Mounds of Farming.

To continue on a on the farming theme I thought I'd share some more about the history of Agriculture in Georgia. This idea was helped along by a recent field trip to the Etowah Mounds State Historic Site in Cartersville, Georgia. The video at right is of one of the rangers on site giving information regarding the Three Sisters of Mississippian Era agriculture. 

Corn. Squash. Beans. With these three crops, these people developed a broad menu of foods. 

Agriculture was a way of life in the South long before the arrival of European settlers. This particular community was populated by farmers as early as 1000 A.D. (over 50 years before the Norman Conquest of England) and perhaps even earlier. These "primitive" farmers had learned the value of crop rotation, or at least the benefits one crop can have for another. It would be centuries before the settlers learned some of these ideas. 

So this culture domesticated dogs and turkeys in addition to their three sisters. They gathered nuts and berries from the fields and forests nearby. They caught fish from the river and hunted the wildlife that lived in the area. They wasted nothing, having a use for everything they killed, grew and gathered.

At left you'll find a demonstration of the weapons advances they made in order to feed themselves and their families. With the use of fishing, hunting, gathering, and agriculture, these people formed a civilization that survived for about 500 years at this location. To this day, their artifacts are still being found in the ground. To this day, their mounds and fish traps still remain as visible remnants of their society. Structures that date back ten centuries. 

That's not bad when you figure practically no structure in Atlanta is over 150 years old.

Long story short, this is our heritage. A wise and diverse use of the land. A sustainable and interactive form of agriculture that we can still learn from today.

It's our past. But it's about our future. And with so many other troubles mounting against farmers, they're not getting any younger. You can't eat a legal writ. You can't eat a bank note. And, as important as health care may seem, if you don't have food to eat, a doctor can't help you.

Educate yourselves about farming. Ask a farmer about the challenges of the job and life in general. Make this an election year issue. Let's put emphasis back on the agrarian heritage of our region. 

No more canned peaches from China.

Farm

My first job out of college was with a corporation with a household name. The position was dealing with higher end food service. It was the type of operation that used chefs and "quality" ingredients. A higher priced operation with some fairly exclusive clientele.

My coworkers were from all over the world. They had left the far reaches of the Earth and worked in other far reaches before this particular stop in the shadows of Atlanta's skyscrapers. 

These folks knew good food.

So it caught my attention when I heard one of them comment, "why are we using canned peaches? Isn't this Georgia?"

Peaches weren't out of season. Some of the finest peach orchards in the world were an hour and a half down I-75. And we were using canned peaches. They might even have been from China.

The previous summer I had visited Atlanta. I was in Centennial Olympic Park with a couple thousand people from all over the world. One thing that sticks out in my mind was an exhibit to tell these visitors our story - to introduce us to them. It proclaimed "The South is Agriculture". 

It's true. If you can eat it, wear it, smoke it, chew it, turn it into fuel and burn it, we'll try to make it spring from the ground. Agriculture is such a big deal that parts of our agriculture depend on other parts of our agriculture.

And we eat canned peaches from China.

Georgia specifically: we grow peaches, pecans, peanuts, apples, native grapes (muscadine, etc.), Vidalia onions, cotton, corn, soybeans. We raise poultry, beef, pork. And more.

And we eat canned peaches from China. 

Earlier I read a Twitter tirade straight out of Tattnall County. It inspired this post. There's a man down there, a Chicken Hippie, if you will. He has this crazy notion that Georgia dirt, fresh Georgia air, and Georgia sunshine will produce quality, tasty, nutritious chicken, duck, quail, & turkey. No crowded chicken houses. (You can find him on Twitter at @GApasturedbirds and on Instagram at grassrootsfarmsga.)

Next time you pass a chicken truck on the highway, take a look at the cargo and see if you agree with him.

Admittedly, I don't buy birds from him. Not right now. He makes his birds available through a distributor and restaurants can offer customers sustainable, locally-grown, pasture-raised poultry. And then they can switch back to Holly Farms and not tell you any different.

Thus the tirade.

Listen to me. This isn't about being a foodie. It isn't about being a hipster. It's about being a Southerner. It's about English settlers founding Georgia on agriculture in 1734. It's about Native American tribes sustaining themselves on this red clay on agriculture seven centuries before the English came.

It's about Georgians not eating canned peaches from China.

And it's about not wondering how a small farmer in South Georgia is selling poultry to restaurants in Atlanta and beginning to wonder why such products aren't widespread in our grocery stores. Why do we settle for less just because it costs a little less?

And Grassroots isn't the only farm like this out there. I know several people raising cattle & crops the old ways. You'll find them if you look. 

There's more on this topic but it will have to wait for another time.

Until then...

Day 3

Day 3 of the road trip found us headed south on 75 from Cordele en route to the furthest southern point on the trip. Tifton.

The Cravey House, built in Inaha, Georgia and moved the Tifton

The destination in Tifton was the Georgia Museum of Agriculture on the campus of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. This museum has both indoor and outdoor facilities that tell of Georgia's agricultural past and the cultivation, harvesting and marketing of the major cash crops of the region - cotton, tobacco, timber and turpentine. These stories are told through historic interpreters in various settings including a doctor's office, a blacksmith's forge, a cotton gin, a print shop, the Victorian home of a wealthy man and farms from different eras of Georgia's past.



The Tift House

I was quite impressed with the feisty lady that gave us the tour of the Tift Home, the Victorian mansion of the man for whom Tifton is named. The preserved home is an excellent example of what I call "they don't make things like that any more." The house itself is a work of art. The original furnishings and decor make the home a museum unto itself. I'd have to admit that my favorite part is the lone closet in the house - covered, as it always has been, by a curtain to avoid paying the taxes on the additional door. Sounds like Mr. Tift was a man after my own heart.

And so we learned about forging farm tools, printing newspapers, ginning and baling cotton, raising livestock and crops and making turpentine. That was life in South Georgia around the turn of the last century. It was simpler and yet more complicated leaving me wondering where the tipping point of good thing/bad thing in that scenario is. The work was hard and the comfort level was much lower than we are accustomed to but a lot of the hustle and bustle (i.e. TRAFFIC) was non-existent

The trip back to Cordele carried us through Irwinville to visit one of my disappointments of the trip. In 1865 Jefferson Davis was fleeing to the west to wage a guerrilla war against the occupiers of the South in hopes that Southern Independence could still be a reality. (Incidentally, it was about this same time that Alexander H. Stephens - all 100 pounds of him - was sitting in his parlor at home playing cards when the Union /Army knocked on his door.He asked to see their arrest warrant and then replied, "If y'all had let me know you wanted me I'd have saved you the trip all the way out here. Let's go". But that's another story for another day.)

The Jeff Davis Memorial Marker

Davis met for one last time with his cabinet in Washington, GA and then they went their separate ways. Two units of the Union Army pursued him to a campsite just outside the minuscule town of Irwinville. The adept military professionals actually shot at each other for a spell before they realized that they were on the same team. Davis, realizing the Yankees were on his tail, beat a hasty retreat. But it was too late. And there in a pine thicket in the dead of night the 16th President (from Georgia's perspective) became a prisoner of war.

Some years later, the State of Georgia dedicated a monument and state historic site on the location. A few years ago the operation was turned over to Irwin County. The building is headed toward disrepair, the grounds show signs of neglect. It is a testament to the event it commemorates. The economic system established in the absence of the Southern delegates to Congress does not make for wealthy farmers. Money is for bankers, industrialists and railroad tycoons. Farmers can have money when they get real jobs - like working in a bank, factory or maybe on the railroad. So money is not plentiful in Irwin County. And let's face it, a county full of farmers, service industry workers catering to farmers and the handful of rangers that work at the site just do not have the resources to appropriately maintain such a site.

I'm not sure what led Georgia to the decision to jettison this park. It has added several newer, more elaborate parks in various locations since discarding the Jeff Davis site, so it doesn't appear to be budget related. The site is not far from the interstate so it doesn't appear to be logistical. That brings me to the fact that rural South Georgia gets the short end of the stick from the state on a regular basis and the ever growing evil of political correctness that is constantly trying to sweep clean any remnant of the South's past.

Davis would be held in terrible conditions for two years. During that time he received encouraging gifts from Pope Pius IX, his legal representation was the former governor of Maryland. His official charge was treason but he would never stand trial as the Union knew there was no hope of conviction as he had committed no crimes. He was released on bond which was posted in part by Horace Greely, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Gerrit Smith.

Yankees helped post his bond and Georgia hung his park out to dry. What a shame.

I'll say this before leaving the topic of the politically correct assassination of Southern History - "Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set." - Proverbs 22:28.

This verse may or may not be talking about such landmarks but the tone is explicit. Don't destroy memorials. They point to where we came from and therefore teach us where we are and where we are headed. Only an ignorant man would be offended by such a memorial.

All in all, day 3 was a great educational outing filled with the stories of Georgia's identity. It taught us about the work ethic, the ingenuity, the grit that it took to survive in the Georgia of 100 years ago. We learned a little about where we came from and who we are.

That's two presidents for those who are counting....