ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Deer Creek
Farms leads
the home
grown trend
BY RICHARD DUMAS
F
orsyth’s Deer Creek Farms
just wrapped up its sixth
summer providing delicious
blackberries and blueberries for
Middle Georgians, and owner
Seth Peed said the business
continues to grow each year.
Seth Peed, along with wife
Amy, opened Deer Creek Farms
as a family-owned business at
1573 Jenkins Road in South
Monroe County in the summer
of 2009. Deer Creek Farms,
located about a half-mile off of
I-75, stays open from the start of
June through the third week of
July, supplying customers with
blackberries, blueberries, tomatoes and sometimes other crops
like squash and watermelon.
Peed said locally-grown foods
are only increasing in popularity
and added that while his business
could produce additional fruits
and vegetables, he prefers to
focus on excelling at just a few.
“We’ve grown a bunch of different stuff in the past and figured
out that you get too much stuff
going at one time and you can’t
do a good job with all of it,” Peed
said. “So we focus on blackberries, blueberries and tomatoes.
That’s what people get fired up
about.”
Over several acres of neatly
manicured rows, Deer Creek customers are allowed to pick their
82
own blackberries and blueberries
from the vine while the business
also offers pre-picked fruit for sale
as well. The blackberries and
blueberries are then sold by the
pound or pint. The tomatoes are
always pre-picked, and are also
sold by the pound. in addition to
supplying the public, Deer Creek’s
fruits and vegetables are sold to
a number of Middle Georgia restaurants, including Macon’s Fish
and Pig and Fountain of Juice and
Forsyth’s Grits Cafe.
“That kind of helps us move
volume,” Peed said of restaurant
sales. “But we rely mainly on
the you-pick crowd to move the
majority of our fruit.”
Peed said Deer Creek’s
season opens with blackber-
Owners of Deer Creek Farms Seth and Amy Peed are shown with their children,
Henry, 12, Lewis, 9, and Caroline, 6, Deer Creek Farms
ries, which are typically picked
out pretty quickly. Once the
blueberries are added to the mix
several weeks later, the number
of customers further balloons
often peaking with Deer Creek’s
annual Black and Blue Berry
Festival in mid-June. The Peeds
have held the festival for the past
three years. The festival has
included hayrides, homemade
blackberry ice cream, hot dog
lunches, a bouncy house and
even live music.
“It’s really a family-oriented
day,” Peed said. “People come
and pick and have fun. And that
helps us attract a lot of people,
new people.”
In addition to its summer
festival, Deer Creek Farms also
holds an annual fall festival on
a Saturday in October, where
pumpkins are sold and apples are
brought in from North Georgia.
During the peak summer season, Deer Creek Farms is open
Tuesday to Saturday from 8 a.m.
to 7 p.m. with Saturday typically
being the busiest day. Later in the
season in July, Deer Creek offers
25 percent off you-pick fruit offerings on Wednesdays. Then, in the
final couple of weeks as supply
wanes, Deer Creek reduces its
hours to 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. three
days a week.
Peed said Deer Creek’s customer base ranges from Columbus and Atlanta to all throughout
the midstate and sometimes even
outside of Georgia. Peed said
Atlanta customers commonly
drop by each year on the way
to vacation in Florida, and many
customers make Deer Creek an
annual stop.
“It’s fun meeting families, and
you’ll meet somebody that lives
in Kentucky and they’re going to
Florida and they stop by because
they’ve got a farm,” Peed said.
“And they just wanna see what
Welcome Home: The Forsyth-Monroe County Relocation Guide and Membership Directory