By the time I arrived, one morning after eating green nuts in the Hardy’s fields, the parade was long over and the Nobel Prize laureate away from home. I bought a bag of boiled Georgia Runners and a used copy of “The Carter Family Favorites Cookbook” (1977) in a gift shop. A chapter is devoted to peanut recipes: peanut butter brownies, peanut praline cakes, bacon and peanut butter cornbread, peanut vegetable loaf, peanut butter fondue. The high school Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn attended has been converted to a museum and contains memorabilia from their childhood and political campaigns. The grinning peanut logo — based on Carter’s own generous smile — is singularly weird. On display in a hall are peanut drawings by schoolchildren who have visited the National Historic Site.

More compelling is the Jimmy Carter Boyhood Farm, a few miles outside of town in the rural community of Archery, named for a 19th-century relief organization of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Originally the modest house lacked running water and electricity, and the family cook prepared meals on a wood-fired stove. The dining room table was set with plastic replicas of fried chicken, deviled eggs, iced tea — a homespun reminder of how the Carters would eventually entertain in a bigger white house. The kitchen garden supplied the family with vegetables, and a dry goods store on the property operated by Carter’s father supplied the neighbors, predominantly black farmers, and railroad employees. Walking around the quiet yard gave me a better sense of how growing up on the farm shaped the president’s commitment to service, starting with early morning chores and his first commercial venture as a boiled-peanut vendor.

While Carter served in the Oval Office, he placed the family businesses into a blind trust to avoid conflict of interest. (How times have changed.) An Atlanta lawyer named Charles Kirbo was appointed financial trustee. Suffice to say, he did not do well by Jimmy Carter. After three years of drought and mismanagement, the plain-speaking president left the White House over $1 million in debt and dangerously close to losing the family farm.

Carter saved the fields with a book deal and the sale of his family's processing plant. His life in public service extended beyond his term as president, most notably with the founding of the Carter Center, whose peace and health initiatives extend around the world. Even in his early 90s, he continues to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity, which has its headquarters in nearby Americus. But in 2013, the former leader of the free world admitted: "I'm a peanut farmer at heart, still grow peanuts on my farm in Georgia."