The Andersons of Mill Creek Farms

The Andersons of Mill Creek Farms From Nuts to Bees

When farming is your way of life and your family has been doing it for over 100 years, you learn a few things about sustainability, profitability and just plain hard work.

The Andersons of Mill Creek Farms are innovative and inventive in securing the future of the Georgia Centennial Farm they’ve been stewards of for generations. Father and son team, Leslie and Hunter Anderson, have turned their century farm into a marketplace of home-grown farm products, supplying

restaurants and farmers markets throughout the region. For them, experimenting with new products and diversifying their offerings, have become the brilliant way they keep the farm going.

“In the 90s, we had Anderson Strawberry Farm here,” said Hunter. “Today we produce pecans, eggs and meats.”

Long range planning meant Leslie planted pecan trees in 2003.

“We planted them in blocks around the shop and store to start with,” said Leslie. “Then we expanded into fields as we went along. In 2010, we started harvesting.”

In 2018, Hunter had an idea of selling roasted and raw nuts to consumers, in addition to restaurants and wholesale places. They obtained a Cottage Food license to produce the nuts in house.

The Anderson’s most popular products are their pecans. „

They harvest an assortment of pecan varieties including Stuarts, Summers, Cape Fears, Creeks, and Gloria Grandes. The raw nuts are cracked and shelled on premises at the Farm Store, roasted, candy coated and packaged for sale.

“We offer roasted, salted pecans, candied with cinnamon sugar, and a salty, sweet and crunchy white chocolate pecan,” said Hunter.

All three varieties sell well at area farmers markets and make great gifts packaged by the farm for the holidays. The pecans are available on displays at Dolan’s Bar-BQue, Visit Statesboro, Ellis Meats, McCook’s Pharmacy and Anderson’s General Store. You may also order them from the farm’s website www.millcreekfarmsga.com. Or grab some bags at The Main Street Farmers Market in Statesboro, and others in the area.

Eggs are the next commodity the Anderson’s produce in their Department of Agriculture certified Georgia Grown commercial operation. They now have a variety of egg producers including Golden Comets and Rhode Island Reds. They even have a pair of bantam yard chickens that keep the other fowl straight. The egg operation first started with 50 chickens.

“We just delivered 115 dozen eggs wholesale,” said Hunter. “We have about 400 free range layers. We’ll keep them for 2 years. It takes them six months to grow up and we get about 1.5 good laying years out of them, then we sell them. We have a quota for each layer of six eggs a week. We also have 100 ducks in a pen. We have to hunt for the duck eggs, but the chickens lay in

the chicken house. Sometimes we have to hunt chicken nests.”

When they had 50 chickens, all the egg washing was done by hand, three eggs at a time. Now, after the Andersons collect the eggs, they’re washed in an egg washer, candled and crated for delivery. They now can package 40 dozen eggs in an hour. Their eggs are part of the menus of many restaurants in the area, such as Sugar Magnolia, and are delivered weekly.

The Andersons use everything at the farm. Cracked eggs and withered pecans end up as feed for the hogs. They pick-up supplemental food for the hogs from area restaurants as well. Brewer’s trash from Eagle Creek Brewery feeds them, along with throw aways from carrot farmers and pumpkin patches.

“Those hogs get mad when we run out of pumpkins,” said Leslie.

The Meishan variety of hogs that the Anderson’s raise, are a small to medium-sized breed with large drooping ears and wrinkled dark skin. They thrive on a diet high in fiber and roughage. And will graze a pasture.

“Pasture hogs take twice as long to raise,” said Leslie. “They have a different taste than store bought. Some cuts that we offer are not in grocery stores. We have fat back, ground, cubed pork steak, and neckbones. We have always had animals here on the farm. We started with 250 head of brood sows in 1982. We had around 200 head of cattle.”

Today the meat they offer is pork and lamb.

“Our sheep are a cross breed called Katahdin sheep,” said Hunter. “They’re hardy, adaptable, low maintenance sheep that produce superior lamb chops and lean pink meat. They do not produce fleece that has to be sheared. The wool falls off of them every spring.”

They offer ground lamb and lamb chops. The meat is a part of menus in some of the best farm to table restaurants in the region.

Hunter works fulltime off the farm at Gulfstream Aerospace as an analyst. His job includes fixing problems with equipment parts. Something that comes in handy on the farm. After the work at Gulfstream ends each day, he heads home to do the farm work. He spends evenings with his dad feeding up the farm stock, dipping, washing and candling eggs, and making deliveries to restaurants like Café Gourmet in Savannah.

“It helps to be versatile so we can develop new products and services as the consumer demand increases,” said Hunter. “But for now, we’re getting ready to gear up for our busiest time of year – the holiday season.”

Beginning in October, the Anderson’s go full on in pecan production. From the time the pecans are picked, they never leave the farm until they are sold. They are cleaned, sorted, cracked and shelled, then roasted and candy coated, and packaged to sell in November and December. Linda Boyette helps in the kitchen when the pecan season starts. They

are currently expanding their marketing to the public and corporate customer with gift boxes of pecans.

“We offer pecans in whole and pieces,” said Hunter. Houlihan’s restaurant in Savannah uses Mill Creek pecan pieces in salads.

Other avenues of revenue they are currently exploring include deriving pecan oil from the shells, and selling the shells for smoking or grilling.

“I’m into bees right now,” said Leslie. “I have a friend that’s helping me. He has 1,500 hives and pollinates blueberries in Maine. Tittle Apiaries of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He winters here in Bulloch, Candler and Screven Counties. I’m looking at pollinating almonds in California. We’ll ship the bees there and back by truck.”

A sweet venture for two farmers who can’t stop experimenting and innovating with Georgia Grown products to keep the family farm going for another century.