RUSTON — Joe Mitcham pulled a knife from the pocket of his jeans and made a few quick cuts in the root of a peach tree he had pulled out of the ground earlier that day. Using the tip of the blade, he ...

Mitcham’s farm, on gently rolling hills just northwest of Ruston, was founded by his father and mother in the 1940s. Over the decades, it grew to approximately 340 acres, if not the largest peach ...