Interview of Cheryl Smith, State of GA Agritourism Manager and Membership Coordinator

Thank you to this episode’s sponsor, CANTSINK: https://www.cantsink.com/.

Episode Summary:

In the latest episode of the InPowered Women’s Podcast, host Sharon Lee interviews Cheryl Smith, an agritourism manager for the Georgia Department of Agriculture. Sponsored by Cantsink, the episode delves into Cheryl’s 30-year career in promoting Georgia’s agritourism, including the growth of the Northeast Georgia wine industry and various farm-based attractions. Cheryl shares her journey from nursing to tourism, emphasizing her passion for working with people, her admiration for farmers, and the importance of networking. Cheryl elaborates on the Georgia Grown initiative, which connects local agricultural products with consumers and markets. She highlights the success story of Cloudland winery and discusses the broader impact of agritourism in Georgia. Additionally, Cheryl touches on the personal satisfaction derived from engaging with nature and supporting local communities, and her commitment to mentoring and the diverse career opportunities in agriculture. The episode celebrates Cheryl’s significant contributions to agritourism and concludes with her encouraging listeners to explore Georgia’s agritourism offerings.

Insights from this episode:

• Cheryl Smith has a rich 30-year career in agritourism, marked by significant contributions to Georgia’s agricultural and tourism sectors.
• Originally trained as a nurse, Cheryl found her passion in tourism and has since become a pivotal figure in promoting agritourism.
• Emphasis is placed on the key role Cheryl had in the growth of the Northeast Georgia wine industry and various farm-based attractions, showcasing her influence in the sector.
• Cheryl is deeply involved in the Georgia Grown initiative, which connects local agricultural products with consumers and markets, enhancing the agritourism community.
• Emphasis is placed on networking and how it allows for connections to be built across industries.
• Cheryl’s work extends beyond promotion; she is passionate about mentoring aspiring professionals and advocating for diverse career opportunities in agriculture.
• Cloudland Winery stands as a testament to agritourism’s positive impact, illustrating Cheryl’s commitment to showcasing success stories in the field.
• Cheryl emphasizes the personal satisfaction derived from engaging with nature and supporting local communities through agritourism initiatives.
• Her enthusiasm and significant contributions continue to inspire many, making her a cherished advocate for Georgia’s agricultural heritage.
  
  

Quotes from the Show:

Resources Mentioned:

• Georgia Grown
• A Fork In The Road TV
• Georgia Department of Agriculture
• Georgia Grown Innovation Center
• Cloudland Winery

Episode Transcript:

Cheryl

Hello.

Sharon

Welcome to the InPowered Women’s podcast. I’m Sharon Lee, Principal of Pinnacle Strategic Advisors, and I am thrilled to bring you today’s episode. But first, let’s take a second for a word from our sponsor, Cantsink. Cantsink is an environmentally friendly piling manufacturing company trusted throughout the nation to supply innovative, strong, and cost-effective helical piles. They can provide foundational support for homes or business businesses, and even provide support for solar energy installations. In business since 1988, Cantsink is trusted and endorsed by building professionals, and their products are manufactured with utmost quality standards for guaranteed results. This is only surpassed by their customer service and customized engineering, so reach out to them today at cantsink.com. And now I’m so excited to introduce my guest, Cheryl. Hi, Cheryl. How are you doing?

Cheryl

I am awesome. It’s a great day. Thanks for having me.

Sharon

Oh, it is a great day. Springtime in Georgia, sometimes it can go straight to boiling heat. So we’ve actually gotten a little bit of a reprieve this year. I’ll take it. But in thinking about how to introduce you, I was looking online because I didn’t think that I had your title correct. I had it as Agrotourism Manager and a Membership Director for the Georgia Department of Agriculture. And I thought, Wait, was that right? I looked you up online and I found an article that had been written about you. I’m going to embarrass you here. Let’s see. I’m going to read what you were written about. So this is in the AgriLeadHer, and I think that’s out of Athens. You’re going to have to tell us a little bit more about what this publication is. But it says, For almost 30 years, Cheryl has worked to bring the world to North Georgia wineries. If you found your way into Dahlonega tasting rooms, coasted down a wine highway, or got a good tip on your next trip to some far-flung winery in the mountains, send a thank you to Smith, who has been getting the word out about Georgia wine since the long-gone days of travel agents and cheap air fare.

She hit her 30th year with the tourism division of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, a career spanning five governors that have seen the northeast Georgia wine industry second in its tourism draw only to the formidable Lake Lanier, grow from two wineries to the dozens dotting the hills today. So how’s that for an introduction?

Cheryl

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I had forgotten about that. I want to share AgriLeadHer with you because you mentioned it, and it was something that came about a couple of years ago. It’s an educational forum for women to foster leadership, mentorship, and skill development. It is basically all online, and they do it once a year. It’s a really great forum to meet people. It’s very interesting technology-wise. If you can look up AgriLeadher on the internet, you can find, and it at UGA, then you’ll find out a little bit more about it. But it’s very interesting. Like I said, the technology for the conference is really cool, and you get to meet people from all over the country.

Sharon

I love the connection. I love the InPowered women connection. It was just so serendipitous that I was looking you up, and I found that. I just loved, loved, loved the connection. But I was originally going to ask, what is an agrotourism manager? Tell us what that is.

Cheryl

A number of years ago, the state legislature enacted legislation to create the position to help foster our rural communities with our agricultural communities and tourism. Agrotourism is basically taking agriculture and tourism and slapping them together to create an experience on the farm or with an agricultural product. That’s basically Agrotourism. Now, what I do is I predominantly work with the Department of Transportation to get the agrotourism signs that you see when you’re driving around Georgia, there are really nice big green signs that direct people to farms and agricultural attractions to get people out and experience farms and all that farms have to offer.

Sharon

Well, that’s right, because in the introduction, I was talking about your work with getting wineries noticed and developed and all that, but it goes way beyond wineries. Give us some other examples of those types of farms that you would draw attention to.

Cheryl

It’s very broad. It’s corn mazes and pumpkin patches, llama farms, you pick, dairy farms where people do tours. Claremont, up in Claremont, North Hall County, there is Mountain Fresh Creamery. They have a retail outlet where you can buy ice cream and buy the milk. The really interesting thing about their milk is that it’s non-homogenized. It’s pasteurized, but it’s not homogenized. So people who are allergic to milk can generally drink it. It’s really great. great for kids. And then not too far, they have the farm where they do the tours, and you can learn about all the different kinds of milking cows there are. You can see the baby cats. It’s very interesting and very educational. And that’s what the really cool thing about agrotourism is that it is educational. You take away something knowledgeable when you go to visit a farm.

Sharon

Well, and I love the fact that it’s local as well. I mean, these are things that you and your family can do right up the road, and you may not even realize that there’s something so cool that is just right there. But that also reminds me that Georgia Grown is a part of all of this mix as well. Can you explain what that is?

Cheryl

Georgia Grown is the Marketing and Economic Development Division of the Department of Agriculture. We do so many things at the Department that people just don’t realize. The Commissioner says it, but I’ve also said it, that our department touches everybody in the state of Georgia at least three times a day because you eat. But then you buy gas and you get your food weighed at the grocery store. There’s so much that we do. We do licensing, but the Georgia Grown is our marketing arm, and we really work at trying to get the word out about our farmers and our products that are produced in Georgia. We like to say that we foster and initiate growth of the agriculture industry, where you take retailers, wholesalers, producers, processors, agrotourism attractions, and the customers, and you connect them with all those various aspects of the industry. People don’t realize that gardens and arboretums are part of Georgia Grown. We have nurseries and lawn care, the companies that do landscaping, they’re members of Georgia Grown. And we have businesses that support the Ag industry as part of Georgia Grown. So we have a website. We have several people that travel domestically and internationally to get products into other markets.

Cheryl

One of the biggest aspects of that is getting pecans and pecans. However you say, pecans, pecans. Any way you say it, it’s good. They work with companies internationally to get our products there. Blueberries is another one. We also have a newsletter that goes out to our members talking about opportunities. We have fairs and festivals and events that we sponsor, and our members get a discounted rate for attending those and sharing their products. We just We got through doing Grill Fest, the Georgia Wine and Food Festival, and there was another one just recently that I went to the Craft Brew down in Midtown, the Craft Brew Festival. We do a lot to market and promote the brand. And in doing that, we hope that it fosters and grows our agricultural and agrotourism entities in the state of Georgia.

Sharon

And this would probably be a good time to back up because you were not always in tourism. I mean, it feels like it. It’s just like you’re living your best life running around Georgia and really promoting all of these entities. But that wasn’t where your career got started, was it?

Cheryl

No. When I was younger, I wanted to be a vet, and that didn’t quite work out. So I went to nursing school, and I was a nurse for… I worked at Crawford Long, when it was Crawford Long, and I was in their open heart unit. Then I scaled down. I went to work for a family practice up in Greenville. It was a program, an intern program for doctors to get experience in family practice. And then I became a nurse for a preschool in Athens. Then I’ve had a long career. Then my husband went back to school, and then we ended up back in Greenville, and I had talked to Clemson University. They have a tourism program, but I got interested in tourism because when he was interning, I worked at Pine Isle on Lake Lanier, back before it was leveled in Emeral Point, and everything has really exploded on the island. But I worked there and I enjoyed working with people, and it’s a service industry. It was wonderful. I got into tourism. When I went to Clemson, I was in their Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management program. Then my husband wanted to move back to Georgia, and so I got a job with the Georgia Department of Economic Development.

Cheryl

Development as a regional rep for the tourism division. I covered 17 counties in northeast Georgia working with DMOs, which we call Destination Marketing Organizations. Those are chambers, CVBs, Any organization that markets and promotes tourism. I worked with mayors and county commissioners and individual attractions. One of the entities I worked with were farmers and agrotourism attractions. I had a connection with them when I was in tourism. I really, really enjoyed working with them. Then the opportunity after 30 years with the tourism division to go to work for the Department of Ag as their I’m an agri-tourism manager, but I cover the whole state rather than just the northeast Georgia region. I will tell you that farmers are the best people in the world. They have to be everything. They have to be not only farmers, but they have to be weathermen. They have to be mechanics. They have to be financiers and business people and marketing people. They have to be so many things, and yet they are just the salt of the Earth. They’re great people.

Sharon

I just love that. And I love just the fact that when you’re going around… A case in point, we met through a mutual friend, Carol Danford, and she was with Georgia Public Broadcasting. So you’ve had connections there. But hold on, let me start this over because I was trying to figure out. I really didn’t want to go there just yet. So let’s wait, let’s pause there because I’m trying to figure out where I wanted to go with your farming because I wanted to make the connection that this is still under the Department of Economic Development, and that isn’t always… I wouldn’t have realized that. So let me just take a pause and go. Okay, so that’s still under the Department of Economic Development. If I can ask a question, I know that you were in agritourism, but that is still under the State Economic Development Branch, right? I mean, so explain that connection a little bit for us.

Cheryl

Well, actually, I started out with the Department of Economic Development, which has the tourism division. And then I went to work for the Department of Ag that has the Georgia Grown and all the other areas. But working with the Department of Economic Development, I worked with a lot of people. I worked with media. I would help travel writers and journalists and marketing people who have magazines like Georgia magazine or Georgia Public Broadcasting or any of those folks I worked with because they were always looking for information about the tourism in northeast Georgia. So I went to Governor’s Conference, and that’s a way to connect and network with a lot of people. And networking is always very important, no matter what you’re doing, because you never know where you’ve been and where you’re going. And so it helps to make those connections and meet people. And it’s always great to know what somebody does and how you connect either professionally or personally.

Sharon

Right. And so with your connection with Georgia Public Broadcasting, so we have a mutual friend that works there. I’ve known Carol Danford forever since I moved to Atlanta, and I had been invited to go on this this women’s hike, and I didn’t even know what the hike in was. It’s a beautiful lodge above Amicolola Falls. And so I dragged Carol along, Go with me, and let’s go check this out. And so we loved it. I mean, the hike is fantastic. The inn is wonderful. And the group that goes is fantastic. It is a group of female business owners or leaders, and we take over the entire inn. There’s 20 rooms, so there’s 40 women. And so we never actually encounter wildlife on the trail because we’re a little too loud, but it is the best weekend every year. And so, Carol invited you, I think, what, two years ago? And so we met on the trail, right?

Cheryl

Two years ago. And it’s interesting. When I talked about networking, when I was in tourism, I promoted all the state parks in the region. And Eric Graves is the manager of the Len Foote Hike Inn. Well, a couple of years later, I was on Paddle, Georgia, and who do I see? Eric Graves. And now I’m in the Department of Ag. I’m talking with Carol. Carol’s inviting me to the Len Foote Hike Inn, and I’m going, Oh, yeah, I know Eric. And then you all are going to… This group is going to the Len Foote Hike Inn.. So things come and go. They are circular. It’s really cool how you can meet people and you don’t even know anything about them, and then you find out all these other things when you’re working with them.

Sharon

Oh, absolutely. And so after we got off the trail, we got a group together and went to the Cloudland Winery. And that was hilarious because as we all met there and went into their tasting room, and then you walk in and it was like we were with royalty because they all knew you and you knew their story. They’ve got a really cool story. So share how that is an agritourism success story.

Cheryl

Well, I met Sean. He’s the owner back when he worked for Chateau Elan, I didn’t know it at the time, but he had purchased this property at Exit 8 off of I-985, and he had planted his vines. It takes about three years from planting to really a good first harvest. And so I met Sean in Chateau Elan, but he had been at Biltmore before that and had gone and come. I mean, it’s interesting how the people in the wine industry, they move around and they learn from each other. But yeah, Sean is a really great guy. His winery is so cool. It gives you the Joanna Gaines farn vibe. It does. It’s very quaint. And we went there, and we had a great time. They serve a charcuterie board, and they have chickens that the kids love, although they’re working their way away from kids, because sometimes the kids go in the vines and break up the vines, but that’s okay. They have the fire pits. It was raining. It was drizzling when we went, but we put up our umbrella and we sat there, we ate and drank. People think wineries are about getting drunk or drinking.

Cheryl

It’s not. It’s about socializing. It’s about talking with each other without the phones in your face. And it’s all about, quote, the experience that I mentioned before. And it’s a way to connect. And we are connected to our technology so much these days that getting away really embodies a higher Spiritual sense of place that we don’t have when we’re connected to those little boxes that we carry around in our pocket.

Sharon

Oh, that is so absolutely true. And you’re so right. It is about the experience because it was funny because we were talking about, do we even go tonight? Because it might rain, and we just thought, okay, whatever, we’ll go. And it was fantastic. I mean, just a great night just to sit outside and enjoy. But anyway, enough about that. I know, too, another thing I wanted to talk to you about is that you are in charge of membership, and I wasn’t really sure what that meant. What does that entail?

Cheryl

Well, when Georgia Grown first started, they did not charge a fee to be a member. And throughout the several years that it’s been around, the database is mess. It’s real messy. And so I’ve been working on cleaning it up because people’s emails change. When they create a profile on GeorgiaGrown.com, then they don’t go back and they don’t update the information. They don’t have a logo. So I’m working to make sure their profiles look good and give good information so that when somebody’s reading the profile, they go, Oh, yeah, I want to buy that jerky, or I want to buy that hot sauce, or I want to buy that half a cow and put in my freezer. The one thing that is really… Covid really made a huge difference, I think, in Georgia’s agricultural tourism and just buying products because people were not able to get things from the grocery store. They started looking and finding things locally, and they realized that that stuff is so much It’s better for you. It is healthier. It’s not on the shelf. It’s not being transported for a week at a time. You’re getting it fresh from the farm.

Cheryl

If you look at an egg that you get straight from the farm as opposed to one from the store, you’ll see that the yoke is really a bright yellow. And so you know that the nutrients in that are just much better than what you would get at the store. Not that what you get at the store is bad, but it’s just healthier. So COVID, in the wineries especially, I had a lot of the wine owners say that they wish they had COVID every year because they were able to get people out and about. People wanted to get out and into the outdoors because they were cooped up for so long. So yeah, COVID was very… I wouldn’t say it was great, but it really helped with people creating an awareness of getting products locally and locally sourced.

Sharon

Right. Well, that’s probably a good segue into talking about how you have seen the landscape change over the years that you’ve been involved. I know in that article, it said, what, two wineries, and it exponentially grew from there. What have you seen as far as the growth in the Georgia area?

Cheryl

Going back to COVID, I would say that I have seen a a lot of people, especially people getting out of the military, they’re looking at doing something close to nature. They want to get out of the boardroom or out of the office, and they want to do something with their hands. They want to experience nature, the outdoors, the fresh air. And even before that, people want to get away and be with their families, not working a regular job in an office, but going out and having their kids participate in what they’re doing. Having kids… I know I’ve seen videos of young kids, eight or nine, driving these huge tractors, and they’re very good. They’re much better than a lot of other people. So I think that working with their families and getting out and feeling satisfied, feeling like you’ve done something positive in your life. And sometimes people don’t get that when they’re in an office or when they’re in a job that doesn’t give them access to the outdoors and nature and fresh air and that. And then their lifestyle is much better. They see an increase. In some cases with farmers, they have stress.

Cheryl

They have all those things that you have when you work a high stress job. But being with family is very important. I go to a conference called NAFDAMA, the international agritourism conference. You see these people coming to the conference with their kids and their family families, and the kids, they know what’s going on. They are smart. They know how to back up trailers and work with feed and when to plow. I’m just impressed by the families that go to conferences like that and bring their families. We have a family down in South Georgia called Hunter Cattle Company. I was down there delivering these limited liability signs. I walked in and the mother was cooking. They had this one little building where they cook lunch for all the family members and all the people that work on the farm. I mean, people were coming in and out, and she was cooking hamburgers, and they had coleslaw, and they had their own sauce. And I was talking to one, and he plays football for the high school, and they just I love the feeling it gave me just to be with those people because they were family and they were happy, and they had a job to do, and they did it.

Cheryl

And I was so impressed.

Sharon

I love it. I love it. I love the fact that that is so… I’ve said local over and over again, but I do love the idea of supporting local and what all that means. But also know that there is an element to this that’s international as well. So talk through that connection.

Cheryl

Well, Sarah Cooke and Liz Danford are our two people who travel domestically and internationally. They’ve gone to markets that I would never think about. They go to Brazil, and they have gone to India. And gosh, I can’t even name some of the places that they buy. And like I said before, they pretty much work with the peanuts and the pecans because those are the things that we grow that are not grown in a lot of places. I think Texas has a lot of pecans, but we grow a huge amount of pecans. If you go to South Georgia, it’s cotton, and large row crops, but they work with companies. In fact, one company I was down in Metter and met Corks Popcorn. Corks Popcorn, because of this Georgia Grown Innovation Center, which is run by a woman. Her name is Heidi Jeffers. She works for the city of Metter. They have an innovation center, and it’s an incubation. It allows people to come in and learn about how to better retail their product, how to better source their product. I was down there for a workshop and met the gentleman who owns Cork’s pop Cork. Apparently, because of this incubation center, his product is now in a lot of places, but most interesting is Delta Airlines.

Cheryl

They serve it on Delta Airlines. So Our folks really work to get products in the areas, not just the grocery stores like Publix and Kroger’s and Ingles and IGA and some of those, although we try to get a lot of our products into the more rural grocery stores because that helps our rural economy, which people say there’s two Georgias. There’s Atlanta and then there’s the rest of Georgia. But we like to think that even though Atlanta is more Metro, there’s a lot of things going on in Atlanta and people producing products in Atlanta. One of our staff people, Olivia Radar, she is going to work for Aglanta, which is a program by the city of Atlanta to foster more community gardens and things like that.

Sharon

Nice. It’s just amazing because this can just continue to grow from there, no pun intended. But it is just amazing. And I love the inventiveness of it all in trying to bring some of that back to the cities and all of that, but at the same time, really helping those rural communities. I mean, it all works together and all that, which is probably a good segue into mentorship. We talked about that, and that being a big part of what we on this podcast. And I love the fact that everybody has a different either approach to it. Some people are very much… They got programs in place, and they do things like that, and others just have an open-door policy or whatever that may be. But let’s talk about what mentorship means to you, whether you are mentoring or being mentored.

Cheryl

I will always help anybody that’s interested in either tourism or agrotourism or agriculture. I have gone to the UGA’s Hospitality Seminar conference every year. They’ve done it three years now, and they invite their students from the College of Ag and Environmental Sciences. I usually meet some students there, and a lot of them have called me. Well, not a lot, but some have called me, and when they do, I try to help them as much as I can with either information about the industry, about getting into tourism, job opportunities. People don’t realize the plethora of professions that you can have in the Ag industry. Agrotourism is just one aspect of it, but there’s a lot. I went to Clemson. Anybody from Clemson, I’ve had several people contact me, and I share information with them. I do an Ag industry update, and it goes to anybody that’s interested in getting that information. And it has information about conferences, workshops that help people either further what they’re doing or think about what they could get into. So I’ve always been open because, I mean, what are we here for? But to help each other.

Sharon

Absolutely. Absolutely. And in thinking about how much you travel all around the state and that thing, what does that leave as far as free time and how you spend your time? Tell us a little bit about that.

Cheryl

I do like to go to wineries.

Sharon

And I will always join you.

Cheryl

Georgia, very interesting. We have French Hybrids in the north part of the state, but we also have the Muscadine in the south part of the state. I have come to appreciate Muscadine wine because we have winemakers who are very craft-oriented, and the Muscadine wine is not like your grandmother’s. It’s not that real super sweet. But I like to do a lot of other things, too. My husband and I canoe and kayak. I love to go down rivers. We live close to Lake Lanier, so we can go on the lake or any of the rivers. I love to go to, don’t tell anybody, but the northern part of Florida, the Crystal River, and all those Rivers love to do that. But I have two grandchildren in Alaska, so we go to Alaska once or twice a year to visit them. Every time we go, we try to do something different. He lives on the Kenai, so we do a lot of stuff in Homer or what is the other one? Seward, Whittier. We go to Girdwood. So we spend some time in Alaska, and I’ve got a garden. My grandmother was from a farming family, and I never really grew up in a farming family, but I have learned I just love…

Cheryl

I don’t know, there’s something about picking a blueberry off a bush and eating it and tasting that right off the Bush or a tomato. I’ve got asparagus growing now. I’m so excited. I can’t wait for next year, so I’ll have lots of asparagus. But I think it’s self-discovery. It’s learning to do something you’ve never done before and learning to do it well. I I mean, I’m open to anything that anybody wants to do. I’m not a techie, but I’m what they call not a first adopter, but I try to… I’m almost 70, so people think people are old and they don’t know anything. Things. So I try to keep up my technology. If I don’t know, I go to YouTube University and figure it out. So I walk with my Australian Shepherd. She needs a walk every day, and Of course, anytime Sharon wants to go have a glass of wine at the Cloudland, I’m willing to go.

Sharon

Excellent. Well, we will do that very, very soon. Well, in the meantime, if people do want to reach out to you, what is the best way to find you?

Cheryl

They can email me at… It’s c-h-e-r-y-l. Smith, S-M-I-T-H, at agr. Georgia, and georgia spelled out. Gov. That’s probably the best way. I mean, nowadays, you can message somebody, you can email them, you can call them, you can text them. I tell you what, sometimes I have to go through my list of how somebody can get a hold of me and make a note so that I can reach out back out to them and they don’t think I’ve completely forgotten them.

Sharon

Right. Well, and you’re also on LinkedIn, right? Just Cheryl?

Cheryl

Yes, I’m on LinkedIn.

Sharon

You are there. You are there. Well, this has been such a fun conversation. And again, it’s so eye-opening just to see what all is available right here in our own backyard. And so I love the fact that you just live this every day. So thank you very much for sharing your story with us.

Cheryl

Thank you for having me. I would encourage everybody to go to the georgiagrown.com website and check out A Fork in the Road. It is our CBS or public broadcasting television show that airs with David Zelsky. If you want to learn all the wonderful things about agriculture in Georgia, especially agrotourism, go to A Fork in the Road. It’s on the website.

Sharon

All right. You heard it here. Let’s do it. That sounds great. I look forward to seeing you again, and I can’t tell you how much I thank you for being here.

Cheryl

Thank you.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

Thank you to this episode’s sponsor, CANTSINK: https://www.cantsink.com/.