Braves’ Darren O’Day, NewNation’s Liz Prann Farm Lux Atlanta Backyard With The Kids – Watch Now!
The O’Day Home Is A Life Lesson, Chickens And All
ATLANTA, GA — From the street, it looks like any other luxurious home in this part of Atlanta, popping through the woods majestically on a curving lane like all the rest. From the back, you see another story: There’s a farm there, replete with chickens and coops. Crops of every variety grow in neat rows and terraces.
This is the home of NewsNation anchor and correspondent Elizabeth Prann and husband Darren O’Day, who pitched 15 years in the Major Leagues and is now part of the Atlanta Braves broadcast crew. It’s a family bonding activity to be sure – but it exists primarily to help their three young children understand the world they live in better.
And also because Liz and Darren have both always harbored a yen to farm, despite the fact that neither comes from an ag background.
“Baseball players travel so much, and when Darren was playing I was always looking for something to do,” says Liz. “A couple of seasons before he retired I started playing around a little, planting carrots and things. I think the biggest I ever got were about an inch.”
But Darren took notice and caught the bug himself.
“I’d already been thinking about it before I retired,” he says. “I’ve always felt like people who are able to retire young, like me, need to do something other than just sit around. I’ve always been disappointed in people who do that and I’m determined not to.”
With Liz’s help, Darren studied YouTube videos and any resource he could find. What crops would work best in metro Atlanta? How did they grow? How did they thrive? And did somebody say, “Let’s have chickens!”? (They did – it was Liz.)
Before long, they had transformed a suburban landscape into a thriving backyard garden. Carrots, onions, cabbage, garlic, berries, beets, potatoes and a whole lot more sprout from terraces and containers, all framed up by a gorgeous pool and punctuated with the cackle of roaming chickens.
“It’s so gratifying to see the kids walk by and grab a handful of berries off a plant and know they understand where those came from,” Liz says.
“I love it when we have neighborhood kids over for parties – I encourage them to try whatever they want,” Darren says. “They’ll pick a little spinach and try it right off the plant – and then I get to tell their parents they liked it!”
The O’Days aren’t trying to feed the family from their backyard, but what’s grown there is a regular part of the dinner table. And there are always plenty of eggs. But with names like Kelly Cluckson and Babe-raham Lincoln, the chickens are strictly off limits.
Now you can see their story on the YouTube and RFD-TV Network (DirecTV, Dish, Cable, Sling) series Where The Food Comes From. Watch the show now on YouTube @WhereTheFoodComesFrom or see it Oct. 11 at 10 p.m. EDT and again at 1:30 a.m. on TV.
The couple met while attending the University of Florida. Liz first rose to prominence covering the massive Deep Horizon oil spill for FOX News in 2010. After a stint with CNN, she’s now a correspondent and sometime-anchor for NewsNation. O’Day reached the big leagues as a relief pitcher in 2008 and retired as a Brave after the 2022 season before joining the radio broadcast team.
“It’s funny,” says WTFCF host and producer Chip Carter, “I knew Liz from her on-air work and Darren was a mainstay of my fantasy baseball teams for years. To get to parachute into their personal lives and see what they’re doing in an extraordinary place was really fun.”
Where The Food Comes From travels the country visiting farms and going up and down the supply chain to show all the invisible hands that keep the world fed. Currently in Season 5, full episodes are available on the show’s YouTube channel now, and that number will grow to 65 by the end of the year!