Look inside Jimmy Carter’s peanut farm, where he grew up with no electricity or running water
Jimmy Carter grew up on his family’s peanut farm in Georgia before entering politics.
At age 100, former President Jimmy Carter is the oldest living president as well as the nation’s longest-lived president.
However, before he lived in the White House, he grew up in a humble home on his family’s peanut farm in Archery, Georgia.
The Carters were one of few landowning families in Archery, The New York Times reported, and the only white family in town.
Despite achieving status in a rural town with a population of only 200, the Carters still grew up in relative poverty. The family’s home didn’t have running water until Carter was 11 years old and didn’t get electricity for another three years after that.
Here’s a look inside his family’s famous peanut farm.
Jimmy Carter grew up on his family’s peanut farm in Archery, Georgia
At age 100, former President Jimmy Carter is the oldest living president as well as the nation’s longest-lived president.
However, before he lived in the White House, he grew up in a humble home on his family’s peanut farm in Archery, Georgia.
The Carters were one of few landowning families in Archery, The New York Times reported, and the only white family in town.
Despite achieving status in a rural town with a population of only 200, the Carters still grew up in relative poverty. The family’s home didn’t have running water until Carter was 11 years old and didn’t get electricity for another three years after that.
Here’s a look inside his family’s famous peanut farm.
Jimmy Carter grew up on his family’s peanut farm in Archery, Georgia
Jimmy Carter on his peanut farm.
Carter lived at the farm from the age of 4 until he departed for college in 1941. Carter’s family didn’t have running water until he turned 11, and they didn’t get electricity until three years later.
“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 New York 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, according to the National Park Service.
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, the National Park Service said.
Today, visitors can tour Carter’s peanut farm, which has been converted into a historic site.
A vintage sign in Plains, Georgia, advertises tours of the city and the Carter family peanut farm.
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, and guided tours are also available on weekends.
The 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.
Jimmy Carter’s boyhood farm is located in Archery, Georgia.
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.
The entrance sign to Jimmy Carter’s Boyhood Farm.
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.
The official Jimmy Carter website wrote that 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.
Jimmy Carter’s boyhood farm has been restored to look how it did in 1937.
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 dining room inside Jimmy Carter’s boyhood farmhouse.
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.
Jimmy Carter’s childhood bedroom was recreated.
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.
The clay tennis court at the Jimmy Carter Boyhood Farm was built by his father.
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 and windmill provided supplies to Boyhood Farm.
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, the National Park Service reported.
Inside the store, people could buy farm and household supplies.
The commissary or country store at Jimmy Carter’s boyhood farm.
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.
A barn with a wooden fence at Jimmy Carter’s boyhood farm.
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.
Jimmy Carter is now celebrating his 100th birthday, a historic moment for a former president.
The signature and hand prints of Jimmy Carter were left on a stone at Boyhood Farm.
At age 100, 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. Rosalynn died in November 2023 at 96 years old.
After Jimmy Carter entered hospice care in February 2023, residents of Plains, Georgia, have come together to wait for updates and hold vigil for the former president. He has now spent over a year in hospice care.
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 New York 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.”
