(gentle upbeat guitar music) - [David] From the soil of our family farms to your table, there's something special about Georgia, something you can taste in every bite.

Fresh flavors, local farms, unforgettable experiences, Georgia has it all.

Support local, taste the difference, and make memories along the way.

Look for the Georgia Grown logo wherever you shop or visit georgiagrown.com.

(light upbeat music) - [Announcer] Community, learning, working, playing, celebrating.

Doing life is always better together.

At GPB, we aim to provide you with the tools to be able to do life together well.

Our mission to educate, inform, and entertain inspires everything.

From our wide range of programming, to our stimulating radio conversations, to our fun in-person events, we've got something for everyone.

Visit gpb.org/community to learn more about our upcoming events.

- 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."

♪ Mm, mm, mm ♪ ♪ Mm, mm, mm ♪ ♪ I came from the mud ♪ ♪ There's dirt on my hands ♪ ♪ Strong like a tree ♪ ♪ There's roots where I stand ♪ - [David] Georgia farmers, artisans, merchants, and producers, we depend on these men and women every day of our lives through the choices we make and the food we consume.

Their strategy and approach is always shifting, but the end game remains the same, results.

(lively upbeat music) Starting a farm from scratch is hard work.

On top of education and knowledge of how to grow, farming and raising animals takes time, money, and quite often a whole lot of land.

This week we explore a couple of Georgia farms that have become possible because of a program called the Georgia Farms Fund.

This program run by a national organization called The Conservation Fund detects threatened farmland located in areas near major cities, like Atlanta, acquires that farm property, and then provides an opportunity for new farmers to own the land and grow fresh food for their local food system, especially in areas that face food insecurity.

♪ Mm, mm, mm ♪ - [David] Let's begin this episode in Covington to meet one of these young farmers who is armed with a few engineering skills as well and learn how this Farm Funds relationship all works.

(bright music) Rahul has been farming since 2016 because he noticed that there was an unmet demand for sustainably grown local produce at farmers markets, CSAs, and restaurants.

He teamed with the Farms Fund in 2022 and with their help changed farming locations and went from 14 acres to growing and managing crops on 147 acres of this now protected farmland along the banks of the South River.

Justin Nickelson is a Georgia Farms Fund specialist and has been to Snapfinger many times watching this special program play out just like it was envisioned.

- It's a first-of-its kind buy, support, protect, sell program, which identifies and acquires farmland which is under threat of development pressure, puts conservation easements on those properties, permanently protecting that land from development pressure, as well as conserving that farmland for agriculture in perpetuity.

At the same time, we match farmers in and around metropolitan areas, matching those farms to the land so that they can maximize and increase their scale, identifying local markets, as well as reducing the purchase price of that property with the conservation easement.

- I found out about the Working Farms Fund through my friends at Love is Love Farm, which was I think either the first or one of the first farms in the program.

Honestly, I mean, I've never heard of anything like it, and so when they first told me what the deal was, I kind of was like, "What's the catch here?"

But after meeting with Christiane from the Working Farms Fund and then Justin and, you know, talking to them and seeing, "Hey, this is real, they're serious people, they want records," to some people, that might feel daunting, but to me it it showed that, hey, they're serious.

I see that there's a lot of demand for local produce on the wholesale level, and so if we can come in and substitute something that's coming from overseas or from all the way across the country, I think that works out for everybody.

So we are currently in our fall field.

It's about 10 acres per season is what we do currently, and we are in the half acre of beets right now.

This is a crop that we've chosen to do a larger volume of.

We can wait till we got nice-sized beets, harvest 'em all out, bring 'em in, and they're great for storage.

And so we can wholesale a portion of it quickly, and then we can hold another couple tons for our retail markets and have consistent availability for farmers markets, restaurants, for a longer period of time.

And so with beets, currently we're almost at availability 12 months a year.

You're kind of seeing here beets just starting to form.

I think, you know, there's a few bigger ones, but it's time for the root to grow.

So I would say two to three weeks for market bunches and probably about a month for our bulk harvest for wholesale.

- [David] This is Bugs Bunny territory.

- Yeah, here we've got our carrots.

We have less of the carrots because we're still working out how to do these efficiently.

After they germinate, we can pretty much use the same system we use for the beets, but carrots require the soil to stay moist, and they take longer to germinate, up to 14 days.

And so managing that water on the front end is really important.

We've been testing different ways to keep the beds moist and get those carrots to germinate.

They're slowly getting ready.

We planted these at a similar time to the beets, so they're two to four weeks from harvest time.

- [David] How would that taste right now?

- I mean, I think it'd taste pretty good.

Let's find out.

Very sweet.

- [David] Cool, so it's not like fruits where they're sour or... - [Rahul] No, so carrots, you're gonna get more sweet with more cold.

(upbeat guitar music) So here we've got some of our storage radishes.

- [David] Explain storage.

- Storage radishes, they're these big radishes, daikons, and watermelon radishes that when we harvest these, we cut the tops.

They run through our root washer, and then they can go in and be stored for a few months.

With succession planting and planting in both the spring and the fall, we're able to have these all year long.

They're nice and big.

- [David] That is big.

- [Rahul] And here's a purple one.

- [David] Do they taste different?

- Well, they taste pretty similar.

They're crunchy.

You know, these could be used for soups and stews, roasting, raw in salads, all kinds.

They're pretty versatile vegetable.

- [David] Do you know much about the nutrition of these?

- Yeah, they're good for you.

(David laughs) - [David] And you have sweet potatoes over here.

- Yes, so we've got three varieties here.

There's Orleans.

There's Covington, and then there's Murasaki.

The Orleans and the Covington are your traditional orange-flesh sweet potato, and the Murasaki is a purple skin, white-flesh sweet potato.

- [David] How much of the land are you farming on at a time?

How much is sitting and resting?

- Currently, we have 30 acres of fields in production.

We do 10 acres in the spring, 10 acres in the summer, and 10 acres in the fall.

And I do that because it allows me to cover-crop effectively.

You know, from an efficiency standpoint, planting this way also allows us to not worry about where a crop is going.

So I can say, you know, for the fall on our 10-acre block, this is what's going in every single row of that 10 acres, and I'm not worried about getting something out to get another thing in.

And that's something on a small scale that I had to do a lot just to make enough money per acre to sustain the operation.

And with the access to this land, we don't have to operate that way anymore, and we can really keep the sustainability of the land and the soil quality in mind without sacrificing the economics of the operation.

- [David] And that is important to you and important to The Conservation Fund, the sustainability of the land you farm on.

- Yeah.

So, yeah, here we've got our sunchokes, and we grow quite a bit of these.

There's a half acre of it right here.

They look very dead, but that's how they're supposed to look this time of year.

This is the crop right here.

So this is a small one.

But they're a tuber that grow beneath, you know, these plants.

They flower somewhere about July, and they look like huge sunflower plants with little sunflowers all over them.

And so from there, you wait till all the foliage dies down, and you're ready to dig.

The good thing about these is you can leave 'em in the ground and dig as needed.

They'll store fine.

They're kind of like a potato after you cook 'em.

You can boil 'em up and then saute 'em in a pan, and it'll be like a breakfast potato, crispy skin, soft inside, just a little bit more of an earthy flavor.

They're high in fiber and inulin, and some say that it's a good potato substitute for people with diabetes and things like that.

And it's actually native to Appalachia.

Even though it's not a well-known vegetable, it's been around for a long time.

- [David] Now at the beginning of the story, I mentioned engineering, and stuff like this is cool.

- This is our homemade root washer.

It's actually... It's been used more this year than it ever has, and we're actually renovating it right now.

But basically what it does, it has a variable-speed motor, and it turns this barrel, which rolls on these wheels, and then there's a water hookup to spray inside the barrel.

And so depending on the crop, you can choose your speed and your water pressure, and you can effectively wash a lot of crops with a lot less labor.

And so things like beets, carrots, daikon radishes, even things like green garlic, it saves a lot of time, and it results in a very clean, marketable product.

- [David] And what do you got here?

- So this was a 1949 Allis-Chalmers G rear-engine cultivating tractor.

This one actually had a blown-up motor, and so I converted it to an electric.

So this is actually an electric tractor now.

This is a modern electric motor, 1949 transmission and frame, modern basket-weeding cultivation bar.

And that's all this tractor does, is it's permanently set up as a basket weeder.

And so it's set to match the tractor-mounted seeder and the beets, the carrots, the daikons.

Anything we direct-seed gets cultivated by this.

- [David] And this is not your background, the engineering and- - No.

- Making electric motors?

- No, no, no, no.

- [David] So you're used to tractors being loud.

- [Rahul] Yeah.

It is on.

So that's about how loud it is right there.

(lever clicks) (Rahul chuckles) - [David] Rahul and his wife Carson have a mission to be a strong rural business attracting creative young people through agriculture and craft.

And for anyone who steps foot on this farm and witnesses the hands-on effort that is put into growing healthy, organic options for this community for the purpose of feeding others, it's hard not to be inspired.

♪ Mm, mm, mm ♪ - [David] Let's now journey from Covington to another Farms Fund success story in Pine Mountain, where the goal is to improve the health of the land and the community through sustainable farming practices.

Beautifully maintained farmland boasting an array of colors and healthy food options, Little Fox Farm is a fast-growing 52-acre, woman-owned organic vegetable fruit and flower farm.

Lindy and her husband and assistant farm manager Daniel have a true passion for farming, and it shows.

Little Fox Farm outgrew its original production space after leasing for seven years.

And at that time, they did not have a path to secure land ownership, and that's when their partnership with the Working Farms Fund program came into play.

- My name is Lindy Kloepfer from Little Fox Farm in Pine Mountain, Georgia.

The full property is 53 acres, and so we grow on about eight acres that we have under cultivation right now.

So we do a wide variety of things, so like strawberries, blueberries, figs, a lot of root vegetables, greens, and then cut flowers for like flower bouquets.

So we mostly do market farming.

So we're trying to figure out right now what we're gonna do with the back of the property 'cause it's mostly pasture.

So we've got three cows now, and we're thinking of expanding that.

You know, it's a lot to mow when we've got the time.

(laughs) - [David] It's November.

These are blooming.

- Yeah, so these are different colors of marigolds.

Kind of at the end of flower season, but we'll be cutting these every morning all week long.

They go into the walk-in cooler.

And then on Thursdays before the market, I make mixed flower bouquets.

- [David] It's pretty crazy though.

We are in mid-November, mid to late, and got a pollinator right here in front of us.

- [Lindy] Yeah, they're still hanging on.

(upbeat music) - [David] All right, Lindy, tell me where we are now.

- Yeah, so we're in the first tunnel.

So we have rainbow chard through here.

These are calendula flowers over here.

They can be used as an edible flower, like as a garnish on salads and things.

But once the stems get longer, we'll also use it as a cut flower.

A bunch of different varieties.

I really like these.

- [David] Let's go over here 'cause I see the green here.

- Yeah, we've got green pak choi over here, and then these are a purple pak choi.

- [David] Okay, you say pak choi.

I know bok choy.

- Yeah, so I think they call it a pak choi when the variety is like smaller.

So I think the bok choy refers to the ones that are like, you know, giant, and they have like the really thick white stems.

And then pak choi is usually like the smaller ones.

So we started harvesting these when they were only about that tall, so, really little and cute.

This is kind of like at the very end.

So like in the next week or two, we'll probably harvest the rest of these out of this bed.

Purple pak choi, the purple peppers.

- [David] You got a theme going.

- [Lindy] Yeah, purple things that match my hair.

(laughs) - [David] There you go.

- So this is a transplanter here.

So these trays, the lettuce is seeded into the paper pot.

So each cell gets a seed, and then the tray goes into the transplanter like this.

And it plants it as you pull the transplanter backwards.

So we usually only do like our lettuce and our spinach with the paper-pot transplanter.

Everything else we hand-transplant for the most part, or direct seed.

We've got carrots in here that we've been harvesting these for about two weeks now.

- [David] Those are pretty.

(dramatic music) Having close proximity to Callaway Gardens and Pine Mountain as well as access to both Atlanta and Columbus, there are numerous market opportunities for Little Fox.

There are the crops you may expect from this growing region, like blueberries, figs, a variety of greens and cons.

However, Lindy and Daniel shared another not-so common growing project that had me quite intrigued.

- [Lindy] Can you tell him about the prickly pear?

- [Daniel] Yes, the fruit is the prickly pear here.

Here's the cactus.

Here's the leaf.

- [David] It comes on the top?

- Yeah, and this is the plant, one leaf to this plant.

It's the same healthy like aloe.

- [David] So you'll get a fruit.

You'll get an aloe.

- Mm-hm, and you get the leaves.

You can chop it right now and technically fry it or put it in a pan with a little cheese and put one in the top, and you have like a nopales quesadilla, super healthy.

- [David] What would you compare it to taste-wise?

- It has like a really mild flavor, but the texture is the thing.

- Yeah.

- Like, almost like aloe-like kind of, right?

And that's why it's healthy like aloe, 'cause of like the texture of it.

I think it's really good for like your skin, for healthy skin.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

To put it on but also to ingest it?

- For eating, yeah.

- For eating.

- Yeah.

Just as a first-generation farmer with the cost of land the way it is, actually being able to purchase land is the the biggest challenge for first-generation farmers.

Without the Working Farms Fund, I don't think we would've had the opportunity to purchase land.

I leased land for about eight years before we were here.

- With our buy, support, protect, sell program, we have some key partnerships with local land trust organizations.

Within that partnership, we will be able to sell the conservation easement to a land trust organization, which reduces the purchase price for the farmer at the closing table.

And then the land will stay in agricultural production in perpetuity.

So they'll be able to farm on this land forever, pass it down to the next generation, and it's been just extremely gratifying seeing how they're able to expand the operations.

- We've been able to expand a lot.

We've almost tripled, maybe more than tripled our production.

We did that in the first year that we were here at the new property.

And now that we have the security of knowing that we're gonna be purchasing this property, we've been able to put in like more permanent infrastructure, like all of the tunnels here.

You know, we know that we're not gonna have to break them down and move them somewhere else, that this is gonna be our permanent spot.

So that's made a big difference.

- The Conservation Fund deal with everything in one time, like help you win the land, help you win support, equipment, knowledge, contacts, and it's great.

Saves a lot of time.

- [David] Finding the right farmers is key to fulfilling the overall mission of the Working Farms Fund.

For the project to work, the farmer must be all in to provide for the community and protect the land.

And here at Little Fox Farm, Lindy and Daniel's dedication to sustainable farming has followed that mission by protecting the surrounding ecosystem through their eco-conscious farming practices, laying the foundation for a more resilient local food system.

♪ Mm, mm, mm ♪ - [David] Let's follow the food from Pine Mountain to Decatur and team up with an award-winning chef who joins forces with farms like Little Fox and Snapfinger to prepare world-class dishes for all to enjoy.

(gentle guitar music) We have explored the world of fresh with Chef Terry Koval in a previous episode, cooking fresh shrimp and crab low-country style with ingredients harvested from Georgia's nutrient-rich coastal waters and the herbs grown on the protected land of Ossabaw Island.

We now join Chef at not one, but two downtown Decatur hotspots that features several ingredients from Farm Fund success stories like Little Fox and Snapfinger.

Let's catch up with Chef in the kitchen of The Deer and The Dove and then take a few steps down the road to his latest location known as Fawn.

(laid-back music) All right, Chef, what we got here?

- So we just got in our wild Georgia shrimp from Anchored down in Brunswick, Georgia.

Super stoked to have these things up in our restaurants.

We kind of do a couple different applications.

At The Deer and The Dove today we're gonna throw 'em in the wood-fired oven behind us.

Maybe we might throw some on the hearth.

And then we'll walk over to Fawn, and we'll do a little application over there where we lightly poach them in some cardamom butter.

Yeah, we'll get started.

These are so incredible, so plump.

And you see there's hardly any bloodline in there.

So we're gonna oil our pan up, get a little oil in there.

Gonna throw it right in here to get it nice and hot.

Some butter, (pan clinks) shallots, garlic, a little anchovy.

We're gonna throw this in the wood-fired oven.

(laid-back music continues) (pan sizzling) We got some beautiful chard from Love is Love Farms.

Creamer peas here.

like a little white pea from DaySpring Farms.

Here's our shrimp.

We're gonna do a little benne seed.

(laid-back music continues) There we are.

Georgia Shrimp is something that is becoming a little scarce that we need to highlight and showcase our region here.

And it's our job as chefs to kind of put it out there and share with other folks.

(lively string music) (lively string music continues) So we got green cardamom pods here.

We're gonna just kind of break 'em a little bit and we'll bust it open here, and then we're gonna go over here.

So here at Fawn is a different kind of concept, especially as far as cooking goes.

At The Deer and The Dove, we work with a lot of open fire, over the fire, in the oven.

Here we're using all electric.

This is some high-tech cook tech equipment here.

It's a smaller space here.

The focus is on seafood.

While we're waiting on our butter to steep with that cardamom flavor, we have some beautiful baby cabbages from Snapfinger Farm.

Slice these in half.

Yep, look at that, beautiful, crispy.

- [David] That's Rahul, right?

- [Terry] Yep, Rahul is incredible.

Then we have our clarified butter.

We really want to focus on the flavor of the shrimp with the cardamom butter, so we're not going to cook these shrimps completely all the way.

We're just lightly poaching them.

- [David] That was possibly a minute.

- [Terry] Yeah, just a little bit of cabbage.

- [David] Tell me about this dish.

- One of our servers, Julia, she is a ceramics master and teaches ceramics over at Emory.

So she made us all these little kind of lava sea dishes for us.

Then we have our shrimps.

We're gonna finish it with a little caviar.

There, bon appetit.

(laid-back music) So this, we have some Sapelo Island clams from Charlie that we've steamed already, and we have like a little escabeche sauce.

- [David] What is escabeche?

- So this is onions, garlic, all stewed down with some sweet paprika.

So these olives are the Castelvetrano olives.

We are just gonna cut 'em in half.

So most of the dishes that we're preparing here at Fawn are very simple.

Highlight the seafood and the simplicity of it and bring out all the flavors for them.

(upbeat music) - [David] So as the next generation of farmers continue providing fresh, healthy food for their communities, chefs like Terry Koval also jump at the opportunity to share high-quality Georgia-grown fruits, vegetables, and herbs with their customers.

Farming is an occupation that must continue to be strong, and programs like the Georgia Farms Fund have done their part to help secure this next generation of farming in healthy Georgia soil.

I'm David Zelski.

See at the next "Fork in the Road."

(upbeat music continues) "A Fork in the Road" was brought to you by... (light upbeat music) - [Announcer] Community, learning, working, playing, celebrating.

Doing life is always better together.

At GPB, we aim to provide you with the tools to be able to do life together well.

Our mission to educate, inform, and entertain inspires everything.

From our wide range of programming, to our stimulating radio conversations, to our fun in-person events, we've got something for everyone.

Visit gpb.org/community to learn more about our upcoming events.

(gentle upbeat guitar music) - [David] From the soil of our family farms to your table, there's something special about Georgia, something you can taste in every bite.

Fresh flavors, local farms, unforgettable experiences, Georgia has it all.

Support local, taste the difference, and make memories along the way.

Look for the Georgia Grown logo wherever you shop or visit georgiagrown.com.