HAHIRA — It’s pretty much cliché to say “they don’t do it like they did in the good old days.” But at the new Packhouse Market, the old ways of producing food are literally brought to the counters of this old fashioned farmers market.

Take out the steroids, antibiotics, growth hormones and other unnatural additives from chickens, cows, field crops and fruit, add in old fashioned ways of feeding and fertilizing, and you wind up with the healthiest and best tasting vittles that only your grandparents can remember.

That’s the organic way of doing things and Packhouse Market owner Allen Dorsey swears by it.

“The old timers who come in here say ‘this is the way my grand daddy did it,’” said Dorsey. “The proof is in the taste. It’s incredible.”

Located at 106 S. Church St. just across the street from the Merle Norman shop, the Packhouse Market is easy to pass by if you’re not looking. A small sign in the front yard is easy to miss. It’s a former gas station and auto repair shop that’s been gutted and converted into Packhouse. Word of mouth has turned the market into a popular spot.

The market opened almost five weeks ago during the Honey Bee Festival. Pedestrian traffic has been great, Dorsey said. “I put some rocking chairs on the front porch so people could come and sit for a visit like they did at the markets in the old days.”

Although the bulk of Packhouse’s stock is organic, Dorsey does stock fruits, vegetables and meats from local farmers produced the standard way.

“I want this to be a real farmer’s market where local farmers have a place to sell their products,” she said. “I readily invite local farmers to bring in their goods to sell here. Plus we want to have something for everyone and appeal to everyone. You can come in and drink a cup of organic coffee while eating a brownie or a piece of cake. We’re a farmers’ market with a little more.”

Dorsey knows all about farming. She and her husband Jeff Dorsey own a pecan orchard and farm nearby. Packhouse was Jeff’s idea, but Allen has always been interested in the nutritional value of food.

“My daddy had a condition that would only improve with good nutrition. That’s how I got interested,” she said.

Jeff Dorsey wanted to raise chickens. And the couple had an idea about growing organic blueberries. They went to a fruit and vegetable growers convention in Savannah in January to check out their ideas.

“Everybody was in the blueberry meeting,” Dorsey said. “When farmers here that something is making money, they’ll flock to it. But there were organic distributors there too, and they were begging for anything. So we went to the organic meeting. They were so encouraging and uplifting. We never did get into blueberries.”

The Savannah meeting led the Dorseys to go to another organic meeting a few weeks later in Broxton. This one was held at an actual organic farm operation that had cows, chickens and hogs. The Dorseys liked what they saw and their minds were made up: Organic is the way to go.

“Organic farming is old time farming where you make the soil perfect for the product using natural fertilizers from compost and manure,” Dorsey said. “Once a plant is strong from naturally fertilized soil, they can fight pests and diseases on their own with pesticides.”

How does a chicken become “organic,” one might wonder.

“We keep them on fresh grass. We move them in little chicken ‘condos’ from place to place to make sure they stay on fresh grass,” Dorsey said. “We let the chickens scratch the manure into the soil naturally, which really builds up the soil for crops. We keep the chickens outside and they’re not cooped up like at conventional chicken farms. They don’t have purple bruises on them like store bought chickens. They are healthier to eat. They are perfectly beautiful. They have no steroids, antibiotics or growth hormones in them.”

The Dorseys sell their chickens from their farm. “We just got a new batch in,” Dorsey said. “We can produce a new batch about every 12 weeks.”

Packhouse stocks organic ground beef from White Oak Pastures in Blakely that “makes the best, biggest steak burgers your grandparents remember eating,” bacon “that produces a clear grease… it’s weird it’s so pure,” pork chops of a size you won’t believe, peppered bacon that “makes the best BLT sandwich you ever ate,” and patty and link sausage, Dorsey said.

They sell organic milk from the Sparkman’s Cream Valley Dairy in Moultrie. Sparkman’s uses no artificial hormones to boost production from their cows. Their cows are milked at 2 a.m. and the milk is available by 12 noon the same day. Talk about fresh milk. Also, Sparkman’s milk has a creamy taste that comes from milk solids, not fats. The national average for milk solids in store bought milk is 8.25. Sparkman’s averages 9.48 to 9.92.

“They have the best tasting chocolate milk you’ve ever had,” Dorsey said.

Packhouse also stocks award-winning cheese and other organic products from the famous Sweet Grass Dairy in Thomasville. There’s plenty of organically grown fruit and vegetables, including large blueberries, huge juicer carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, Yukon Gold potatoes, russet potatoes, red potatoes, tomatoes, onions and more.

Of course, there’s pecan products from the Dorsey orchard, including salted pecans, chocolate covered pecans, pralines and more. Orders are shipped everywhere so the pecan products make great gift items. “We only sell pecans harvested this year. We don’t sell last year’s pecans,” Dorsey said. Call 1-800-820-4514 to place an order.

Let’s not leave out the balance of delicious sweet products that are not of the healthy organic mode, including several cake and baked products bought from the Breadwagon, a Mennonite community bakery near Thomasville. There’s brownies, pies, granola, red velvet cakes, chocolate cake and more.

Ed Perry, the owner of Perry Vineyards in Nashville and the future owner of a new winery planned for a location just off I-75 on a Hahira exit, is Jeff Dorsey’s cousin. Allen Dorsey wants to develop an organic wine that could be sold at Packhouse. The new winery’s Hahira Red wine and Valdosta White wine might be sold at Packhouse if the Dorseys get approval to sell wine from the city.

“Muscodine grapes are so good for you,” Dorsey said. “It’d be great to sell an organic wine made from muscodines. I figure that might offset some of the red velvet cake or carrot cake,” she joked.

As harvest is in full gear, fall is in the air and leaves are turning color, Dorsey said it’s the perfect time to come in, pick up a brown sack, do a little grocery shopping for some fresh foods and take a load off on a rocking chair and sip some organic coffee.

“The people of Hahira are so cute. They have really supported us,” Dorsey said.