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Sales of Sweet Corn Swelling Coffers of Macon County Family Farm

Posted on: Monday, 19 June 2006, 09:00 CDT

By Ayanna McPhail, The Macon Telegraph, Ga.

Jun. 19--OGLETHORPE -- When Chase Farm Market opens up, cars constantly pull in.

"Runners" for family and friends stop by on their lunch breaks or drive miles for the taste of fresh-picked corn. Road-trippers wander past the place that's become a landmark in Macon County, about 50 miles south of Macon.

"It's the sweetest corn I've ever had," said Stan Bryant of Warner Robins.

He picked up six dozen ears of corn last week.

When Bryant arrived about noon, the market was on its second trailer of corn. The first one, with about 900 ears of corn, was emptied about an hour after the market opened.

"This is the height of our season," said Michelle Chase, who oversees the family workers, most of them youngsters.

"It's fun to work with the family. We enjoy them and they can make some summer money," Chase said.

Marilee Chase remembers helping the family with its business since she was about 6 years old. Now, more than 10 years later, she gets up, some days at 5 a.m., to jump onto the corn picker. She then sorts the ears and spends at least eight hours at the market where she loads cars with bags of corn, drives the tractor and helps customers.

The 18-year-old doesn't mind helping out because she gets paid -- and not just monetarily. "I'm proud of what we do," said Marilee Chase, while measuring beans at the market. "I know we work hard for what we have. You see the result of what we do."

The business started with her grandmother Ellen Chase, who would sell the corn to passers-by as a side business to the family's farm. There was no stand then, only a run-down smokehouse along the newly built highway.

"She didn't miss a summer. She just kept coming," said Michelle Chase, Ellen's daughter-in-law.

Back then, the family had to handpick the corn on about two acres.

Now, about 60 acres of sweet corn are cultivated, picked by a machine and sold at a market furnished with an indoor, air-conditioned area and a bathroom.

Although the family sells tomatoes, peas and melons from other farms, it's the corn that lures customers to the stand off Ga. 224, just southwest of downtown Montezuma.

In addition to individuals, regular customers include Lane Packing Co. in Fort Valley, the State Farmers Market in Macon, Dickey Farms in Musella and a variety of local grocers.

The family wants to continue growing the business, which started more than 50 years ago.

Glen Chase, a maintenance worker in Greenville, Tenn., who dreamed of becoming a farmer, saw an advertisement in a magazine for land in Georgia.

"He saw the flat land and the Flint River and he said, 'I want to buy this land,' " Michelle Chase said, telling the story that has passed around the family.

At times he would travel back to Tennessee to work so he could make payments on his investment.

Many years later, Glen Chase became ill with prostate cancer, which claimed his life in 1992.

When the patriarch of the family farm became ill, Donald Chase, his grandson, got a call from the family.

The young Chase was at Vanderbilt University working on a master's degree. This new father and graduate student needed to come home and help out.

"He just made a decision that he wanted to continue the family business. He graduated on Friday, and Sunday he was farming," said his wife, Michelle, who had given birth four months earlier to their baby Marilee.

The family farm, once 377 acres of cotton, squash, greens, okra and more, is now 1,100 acres, which includes 60 acres of sweet corn, 720 acres of field corn used for animal feed and 300 acres of peanuts.

The family also produces chickens for Perdue Farms and peanuts for Golden Peanut Co. in Ashburn.

But it's the corn that many of the farm market customers think about when they hear, "Chase."

"Everybody down where I live wants to know when Chase is opening," said Alice Parks of the Sumter County community of Cobb. She's been going to the stand for years. "We watch for that sign when they say they are open."

To contact Ayanna McPhail, call 923-3109, extension 238, or e-mail amcphail@macontel.com [mailto:amcphail@macontel.com].

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Macon Telegraph, Ga.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Macon Telegraph (Macon, Ga.)

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