Proud to be a Farmer: Ottawa Farms continues tradition of educating with fun

BLOOMINGDALE, Ga. (WTOC) - Located just over 30 minutes from River Street and downtown Savannah lies Ottawa Farms in Bloomingdale. It’s the oldest farm in Chatham County.

“We have been in the cattle business all our life. We would run about 200 head of beef cattle over here. We did a lot of cotton farming here, soybean farming, corn farming over the years, and got into picking strawberries, and picking black berries, and pick blue berries. We are fixing to plant some satsuma oranges and some grapefruit,” Ottawa Farms owner Pete Waller said.

Being a third generation farmer, Waller uses his experience to accomplish his true passion.

“I enjoy people and I enjoy having people come to the farm. I enjoy having children come out here, see where their food is grown and that it doesn’t come out of Piggly Wiggly. Food comes out of the soil, and we have about 2,000 children in the spring and 2,000 in the fall come out, and I enjoy the adults coming out because you got a lot of adults that don’t know anything about farming, believe me,” Waller said.

For this reason, Ottawa Farms hosts its fall festivals and its own rodeo, which will be happening over the next few weekends.

“Anything from bull riding, bronco riding, calf roping, bull riding, the whole nine yards. Everything that goes on at a rodeo, we’ll have at a rodeo. and before the rodeo, we’ll have our cow train rides, hayrides, our bronco slide, we’ll have our pumpkin patch and pig races along with it,” Waller said.

All with the goal of improving and educating the community with some small-town farming fun.

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