and showed us that, "look, they're doing what we're currently they're researching what we're doing."

So we contacted the professors at KSU.

They came out with their and their jaws just dropped because we had it all set to what they were trying to accomplish or share with our Georgia Grown farmers that mushroom farming can be done consistently to what we're doing.

And we already have it all set up.

So we decided to kind of venture together and research together.

We're opening up our farm over to KSU so that they can come out and study with us on how to share this technology.

What the rest of the farmers that are interested.

(upbeat music) - The name is catchy.

The shrooms are tasty and the facility is even open for tours if you'd like to take a peak and a taste for yourself - This is a fully grown oyster mushrooms, and we have a farm tour and you pick farming that's going on on Saturday.

So we welcome regular consumers to come out and visit us on Saturdays for a farm tour.

And they're able to pick their own mushrooms is so easy to pick them just twist them and there you go.

And they can go ahead and harvest their own for them to take home and enjoy.

Our pride is the fact that we're actually able to create an incept from more being born in Georgia to fully Georgia Grown.

And that's the beauty of our farm.

- A sublime, shroomy goodness grown and raised by the Moons of Gainesville, Georgia.

(upbeat music) Our final Fork in the Road takes us down to Chamblee where peanuts, pecans and many other tasty nuts are ground to perfection.

(upbeat music) So how can something so creamy at times crunchy and always tasty be so incredibly healthy?

Well, that's a family secret but Jamie Foster and her husband, Harry are at least willing to share.

Introducing the Georgia Grinders.

(upbeat music) - We founded Georgia Grinders back in 2012.

And essentially it's a tribute to my grandfather and his innovation towards health and wellness.

He started making almond butter back in the 1970s before people really knew what almond butter or nut butters were except for the obvious peanut butter.

And this is what I grew up eating.

He took a lot of pride and shipping it all over the country to his kids and grandkids.

He was actually predisposed to cardiovascular disease and ended up living until he was 97 years old and attributes his longevity to clean, simple eating and health and wellness.

- We eat, drink and sleep on nuts.

I mean, we think about it all the time.

It's always there.

That is a little sometimes like, "okay we're not talking about work today," but for the most part we get it does great and or good ying and yang, what she is good in.

I don't do so well in, where she has problems, I can usually pick up the Slack there too so.

- It's a family business and this is what our kids know.

They saw this business born and here we are eight years later and they've seen what it's grown into.

So it's very inspiring to them as well.

And it is a family affair.

(upbeat music) - We started in a thousand square feet.

We're now up to about 15,000 square feet.

It has lots of room to grow and change.

We can do basically anything we want to.

Being small means you're nimble so that we can move and go in between different nuts.

We can try and experiment with different things small batches.

In addition to doing peanut butter which obviously Georgia being known for peanuts.

Georgia is also this, the nation's largest producer of pecans.

So we pride ourselves in sourcing peanuts from farmers in Georgia only and pecans.

Our pecans come from a fifth generation grower.

Our family has been doing this for well over a hundred, almost 150 years now.

- Essentially our products contain two ingredients, the nuts and a touch with sea salt.

You'll never find additional sugars, oils, emulsifiers additives, or any types of preservatives.

We want our products to be very clean and simple as they should be.

And that way the consumer can ultimately decide what they want to pair it with.

And whether that's something sweet or savory - Pecans peanuts, and even almonds, every nut requires a different method for roasting, for grinding.

But these two and their team seemed to have it figured out.

- So at Georgia Grinders we make all kinds of small batch, handcrafted, nut butters.

Everything from almond butter, peanut butter, cashew butter, pecan, hazelnut, and each nut has a different property based on size, shape moisture contents.

All of which is affected by the roasting process and ultimately the grinding process.

But that's what we do extremely well here is we roast everything in-house and have identified the perfect roasting times so that the oils are released in our ground perfectly when grinding.

We focus on producing one nut butter at any given time.

So as you can see right now behind us Nate is roasting peanuts today.

They go through a cooling process and then our immediately browned.

Then we add sea salt to each and every batch with the exception of our salt-free almond butter.

And if there's any inclusions such as our honey or maple or our limited edition chocolate bourbon pecan butter the inclusions get added in mixed shuffled over to the piston filler where each jar is hand filled, sealed by one of our employees and put in a box and out it goes.

- And it isn't just the Foster family that appreciates this different type of nut butter for word has spread all over the USA.

- Georgia Grinders has been very blessed to receive a lot of awards throughout the years.

Initially, we were featured in Oprah magazine as her favorite nut butter in 2013 on the O List.

And then Rachel Ray's magazine has featured us.

We've received some clean eating awards, our pecan butter one Flavor of Georgia back in 2017 just continue to be very well supported by the University of Georgia and the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences.

- That is they've always been great aloft the University of Georgia.

If you have problems, we've called up and talked to food scientists about what we're having an issue with something in this particular variety and what can we do and they'll work with you.

And they, the state has been a great supporter.

That's about the state helping us out too, and being there for the citizens and the small businesses that are there and the farmers.

- With the thumbs up from the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart, this nut butter couple is onto something special and healthy grinding a variety of tasty nuts into jars all over America.

(upbeat music) So from ornamental mushrooms and fruity hibiscus to Georgia Grinders and a brewery in the fields of Pretoria this Fork in the Road has taken us along the right path.

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

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

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] 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 GeorgiaGrown.com - [Announcer] 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.