When Cleveland Whitehead, 74, drives his black Chevy Silverado through the backroads of Macon County in middle Georgia, he remembers the families who worked the land on Flint River Farms back in the day. He looks out over the cotton fields, pecan orchards and dirt tracts that dot the area.
“When I was coming up, I plowed with two mules,” he said. “We had a garden and an okra field close to the house. My dad grew cucumbers, corn, cotton, some sugar cane and peanuts.” The family’s 178-acre farm also had a small fruit orchard with just enough peaches and pears to feed the family once in a while.
As the youngest of 13, Whitehead admitted that he didn’t do a lot of the farm work. While he did occasionally help with the crops, a small creek near the Whitehead farm offered alluring opportunities for catfish noodling — that Southern tradition of capturing catfish with bare hands.
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