THE FRUITS OF LABOR

When Joe and Merlon Harper moved to the country, they had no plans to become farmers. However, once they bought their first two blueberry bushes, the seeds for Deer Creek Farm had unknowingly been planted.

by DAVID ROTEN

“Farmers are the coolest people,” Joe Harper said. I had the same thought as I sat across from him and his wife, Merlon Bell Harper, listening to their stories of how they became farmers. For each of them, it had been a unique and circuitous path from suburban life to rural, ultimately leading them to establish Deer Creek Farm north of Covington. For Merlon, it was, in a sense, a journey home.

The youngest of nine children, Merlon was born and raised on a cotton farm in Winstonville, Mississippi. Beneath the surface of those flat, furrowed fields that make up a part of the Mississippi Delta, the roots of the Bell family tree reach deep and wide. “My father was a cotton farmer,” she said. “All his brothers, my grandfather, my great-grandfather—they were all cotton farmers.” The same land, first worked by her great-grandfather as a sharecropper, was passed down through the generations to her father and his siblings. While her dad tended the fields, her mother took care of home and garden, helping to put food on a busy table.

Memories of those early childhood days swirl around her head like buzzing mosquitoes and stick in her mind like a hot, humid summer day. “I remember my dad taking me to the cotton field as a little girl,” she said. “The cotton was higher than I was.” Eventually, Merlon and most of her siblings grew up and moved away from Winstonville, leaving behind life, as they had known it, on the farm.

Joe grew up in the Gulf Coast town of Moss Point, Mississippi, and, like Merlon, shared a home with eight siblings. Though his family did not live on a farm, he has fond memories of an older brother who plowed a garden with his mule. “I can still hear the sound of the leather when he strapped it on and him telling the mule ‘whoa’ and ‘go,’” he said. A great-grandmother with a “green thumb” who canned and preserved fruits and vegetables the old-fashioned way also made a lasting impression. As for Joe and his brothers, they “grew up in construction,” following in the footsteps of their father. The skills Joe learned proved invaluable years later when designing and building his own house and farm.

When Joe and Merlon first met as sophomores on the campus of Alcorn State University in 1981, the attraction was immediate and mutual. “We just meshed,” she said. “We’ve been together ever since,” he added. A justice of the peace at the courthouse in Decatur married them on Jan. 22, 1985, which just happened to be the coldest day in Atlanta history to that point, according to Joe. “I remember being in his truck, and the heater wasn’t working. It was the happiest day, but it was the coldest day,” Merlon said. “We were on the ‘struggle bus,’” Joe added with a laugh, “just starting out.”

Both went on to have successful careers after college, Joe as a mechanical contractor who eventually owned his own firm and

Merlon as a revenue agent and an analyst with the IRS. For many years, the Harpers and their children, Lawrence and Keallah, lived in Stone Mountain, but Joe felt the pull to a more rural setting. “We came here [to Atlanta] in 1984, and ever since, I’d been kind of looking for some land,” he said. In 2003, he found it on nine rolling acres, where County Line and H.D. Atha roads intersect. When he took his wife to look over the property, he was sincerely hoping she would approve. “He was telling me, ‘I love this property. It has this, it has that,’” she said. “Then he looked at me and said, ‘Do you like it?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Good, because I already put a down payment on it.’” Joe and his brothers began construction on the couple’s new house in 2007 and completed it the following year. Plans to quit mechanical contracting and go into construction had to be scrapped when the Great Recession hit and the housing market tanked. “The timing was awful,” he said. Fortunately, the home was built with an upstairs office, where Joe worked on some draft and design projects, along with operating a small home inspection business.

When the Harpers made the move from town to country, they had no intention of starting a farm. They just liked growing things, according to Joe. “It all started with a couple of blueberry bushes in whiskey barrels from Home Depot,” he said. Over the next few years, they planted more and more.

When Deer Creek Farm’s own Blue Harvest Tea made it to the finals of the Flavor of Georgia Food Product Contest, owners Joe and Merlon Harper joined an elite group of entrepreneurs in a competition designed to showcase the best food and beverages the state has to offer. The 17th annual Flavor of Georgia contest, put together by the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, concluded at The Classic Center in Athens on March 28 and attracted 124 entrants competing in 12 categories.

“The contest is the state’s proving ground for small, upstart food companies as well as established products looking for recognition or new markets,” a UGA press release stated. “This year’s finalists represent all corners of the state and the best of Georgia’s diverse culinary heritage.”

Entrants were given three minutes to pitch their products to food brokers, grocery buyers and other food product experts who judged their entry “based on their Georgia theme, commercial appeal, taste, innovation and market potential.” The Harpers presented their Blue Harvest Tea as “a refreshing drink with the distinct taste of blueberry goodness married with the perfect black tea.” They further suggested that “the subtle taste of herbs will tickle your palate, reminding you of a summer day, sippin’ tea on the front porch.”

Even though the Harpers did not win the drink category for their tea, they gained plenty of perks. Along with a one-year membership in Georgia Grown, they were given a personalized press release, a featured spot in a product