GA’s largest peach grower serves 300K visitors annually, is driving distance from Macon

One of the biggest contributors to Georgia’s peach industry has served Middle Georgia and beyond for more than a century, and it offers more than just peaches.

Lane Southern Orchards was a family-owned business for 98 years before it was bought by a group of corporate owners in 2006. Since its corporate transition, Lane has become the largest peach grower in Georgia. The farm has 11,000 acres of farmland, 6,000 dedicated to pecans and 5,000 to peaches.

Lane Southern Orchards serves 300,000 visitors a year with activities including u-pick strawberries, a corn maze and a Fourth of July festival, but peaches are the orchard’s main attraction. At the roadside shop, visitors get to see the packaging process, eat house-made peach desserts, and purchase Georgia-grown peaches.

Peach packaging, peaches for sale at roadside shop

Thirty minutes from Macon off of Lane Road in Fort Valley is the large gray warehouse that contains Lane’s roadside shop. Two sets of sliding doors lead visitors to boxes of peaches accompanied by shelves of jam, pecans and baked goods.

Shoppers can also find goods from other Georgia farms, such as Georgia craft beer and Georgia-made peach wine.

“We really stress Georgia-grown products here,” Sanchez said.

A short set of stairs at the back of the shop leads to a glass-enclosed area looking down on the peach packing process.

The peaches get washed, then go down a conveyor belt for visitors to watch as they get sorted and packaged. On the conveyor belt, they go through what Sanchez calls a grader and a sizer.

A series of cameras controlled by a computer look at every peach to determine what size it is, and if it has the exterior quality to go to one of the customers. From there, the machine flicks the peach to the left, where rows of shorter conveyor belts sit, with workers on the sides to package them into boxes.

Each row boxes a certain size of peach, so the conveyor belt flicks them to each row based on the size of the peach.

“Every row where they’re packing peaches is a certain peach of a certain size, usually for a certain customer. So we know that on this row, we’ll be packing two and three-quarter-inch peaches,” Sanchez said.

From there, the peaches are either sold in store or shipped to retailers. Lane’s sells its peaches to Walmart, Publix, Kroger and other major retailers, Sanchez said. The orchard mostly sells to stores along the eastern seaboard, said Sanchez, such as those in New York and Florida.

What to eat in the cafe, bakery

Through the doors and to the right of the roadside shop is Lane’s Peachtree Cafe and Bakery, which serves homemade peach ice cream and desserts, along with food for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Their selections include sandwiches, meatloaf, pie, cheesecakes, and more.

“If you’re traveling, it’s a great place to stop and get something to eat,” said Sanchez.

The cafe has indoor and outdoor seating. White rocking chairs sit in rows outside the cafe under a green and white striped awning.

More than a dozen seniors from Center Hill Baptist Church sat in those chairs July 18, talking and laughing. Sandra Hunt, who was part of the group, said they came for ice cream and peach cobbler after stopping at Cracker Barrel for breakfast.

“It was the ice cream and the fellowship that brought us out,” Hunt said.

Lane Southern Orchards is open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. at 50 Lane Road in Fort Valley.

Sanchez encourages groups to come out and enjoy the Georgia-grown products.

“Come get the best peaches in the world, Georgia peaches.”

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