George Wooten, president and owner of Wayne E. Bailey Produce Co., feels blessed and he passes his blessings on by supporting many faith-based and humanitarian charities.

“For the past couple of months, we have been a sponsor of Winter Jam, a Christian music concert series.  33 different cities nationwide hosted Winter Jam. Over 275,000 people attended these concerts and 38,000 made decisions for Christ,” Wooten said.

At every concert, evangelist, author and speaker Tony Nolan gives his testimony and in a very compelling manner, asks the attendees to make a decision for Christ.  They can follow up by visiting the website, www.jamtour.com, to download further information to help them on their journey.

“The concerts featured some of the best-known Christian contemporary music artists today. People like Britt Nicole, a newcomer who is really terrific; Hawk Nelson, a group that really rocks; and veteran group Newsong, the host of each concert. They’re fantastic,” Wooten said.

The headline act was Jeremy Camp, one of today’s most popular contemporary Christian musicians.  A Dove Award-winning performer, Jeremy is a two-time recipient of the Male Vocalist of the Year award (2004 and 2005), the Newcomer of the Year award (2004) and the Rock Recorded Song of the Year award (2005). He has also been nominated for Male Vocalist of the Year this year.

The show also included another very popular Christian music artist, who has won more Dove awards than anyone else, Stephen Curtis Chapman. Then there was Sanctus Real, the recipient of Radio & Records’ most played Christian rock band of the year title; presidential impersonator John Morgan and Andre, the Hollywood Cowboy who finished out the list of performers.

Ask any chef you meet about sweet potatoes, and they are likely to tell you how versatile they are. Chefs know they are nutritious – and delicious – and they can be prepared in many ways. There’s just one thing they really don’t like about fresh sweet potatoes – they are very labor intensive.

Fresh sweet potatoes are not uniform in shape like an apple. Their surfaces are not smooth, and it takes a lot of work to properly clean them and get down to the actual vegetable before you can even begin to prepare your dish. That means there is a lot of waste involved, and in a product sold by the pound, that equates to money being thrown away.

Solutions

The owner of Wayne E. Bailey Produce Co., George Wooten, saw the potential for fresh-cut sweet potatoes a few years ago. In 2006, he opened George Foods, located in Pembroke, NC, and has solved that problem by offering many different fresh-cut (processed) products! “We offer the chef ready-to-use fresh sweet potatoes by doing all the prep work for them”, explained George Wooten, owner. “We want to get more people to eat – and enjoy – fresh sweet potatoes, and one way is to make the product available in an easy-to-use form to the foodservice market.”

George Wooten III is the Farm Operation Manager for Wayne E. Bailey Produce Company, headquartered in Chadbourn, NC. It’s his job to be sure the company grows the best crop of sweet potatoes they can. He oversees every aspect of the farming operation and works hand-in-hand with crew chiefs at all the company farms.

He began working on the farm when he was four or five years old after moving to his mother’s family home on the farm. During the summers, he followed his father, company president and owner, George Wooten, as he made his rounds visiting farms.

The company started growing their own sweet potatoes with a small farm back in the mid-1980’s, and today they farm over 3,500 acres, using cotton as a rotation crop.

Wooten’s pursuit of an Agricultural Business degree at North Carolina State University in Raleigh gave him even more insight to the world of growing. “Soil science classes were very interesting to me, and now, I use that knowledge every day,” he said. Once out of school, he went to work on the farm full time.

Since January, Wooten has been using the “off-season” to get all the planting equipment repaired or replaced and has been busy with land preparation. One project he works on is soil analysis. “We need to know everything about the soil so we can put the right fertilizers and nutrients into the ground to be ready for the plants.”