Take a look inside Jimmy Carter's peanut farm, where he grew up with no electricity or running water
Jimmy Carter grew up on a peanut farm with no electricity or running water in Archery, Georgia.
Carter helped harvest and sell cotton, peanuts, sugar cane, and corn before he left for college.
The Carter farm is now a historic site where visitors can tour his childhood home and bedroom.
Former President Jimmy Carter grew up on his family's peanut farm in Georgia from the age of 4 until he left for college.
The Carters were one of few landowning families in Archery.
According to The New York Times, the Carters were also the only white family in town. The family, despite achieving status in a rural town with a population of only 200, still grew up in relative poverty.
Carter's family didn't have running water until he turned 11 and they didn't get electricity until three years later. Carter lived at the farm from the age of 4 until he departed for college in 1941.
"The greatest day in my life was not being inaugurated president, [and] it wasn't even marrying Rosalynn — it was when they turned the electricity on," Carter said, according to the Times.
Carter received a bachelor's from the United States Naval Academy in 1946 and served as a submariner in the United States Navy before entering politics. When he became president in 1977, he put the farm into a blind trust, allowing a third party to take control of it while he was in the White House, avoiding any conflicts of interest.
When he left the White House in 1981, the law firm managing the trust revealed the farm was $1 million in debt due to drought and changes in management, and the Carters sold it, according to the National Park Service.
Today, visitors can tour Carter's peanut farm, which has been converted into a historic site.
As a living museum, visitors can press buttons located throughout the historical site to hear recordings of Jimmy Carter's experience growing up on the farm. Guided tours are also available on weekends.
The Jimmy Carter Boyhood Farm was owned by Earl Carter, Jimmy's father, from 1928 until 1949. After he died in 1953, Jimmy took over the operations of the farm.
The farm is located in Archery, Georgia, about 3 miles from the nearby town of Plains.
Known as "Boyhood Farm," the Carter family peanut farm is a popular tourist destination in the area.
Many of the farm's original buildings, from Earl Carter's commissary to Carter's childhood home, have been preserved.
Visitors can also tour the Clark home, once occupied by tenants Jack and Rachel Clark who worked on the Carter farm. Jimmy Carter spent a lot of time with the Clarks growing up, to the point where the Clarks set up a sleeping pallet filled with either corn shucks or wheat straw that he would sleep on when his parents were out of town.
The farm and Carter's childhood home were restored to how they would have looked in 1937, before electricity was installed in 1938.
In 1994, the National Park Service purchased Carter's three-bedroom childhood home and 17 acres of the once 360-acre farm to create the historical site.
The inside of Carter's childhood home has been completely restored to how it would have looked in the 1930s.
The furnishings inside the home were never owned by the Carters, but they were chosen to reflect the time period and are similar to what would have been used when the Carters lived there.
In addition to a more formal dining room, visitors can tour the family's kitchen, breakfast room, living room, the bedroom of Jimmy Carter's parents, Earl and Lillian, and the bedroom his two sisters, Gloria and Ruth, shared at the farmhouse.
One of the main attractions at Boyhood Farm is Jimmy Carter's childhood bedroom.
Carter also had a younger brother, Billy, who slept in their parents' room until Jimmy left the farm for college in 1941.
Earl Carter also built a clay tennis court outside the Carter farmhouse.
Carter has continued to enjoy the sport throughout his life, especially during his tenure at the White House, but it was here where he first learned the game during matches with his father.
The commissary is located a stone's throw away from the Carter farmhouse.
The commissary was run by Earl Carter in order to make extra money, provide his tenants and the residents of Archery a place to buy needed supplies, and sell gas to passing motorists, according to the National Park Service.
Inside the store, people could buy farm and household supplies.
The store wasn't always open during standard work hours, but Earl Carter would make sure to open it — or ask Jimmy to open it — in order to make a sale.
A barn once used to house peanuts is also available for people to view.
The property is still an active farm, and crops are still grown periodically throughout the year. Some of the crops still grown on the farm include sugarcane, cotton, corn, tomatoes, and peanuts.
Honeybees, goats, chickens, mules, and farm cats also call the Boyhood Farm home.
After Jimmy Carter entered hospice care in February, residents of Plains, Georgia, have come together to wait for updates and hold vigil for the former president.
At age 98, Carter is the oldest living president as well as the nation's longest-lived president. Following his presidency, he and his wife, Rosalynn, moved back to their two-bedroom home in Plains.
According to The New York Times, now that he is in hospice care, residents of the small town have been keeping vigil.
Jeff Clements, a part-owner of the Buffalo Peanut Company, a commercial peanut sheller and seed treater that owns what was once the Carter family's warehouse, told the Times that "you wouldn't have the downtown atmosphere that you have" in Plains without Carter. Clements also commended Carter's humanitarian work.
"The fact he was still willing to be a Christian and act in a Christian way and not be afraid to do so in today's time," he said, "that's more so his legacy than anything he did while he was president."
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