Smith Farms

Not bad not great, regular jarred/​canned food was made for Smiths Farm not by SF. The cheese is made out of state as well. Again not bad just no reason to return. Location was clean, couldn’t purchase alcohol as it was Sunday. Friendly, helpful person working. We bought 5 jars and liked the flavor of them all.

On the road supporting four friends who are riding from Atlanta to Jacksonville, AL and back on the Silver Comet and Chief Ladiga trail. We were planning a big meal to celebrate when everyone got back to Atlanta and wanted steaks. Saw Smith Farms advertised in a local menu/​restaurant guide and the pictures/​description suggested this could be just the place. Smoked meats, steaks and cut meats and other goodies were advertised.
Found the store just off I-​20 and pulled in. The parking lot and building all look new, and next to an Alabama ABC liquor store (It is the Bible Belt after all). No cars in the parking lot — hmm, but it’s open.
Walk in and we are the only customers. The woman behind the counter lazily greets us. We start to walk around to check the store out. One wall of reach in coolers has beer. The one at the back of the store has been covered over with paper. I find the meat case, it’s dark, warm and empty and really doesn’t look like it’s ever been used. I check the reach ins, and they are new, never been used. Ask the woman at the register if I’ve missed the steaks and what they might have. She tells me all of her steaks are over by the beer. Perfect, I must have missed them.
Find two empty reach in coolers with one lonely ribeye and a couple of bacon wrapped filets and some bacon. That’s it. No amazing selection of meat as the advertisement promised. I ask if she has more (I can see inside the cooler where the lonely steaks are and it’s empty). She mutters something about having more. Frankly seemed more like a programmed response than actually knowing what’s going on.
There are shelves and shelves of the usual roadside store pickled vegetables and jarred goods. You know the stuff — where the containers are the same as the ones you saw in that other touristy town at the gift shop. Where the label there said the pickled asparagus was Auntie Janes special family recipe. Yet here it was Smith Farms special recipe. Not.
Now we’re feeling obligated so we peruse the cheese case and pick a couple of things out from the relatively pedestrian selection. One looks interesting — a smoked cheddar. Huzzah! Perhaps they’ve actually produced this themselves. We needed a few cheeses for dinner, so we grabbed it. At the next snack/​hydration stop for the bikers in Rockmart, GA we broke the smoked cheddar out. Opened the container and it had an unusual springy — rubbery texture, odd since smoking the cheese pulls moisture out than put it in. Then it strikes me — yep. It’s that chemical mystery known as Velveeta which they’ve melted down, molded into their portions and then smoked. I’ve made enough Rotel and Velveeta in my college days to know that stuff all too well.
So, at the end of the day we found a well designed building for a company that has advertising that promises a lot of things that ultimately really don’t exist.
Oh — and the wine tasting. Yeah. Chocolate Wine. Enough said. Too bad, it could actually be a pretty nice shopping experience.