So, you like to eat, do you?

Fruit juice, eggs and bacon for breakfast. Cream in the coffee. A fresh salad for lunch. For dinner, a juicy steak, maybe, grilled to perfection under the awning outside your RV, along with a baked potato and sweet corn. Ice cream with fresh berries or a Georgia peach sliced overtop for dessert. Peanuts for an evening snack with drinks.

Yeah, I know: I’m feeling hungry, too.

All that delicious food might have been purchased at a supermarket, but it started out on a farm—except for the coffee, there’s a good chance it was a Georgia farm. Lots of planning, work and care—and these days, technology— go into every farm that produces great food. Touring a Georgia farm or two to see how it’s done, and maybe even picking some fruit yourself, will make you appreciate your meal for more than how it tastes.

Here are some places in Georgia that invite you to learn firsthand about agriculture:

White Oak Pastures
22775 Highway 27
Bluffton, GA 39824

A five-generation working family farm, White Oak Pastures raises grass-fed beef, free-range chicken, sheep, goats, turkeys, ducks, geese, guineas and hogs. It slaughters the animals in one of only two USDA-inspected on-farm abattoirs in the nation. You can dine in the White Oak Pastures farm-to-table restaurant for lunch Monday-Saturday and for diner Friday or Saturday evening. Stay in one of the on-farm cabins. The general store sells handcut meat, seasonal sausages, preserves and pickled items. Tour the farm on foot (wear boots—it’s muddy!) or prearrange a tour on horseback.

White Oak Pastures is a five-hour drive from Blairsville in the state’s south, about three hours south of Atlanta.  

Vidalia Onion Museum

How sweet is this? The Vidalia Onion Museum tells you everything you wanted to know—and maybe more—about the Vidalia onion. The Vidalia onion is exceptionally sweet, partly because it is grown around Vidalia in all or parts of 20 Georgia counties where the soil lacks high sulfur content. This sweet onion was discovered quite by accident during the Great Depression. According to the USDA, you can’t call an onion a Vidalia if it’s grown in California or Pennsylvania or anyplace other than those counties, even if it’s one of the species that becomes a Vidalia onion. These onions are a rarity in that they’re hand-cultivated. You can also pick up some recipes at the museum and some delicious onions almost anywhere you travel around Vidalia from April through the summer.

The Vidalia Onion Museum is about 4 hours and 40 minutes from Blairsville, and about 2½ hours southeast of Atlanta. Admission is free of charge.

Southern Belle Farm
1658 Turner Church Road
McDonough, GA 30252

Fruit doesn’t get any fresher than when it comes right from the farm. Southern Belle Farm grows lots of it: strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and 10 varieties of peaches. You can pick your own when each crop is in season or buy pre-picked items, plus jams, honey and other products, at the farm’s Country Market. For the summer, count on blackberries, blueberries and peaches. The farm grows vegetables too. This is a real family experience. In Belle’s Barn you can see chickens, donkeys, cows, calves, goats and horses.

Southern Belle Farm is about 2 hours and 40 minutes from Blairsville. McDonough is about a half-hour southeast of Atlanta.

Photo Credit: White Oak Pastures