Georgia Food Tours: Agro Cycle Tour

Note: This column was published in the Barrow Journal on September 24, 2014. I think these tours would be awesome for older homeschooled students who are interested in farming, food and/or bicycling. If you’d like to see all the images I took on this tour, click here.

Last week I had the pleasure of tagging along and photographing an Agro Cycle Tour in Monroe, Georgia. Mary Charles, the owner of Georgia Food Tours, organizes these cycle tours three times a year, and she’s been coordinating walking food tours of downtown Athens for several years. She has also expanded the tours to Roswell as well.

Mary Charles hired me to photograph the cycle event, and though I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into, I knew it would probably be fun – as long as I didn’t have to ride a bicycle. Lucky for me, they were kind enough to drive me to the different stops on the tour.

I met Mary Charles and her crew in the Windstream parking lot early one rainy morning. There were quite a few people signing up for the tour, getting their bicycles checked by the mechanic, and listening to Mary’s brief orientation. The rain didn’t seem to bother too many of the bicyclists, but I was glad that I thrown my rain jacket in my bag at the last minute.

The first stop on the tour was Foster-Brady Farm, which I had never been to, but I was delighted to learn about. Since I arrived before the cyclists, I had a few minutes to wander around its historic buildings, including a beautiful little church. According to its website at foster-bradyfarm.com, this is a popular venue for small weddings and photo shoots.

The farm used to grow cotton, wheat and other cash crops, but now it’s a Certified Naturally Grown (CNG) farm for produce, timber and wildlife habitat. They sell their produce to local restaurants and markets. In 2003 Foster-Brady Farm was honored with a Centennial Family Farm Award, and the Georgia Association of Conservation District Supervisors honored it as a Conservationist of the Year in 2013.

The next stop was Darby Farms, and though I was too busy taking photos to listen to very much of the farmer’s talk, I did catch that owner Daniel Dover was once a computer scientist, and he turned to farming after years of struggling to find a diet that didn’t hurt his body or mental health.

Dover raises poultry, pork and beef, and all his animals are fed a non-GMO, corn/soy free diet, and they rotate the animals every few days to a new area on their 50+ acres of pasture and mixed hard wood/pine land. This allows the land to heal as well as gives the animals a healthier way to forage. Dover said all his Thanksgiving turkeys were sold, but you can buy other poultry and meat from him by checking out his website at darbyfarmsga.com.

The third stop on the tour, which was optional for bicyclists who were ready to head back to their cars and lunch, was Down to Earth Energy, LLC. According to it’s website at downtoearthenergy.net, they are a “Georgia-based biodiesel research and batch continuous production facility serving the southeast region of the United States with clean, safe and cost-effective fuel for commercial fleets and the agriculture industry.” If you have bought Smarter Starter Fluid at Home Depot, you’ll be happy to know that you’re supporting this up-and-coming local company.

After all this, the bicyclists ended up at the beautiful William Harris Homestead for a festival with great food, bluegrass music, shopping, sheep herding demonstrations and more.

You never realize just how beautiful Georgia is until you get lost on its country roads while someone else is driving. I love taking photographs, the countryside, and good food, so this was great fun for me, although it was a tiring workday too. If it sounds fun to you, be sure to check out the Georgia Food Tours website at www.georgiafoodtours.com. And rest assured, you could join the bicycling tour by car too.