A Fork in the Road Podcast: Oliver Farm

Caption

Sunflowers growing at Oliver Farm

Credit: David Zelski

 

Sunflowers, Sustainability, and Small Town Pride: The Story of Oliver Farm

Episode Summary:

In this episode of A Fork in the Road, host David Zelski travels to Pitts, Georgia, to meet Clay and Valerie Oliver, the passionate owners of Oliver Farm. What began as an experiment to produce biofuel evolved into a thriving business creating cold-pressed cooking oils from sunflowers, pecans, peanuts, and more. Clay and Valerie share how their operation grew from humble beginnings, the science behind their process, and their commitment to sustainable practices.

From sunflower fields buzzing with pollinators to the meticulous pressing of oils, the Olivers discuss how they’ve combined farming traditions with innovative techniques. You'll learn about the nutritional value of their oils, the creative uses for byproducts like flours, and how the community-focused approach has revitalized a small Georgia town.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• How Oliver Farm transitioned from biofuel to creating culinary oils.
• The fascinating life cycle of sunflowers and their role in sustainable farming.
• What makes Oliver Farm’s green peanut oil stand out from store-bought varieties.
• How their byproducts are repurposed for animal feed, organic fertilizer, and gluten-free flours.
• The impact of their converted gas station store on the Pitts, Georgia community.

Notable Quotes:

• “If sunflowers don’t make you smile, what will?” – Clay Oliver
• “We should care as much about what we’re putting on our skin as what we’re putting in our body.” – Valerie Oliver
• “To see these top chefs using our products to create amazing dishes is a real honor.” – Clay Oliver

 

TRANSCRIPT:

 

Clay Oliver: They grow so fast or vigorous, they're scavengers for moisture and for nutrients in the ground. And then, you know, if they don't make you smile, what will?

David Zelski: They are international symbols of happiness and warmth. Early indigenous peoples domesticated them. Aztecs worshipped them. Baseball players love their seeds, and Instagram influencers can't resist a selfie in their fields. What are they? Sunflowers.

Theme Song: I came from the mud. There's dirt on my hands. Strong like a tree, there's roots where I stand.

David Zelski:  I'm David Zelski, and this is the Fork in the Road podcast presented by Georgia Grown and the fine folks at Georgia Public Broadcasting. Each episode, we feature stories from Georgia's farmers, fishermen, merchants, artisans, chefs and others who help provide Georgia-grown products to folks in the Peach State and beyond. Today we are in Pitts, Ga. Now, where is Pitts? Well, let's pull out our trusty Georgia map and take a look. You see Macon right there, right in the middle. Put your finger on Macon and trace down I-75 a little ways to Cordele. That's where that giant ballistic missile is. If you make it to Tifton, you've gone too far. Okay. Now that you found Cordele, move your finger directly to the right a couple of inches on the map. That equates to about 40 miles or so, about 14 miles directly east of Cordele is where you'll find Pitts, Ga., and Clay and Valerie Oliver of Oliver Farm.

Producer: And that, kids, is how to read a map.

David Zelski: Yeah. According this map, we've only gone two inches.

Clay Oliver: Well, the beginning started from an idea I had in 2008 to make biofuel. When the economy tanked and fuel prices soared, I thought, how can I offset fuel costs? And biofuel was popular in the media then. And I just began looking into it. And over about a four year period of time got led into food grade oils versus making fuel out of it. And that's how I got started.

David Zelski: Clay's first idea was to make a gasoline alternative, and now he and his family make cooking oils. Wild, right? Valerie thought the same thing at first. What did you think when he said, okay, I'm going to start this fuel I'm making. I'm going to start feeding people?

Valerie Oliver: I don't know at first that I knew how to take it, but he — it grew on me quickly. So enough that I was prepared to say, all right. I quit my job of 16 years teaching and do it full time with him.

David Zelski: Let's now head out to the sunflower field for more on the beginnings of Oliver Farm's sunflower oil operation.

Clay Oliver: I started growing sunflowers for oil in 2012, bought a press in the fall of that year and began pressing it. We tasted the oil and just realized, wow, this is so fresh and so, so unique to what we're used to tasting, that it just became a passion to — to do these oils and to create more. To try more flavors.

David Zelski: And when Clay says they wanted to try more flavors, boy, did they. But before we get to that, let's talk more about the sunflowers out here in the field.

Clay Oliver: But we start in the spring when all fear of frost is passed and then we plant the sunflowers. Takes about 60 days for the sunflowers to bloom. It's almost like clockwork. You can count on it. They're going to begin blooming 60 days later, for these varieties that we do, we plant do. In about 90 days, the flowers will have begun to — they're drawn down. The heads, they shrivel up and they look ugly. They bend over to protect the sunflower seed from —from birds and rain getting in the seed. And then when those are dry enough, we come in with a combine and harvest them, clipping off just the heads or as much of just the head as we can get. The combine burst the seed off of the head, separate it, and then we, we put those into the trucks and then we clean them. Once they're cleaned, we take them to the press area where the shop is and we — we begin pressing the oil out. The sunflowers are just a beautiful crop. I mean, they grow so fast. They're vigorous; they're scavengers for moisture and for nutrients in the ground. And then, you know, if they don't make you smile, what will? When you see a beautiful sunflower field. And then just the intricate nature of the sunflower itself, the Fibanocci sequence, how it's just so unique and we can't recreate that. It's just a God-made natural thing. Sunflowers attract pollinators. If you notice, there's a lot of bees out here. There's everything from honey bees, bumblebees, all kinds of insects, butterflies. And they come to get the nectar out of the flowers and then pollinate it and the bees do their thing. Another neat thing about the sunflower is that these are petals. They're not the actual flowers, the actual flowers in here. So it has hundreds of flowers on each stalk. And then the bees, when they come and work or just work around that pattern as the flowers open and pollinate, then under there is where the seeds are going to form. And little by little it slowly grow.

David Zelski: Clay is a sixth-generation farmer. He knows his stuff when it comes to being out in the field. But remember, all of this oil stuff started off as just an idea.

Clay Oliver: When I started, I started with the one press.

David Zelski: We're now in the pressing room. That's the noise you're hearing in the background.

Clay Oliver: When I started, I started with the one press, and would farm — was still farming and worked till 8:30, 9:30, come in here and try to press a bucket of oil. And it was like watching the walls just climb in on you. But those things were necessary to, you know, just to get going. And we were doing something that we didn't know if it would work or not or if people would even buy it. So, you know, don't quit your day job yet, you know, is kind of the mentality.

David Zelski: You got to. You got to quit the day job.

Clay Oliver: Yep. And, you know, it's a blessing, too, because I still get to work on the farm. I'm still here every day. It allows my brother and I to work together, but not together. Which is a good thing with family sometimes.

David Zelski: Hmm. I'm just going to let that comment sit for a minute. Okay. So why sunflowers?

Clay Oliver: Sunflowers were a crop that we could grow and turn into oil with less inputs. And it's pretty popular to also make fuel with. So it's kind of could have — could have gone either way.

David Zelski: Okay. So starting with the sunflowers, did you all have a giant sunflower field to start with?

Clay Oliver: Actually, I had the idea in 2008 and then thought about it, dreamed, researched up until 2012, and in the spring of 2012, I planted a crop of sunflowers just on faith that we were going to somehow make something happen that year and made a good crop of peanuts that year and then took the money I made, bought a press and took those sunflowers that we had grown, harvested them and began crushing oil like in September that year.

David Zelski: Where did you learn the whole pressing process? You know, because if I grew something, I wouldn't know how to do a press. Where'd this education come from?

Clay Oliver: I didn't really know how to operate it per se, but just trial and error and you know, YouTube, Googling.

Valerie Oliver: We started on the kitchen table.

Clay Oliver: Yeah.

David Zelski: Back to the pressing machine. All right. Well, tell me what's going on here.

Clay Oliver: Okay. So what's going on is we have sunflower seed that we're pressing today. The seed are going through the funnel down into the chamber here, and there's a screw inside. And that screw is pushing the commodity forward. The way it's designed, just friction and pressure is squeezing, squeezing, squeezing it until it sends that sunflower seed out of that nozzle.

David Zelski: And those are just packed sunflower seeds?

Clay Oliver: Yep. Packed. Packed. Everything just minus the oil. And then the oil's coming out here, these ports and going into a container which will then put into a larger container and let it begin to settle.

David Zelski: Okay. Is there heat going on in there? Is it just pressure?

Clay Oliver: It's — there is heat; it's what is generated. You know, so it — it's going to make friction and pressures. So the key, though, is to keep the oil where it's cool. You don't want the oil to get over 120 degrees. That's what causes a breakdown. Cold press is a relative term in that it does generate heat, but you want to keep the temperature down low enough that it doesn't detract from the properties of the oil. Doesn't break the oil down. The free radicals begin to form as oil gets hotter and hotter. And that's like when you cook with the wrong oil and the smoke point is lower than what you're cooking with, you release free radicals in the oil. That — that's when it becomes a carcinogen, when you begin to burn the oil. So that's — that's something to keep in mind, too. You wouldn't want to sear meats with a low-temp oil like pumpkin seed or an olive oil.

David Zelski: Now is a good time to talk about the different cold-pressed oils you can get from Oliver Farm.

Clay Oliver: Yeah, we we do pecan oil, pumpkin oil, sesame oil, okra seed oil. We've done Beni oil, cashew oil and probably some more I'm forgetting.

David Zelski: Now Clay didn't mention the peanut oil there because we're going to talk a lot about it in just a minute. But first, that is a lot of different nuts and seeds. So what about allergies? Allergens are why the press machines at Oliver Farm aren't too complicated.

Clay Oliver: Elementary setup — everything's pretty simple. Everything's hands on. Since we do different commodities, we don't have the luxury of getting bottling machines and so forth because I can't sanitize all of that. So everything's got to be done in single containers and washed, sanitized. Because every one of the products we do is an allergen to somebody. So that's something that we think about and we're very conscious of and want to make sure that we we protect everybody.

David Zelski: So when peanuts go through, do they go through the same presses?

Clay Oliver: Yes, they we use the same presses for everything. And, you know, they're easy to disassemble. I can totally disassemble, submerge. And we don't have the fear of cross-contamination then.

David Zelski: If you or a loved one is allergic to peanuts, don't fret because they are looking out for you at Oliver Farm. If you are not allergic to peanuts, well, there's something special for you here.

Clay Oliver: Yeah, well, you know, in our rotation, we grow cotton, peanuts, corn and then the sunflowers. So we usually have some growing. And I have access to fresh-shelled pecans and peanuts locally anyway, so it was just a kind of a no brainer to try out peanuts as an oil crop. And then we were blown away by the freshness of the flavor. And the first chef that we gave it to said, "Wow, this is green, this is green peanut oil." And it was simply because of the process that we use in the fresh quality peanuts versus oil stock peanuts.

David Zelski: We need more info than just that. So we see peanut oil at the store. And then we see your green peanut oil.

Clay Oliver: Yeah.

David Zelski: And explain how that started. You just started pressing it, and then people started realizing it — it's better. Tell me why it's better. Why is that a little bit better — tell me why it's better, why this is a completely different product than what people are used to getting?

Clay Oliver: Yeah, I sent a sample of our green peanut oil to Chef Stephen Satterfield — Hang on, let me start that over. I sent a sample of our peanut order Chef Stephen Satterfield in Atlanta, chef of Miller Union. When he tasted the oil, he was like, "wow, this is green. It has a green pop and flavor." And he kind of coined it as green peanut. And what we began to realize is that what sets our oil apart is that we use high-quality grade-A peanuts versus oil stock peanuts, which is what most, you know, store brands are going to be made from: your oil stock peanuts. We take the high-quality peanuts — there's nothing wrong with them — run them through the press at the low temperatures and the flavor's retained. And that's something these restaurants weren't used to. That cover it?

David Zelski: Yeah, that's it. That's it. That was 2013?

Clay Oliver: Yes.

David Zelski: Okay.

Clay Oliver: I tried to get it trademarked. "Green peanut oil." I didn't use — a lawyer, I think I should have used. I got one to do, my logo and all. And he's like, Dude, you know what? We could have got this. I was like, "oh well, I didn't."

David Zelski: Then you could have gone on Shark Tank.

Clay Oliver: Yeah. He's like, You can't do a color. I was like, Yes, you can, man. Hey, hey, You can patent a color. He used — he used the — He used a New York Times article to show that it had, already people were talking about it. And I was like, Man, that's my article that we're talking about us in the article. So.

Newsboy: Get your morning paper! Read all about it.

David Zelski: That New York Times article? It is from 2016 and linked on the Oliver Farm website. An excerpt. "The star of the story is cold pressed green peanut oil, which some of the best cooks in the South have come to think of as their local answer to extra virgin olive oil. The nuts are pressed at low temperatures in a machine smaller than a golf bag in the back of a building that isn't much more than a shack on Clay Oliver's farm, He lives about 150 miles south of Atlanta and makes some 400 gallons a year. Chefs turn poetic when they describe it." The article goes on to gush over how amazing the peanut oil from Oliver Farm is. This public outpouring of respect and love has allowed Clay the opportunity to build relationships with chefs all over. They love him.

Clay Oliver: Well, you know, that's one of the bonuses of doing this is I was never really a foodie and didn't get, you know, I mean, of course I eat food, but I didn't get into it like I am now in that seeing these creations that these men and women can do that — I'm blown away that not only does it taste good, it looks so amazing on the plate, too. And to have them call and have like a first-name basis relationship with them is — is pretty cool to say. Like he or she is at the top of their game and they're using our product to make their dishes. That makes us feel really proud.

David Zelski: And it's not just chefs. Last season, we learned about the soap made by Gold Lion Farms and the sunflower oil they used in it. There's a lot of nutritional value in these. Well, we'll start with the sunflowers. Talk about sunflowers. The nutritional value to that oil. And, you know, why people might want to use it?

Clay Oliver: The sunflowers that we grow specifically have a fat content that's guaranteed to be 80% high oleic. This is a much heart-healthier oil; it's lower in saturated fat than even olive oil. Has a ton of vitamin E in it. So it's good not only for consuming, but also for topically applying to the skin or hair or in cosmetic products. The sunflower oil brings a lot of nutrients to it.

David Zelski: And you all have been making relationships with soap makers and others around the state. Share that story with me.

Valerie Oliver: Yeah, that's been the fun part, is seeing our byproduct used in all of these products. And the soaps are amazing. So and I just think all the time we should care as much about what we're putting on our skin as what we're putting in our body too.

David Zelski: Lots of the byproducts here at Oliver Farm find new homes.

Clay Oliver: So we found that the expelled meal after it's been de-fatted is a high-quality animal feed. The sunflower in particular is about a 25% to 30% protein. Still has a little residual fat because I can't get all the fat out with a screw type press. So cows, goats, I feed it to deer. It's a well-balanced ration. And I've done analyses on these for fertility as a source of, say, ah, organic fertilizer.

David Zelski: Yeah.

Clay Oliver: And we got a few people that use it — these — as organic fertilizer.

David Zelski: Yeah. All right. What do we have here?

Clay Oliver: So this is pecan flour. That's what we extract the oil from the pecans, and we mill what's left down into really, really fine flour. So naturally gluten-free still has a flavor of pecan. So to use for pastries, brownies, cookies. We even do pancakes with them. And they're delicious. And it's gluten-free. So people who need that or want that option, it's available.

David Zelski: How long you've been doing flour and how many different types of flour do you have?

Clay Oliver: We started doing the flour about a year after we started making the oil out of the necessity to find a use for the byproduct, you know. And we do pecan, peanut, pumpkin seed flower, beni flour, and okra flower. So about five flours.

David Zelski: What's that? Where can you buy stuff from Oliver Farm. You can find it on their website. But I'll tell you, it's much more fun to take a drive to Pitts and visit the station.

Clay Oliver: This is a converted gas station. It was built in the 1960s by Mr. Homer Lee Connor. And after he passed, the family decided to sell it. And we said, "Hey, this is an opportunity to put a business in Pitts and bring people to here — a little attraction." And we didn't know what to do begin with. We were going to have like the event space and then COVID hit and we kind of shifted into filling the store with all the people we had met through shows and markets that we'd done across the country and then in the state of Georgia, especially in — 90% of everything here's a Georgia-grown product. And not only do we like the products, we like the people, we know them. And so that makes it so much easier.

Valerie Oliver: And we love supporting all of these people through here, too.

David Zelski: Boy, that pretty much sums up A Fork in the Road, doesn't it? What is this? What has the station done for this community in this area?

Valerie Oliver: We think it's just giving people around here a lot of pride to be able to come and have something like this in our community now.

Clay Oliver: You know, something to be proud of in a small town.

Valerie Oliver: Yeah, We think this station has brought a lot of pride to people around here, a lot to be proud of. We're still proud to be from here. And we still think there's so much in these small towns to be offered to. So it's — it's meant a lot to us.

David Zelski: There really is a lot in these small towns to be offered.

For more stories like this one, you can watch A Fork in the Road on GPB-TV or any time on the GPB.org website. That's where you'll also be able to listen to and subscribe to this podcast or download it on your favorite podcast platform.

I'm David Zelski. Thanks for listening to A Fork in the Road.

A Fork in the Road airs Saturdays at noon and Sundays at 6:30 a.m. on GPB-TV. Check your local listings for other replays throughout the week and watch all episodes anytime at GPB.org/ForkintheRoad.  Please download and subscribe to the Fork in the Road podcast at GPB.org/ForkintheRoadpodcast or on your favorite podcast platform.