America's Heartland

>>Hi I'm Rob Stewart.

Who doesn't like a great dessert or something sweet from time to time?

Coming up, we'll meet some farm folks delivering sweet, delicious treats.

We'll take you down South where one farm family has been harvesting sweet and juicy peaches for almost a century.

Cranberries are a popular dish when holidays roll around.

We'll head for Massachusetts where harvesting the round red berries is a lot harder than you think.

We'll meet a Vermont family tapping into the promise of sweet maple syrup.

And this California farm family is counting on strawberry fields forever.

It's all coming up on America's Heartland.

>>America's Heartland is made possible by... >>Farm Credit - Financing agriculture and rural America since 1916.

Farm Credit is cooperatively owned by Americas farmers and ranchers.

Learn more at FarmCredit.com CropLife America- Representing the companies whose modern farming innovations help America's farmers provide nutritious food for communities around the globe.

>>The Fund for Agriculture Education - A fund created by KVIE to support America's Heartland programming.

Contributors include the following: You can see it in the eyes of every woman and man In America's Heartland, livin' close to the land There's a love for the country And a pride in the brand In America's Heartland Livin' close... close to the land >>Hey there, thanks for joining us on America's Heartland.

We all know that fruits and vegetables are important to a healthy diet.

And it makes it easier to stick to that diet if our choices include something that tastes good.

Well the good news is that whether you're picking up fruit at the farmers market, traveling to a you-pick farm, or reaching for peaches, plums, or pears at the supermarket, we're all eating more fruit than we did a generation back.

The Department of Agriculture says that fresh fruit consumption, in particular, is up by more than 25 percent alone, and that figure could grow.

Increasing numbers of Farm to School programs and nationwide farm to table efforts are delivering more fresh fruits and vegetables directly to homes and schools This is all good news to growers in the heartland whose farms and orchards are working to meet that demand.

One of those farms is centered in the heart of South Carolina's peach country, run by a family that's been picking the sweet fruit for almost a century.

It's the busiest week of the year at McLeod Farms in McBee, South Carolina.

It's the height of the harvest and there are ripe peaches everywhere you turn!

Kemp McLeod calls these peaches 'Mac's pride,' and on this mid-July day, they're perfect for the picking!

>>We'll pick 'em five times over about, about, yeah, five to six times.

And we'll probably pick 'em over the next ten days.

We're trying to pick every peach that's ready and because we got so many orchards to go over.

>>The McLeod fruit trees spread across miles of the Carolina countryside.

650 acres with workers picking each piece of fruit by hand.

>>I know what variety gets ready, I know what characteristics.

And these fellows here have been with me twenty years, he knows what to look for.

So I, everybody out here, they're- they're tuned in on what we need to do.

>>The McLeods grow more than 20 varieties of peaches.

Kemp says the Winblo is the most popular peach in the South.

>>About behind the man right there.

>>The picking and packing to keep fruit on the shelf demands coordination in growing and harvesting.

>>OK watch the top, that's what we're looking for, that, this guy's doing a good job.

A peach cannot be stored, so what we do is we grow different varieties to fit different ripening so we have a continuous flow of peaches.

>>I see... >>So we try to pick a peach that will crop, y'know, consistently has good shelf life that can work.

>>Off the tree, containers of the peaches will roll down the road to the McLeod packing house.

The peaches will be sent through a cold water bath to cool them from the field heat.

They'll be sorted by shape and size, then packed and shipped.

How many peaches can move through here in a day?

>>Roughly about seven hundred bins can be picked a day and we also can pack about ten thousand boxes per day.

And that's half a million peaches.

>>Kemp's son, Spencer, returned to the farm after college and oversees the packing house operations.

Much of the fruit will go from field to consumer in less than 24 hours.

Spencer, why did you pull this one out of the batch?

>>This one's ready to eat; it's ripe.

It has a- it's a little bit soft.

That's the way I like to eat my peaches.

Sometimes the peaches can be firm when they're at the grocery store.

You want to give that a chance to ripen up and that's when I like to either set it out, don't put it in the refrigerator.

>>South Carolina is the number one state for peach production in the South.

The McLeod peaches will ship all across the country and even into Canada.

They are ripe and ready to go.

>>Yes, sir.

These are ripe peaches, Winblos, and they're ready to eat right now.

We're gonna take these straight to our store, put 'em on the shelf, ready for people to make a pie or eat fresh.

>>What do people say to you about why they keep coming back for this?

>>Well, you gotta have a good peach.

You gotta make a good product.

If it looks pretty... and that'll sell it the first time.

But if it tastes good, everybody's gonna come back.

>>Those peaches, headed for the McLeod retail outlet, are popular with customers from all across the region.

They show up here to purchase peaches, peach cobbler, peach pie, peach ice cream.

You've tasted them from other places.

>>Georgia.

>>From Georgia.

>>Of course, the Georgia peach is supposed to be the best peach, but we would have to say, these peaches, they're better.

>>What is the appeal?

Why come, for some people far, to eat this?

>>It's fresh and it's home grown, and y'know it's in Chesterfield County, we love it.

>>Mmhmm... does home grown matter to you Susie?

>>Yes.

>>Why?

>>Because it supports our state, and our local businesses, those sorts of things.

>>So it's more than just good flavor for you, it's knowing that you're supporting your roots.

>>The roots and the businesses, and the families and all that participate in it.

>>Alright, well taste it!

>>Taste it, have you had any?

>>Not unless you're sharin'.

>>Get you a spoon.

>>Alright, let's just... I'm goin' have a bite of yours.

May I?

>>Mmhmm.

>>Mmm, I see why you drive all the way over here.

>>[laughs] >>Nice to see you!

[laughing] That fresh picked flavor is part of the pride for the McLeods.

Pride in a product that has deep roots in these fields and this community.

Kemp is the fourth generation of McLeod famers young Spencer, the fifth.

I look at your hat and it says, Mac's Pride.

>>Right, right.

>>What is that pride to you?

>>Well, I mean, it's more like... it's our family life.

Y'know, it's our family.

It's- the farm is our family and our family is our farm.

>>You think your daddy would be proud?

>>I think Dad would be- would be very proud.

>>South Carolina grows more than just peaches.

The Palmetto State is home to one of the few tea plantations in the U.S.

Farmers here also grow gingko, a popular medicinal herb.

And if you like okra, you'll want to stop by Irma, South Carolina for their annual Okra strut festival.

>>A lot of us would agree that holidays like Thanksgiving wouldn't be the same without cranberries.

Whether you like them jellied or whole, the colorful fruit is the perfect addition to the meal.

And if you want a fruit that's truly American look no further than the cranberry.

The red berries were being used for food and fabric dyes long before the first European settlers arrived.

Our Sarah Gardner says cranberries have been part of both American history and the history of one particular family.

>>We landed in with the Mayflower in 1620, the surname Walker came in 1635, and my mother's family landed in 1632.

That's hundreds of- of years of a tradition.

>>Annie Walker is the owner of Annie's Crannies cranberry farm on Massachusetts' Cape Cod.

It's a unique farming operation dating back before the American Revolution.

>>With the exception of 36 years, this land has only been worked by the Nobscussett Indian Tribe, the Hall family, and the Walker Family.

>>A number of native varieties of cranberries grow in the wetland bogs of Massachusetts.

The state has some fourteen thousand acres devoted to the bright red fruit.

>>What I grow is called 'Howes,' H-O-W-E-S.

The Howes berry was cross-pollinated and cultivated on Scargo Lake here in Dennis in 1847.

So when it came time for me to renovate the bog, I chose to plant Howes berries because it's native to here.

>>Cranberry production here is so rooted in antiquity that even crop yields are measured differently.

No bushels here, think instead of barrels like those found on old sailing ships.

>>A barrel is approximately a hundred pounds.

I think the average for Howes is about 120 barrels an acre.

And on my best year I've grown over 450 barrels to the acre of Howes.

>>There are two methods of harvesting cranberries, wet pick and dry pick.

>>The wet pick cranberries represent about 95 percent of all the cranberries in Massachusetts.

They're ultimately gonna be used in juice, sauce, sweet and dry cranberries, those sort of products.

And it's a three-day process.

The first day they flood the bog.

Then they drive out with harvest machines, and they literally knock the cranberries off the vines.

And they float to the surface because they have air pockets inside of 'em.

And then the third part of it they corral the fruit and pump it off of the bog and into the trucks.

>>Annie, who prefers selling cranberries as fresh fruit, employs the dry pick method using a motorized, walk-behind harvester.

>>It's got teeth on the front, which is like combing your hair, so when you dry pick, you always go in the same direction around clockwise.

And the paddles push the berries up into a burlap bag.

>>She also uses a two-handed comb scoop for the edges of the bog.

>>This scoop is from about 1950.

It weighs about three pounds... empty.

And that's all I do.

So I go in here and scoop the edges and rock it forward and pull forward.

What it- what it does is it leaves the vine, it pulls up all the runners, and then I go back and I hand prune this with a pruning rake to get rid of these runners.

>>The crop eventually makes its way to a separator, this one built more than a hundred years ago.

>>This is still how they do them in market is in through these separators.

There's been nothing new invented since 1905.

When they go in the separator there's bounce boards.

A good dry berry bounces.

They have chances to hit the board and bounce forward.

If they hit the board and it doesn't bounce forward, it will drop to the rotten bins in the bottom.

Those actually become... juice.

So we check the front.

This looks like a happy hive.

We'll see if they're happy.

>>With bees necessary to pollinate the cranberry crop, Annie maintains hives all around her bogs.

>>If the bees don't kiss the flowers, we don't get cranberries- it's that simple.

>>In addition to established honeybee colonies, farmers here are attracting native bees, butterflies and other pollinators by growing certain kinds of wildflowers.

>>'Cause you don't want plants that are going to compete and be a pest on the bogs.

You also don't want them to be in bloom when the cranberries are in bloom.

>>The bees are happy, we're happy, 'cause they have to pollinate the food source.

So, if this helps get them through the winter, this will give them a fall honey source for the winter, then next spring-summer when I need my bog is in full bloom in the end of June through mid-July, then the bees will be happy, they'll stay here and they'll go out on the bog.

The best part of this experience is that I'm able to save something that my grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather did and pass it on to the next generation.

The best day of the year for me is a Labor Day party where the whole family comes and partakes.

And that, sharing it with the family, is the best.

>>Do you like cranberry juice?

The Phytochemicals in cranberries are a good source of healthful anti-oxidants.

But cranberry juice is no new health food invention.

Early settlers to New England began consuming cranberry juice in the 1600s.

And the vitamin C in fresh and dried cranberries helped early American sailors prevent scurvy while at sea.

>>We picked some sweet, juicy peaches earlier.

Let's serve up another sweet farm product that comes from a tree.

Now this is not something that you pick like an apple or an orange.

Like the cranberry, it has a place in American history and it's definitely something you'll want on your breakfast table if pancakes or waffles are coming your way.

It's a late winter ritual older than America itself as these snow-covered New England mountains begin to thaw.

>>Ah man, nice and full.

>>The farmstead hills and valleys of Vermont come alive with the annual sound of maple syrup being made.

It is tree-tapping time and within seconds, the sap is flowing.

>>That sound there is music to a sugar maker's ear, that drip, drip, drip.

[motor starting] >>Arnold Coombs' family has been sugar making, as they call it, for 7 generations.

Today he's tapping a tree that was planted decades before the Declaration of Independence.

[chink of hammer tapping spile] >>Well this is the method that's been used for well over 100 years.

Where you drill a hole into the tree, it's a little bit bigger than the plastic one, drive a metal spout into the tree, and just hang a bucket on it with a cover.

>>This sugar house is where Arnold's cousins boil the sap down into maple syrup.

It's a slow process as water in the sap evaporates over a wood burning fire.

As outside temperatures warm, maple sap will flow for several weeks.

It takes about ten gallons of sap to make just one quart of syrup.

Wow... how long did this take to fill up?

>>On a perfect day, you can fill it in one day.

That's 4 gallons of sap.

>>Four gallons... okay.

>>So that would be 40% of your crop in one day.

>>Wow.

>>But seldom do you get that.

>>Just across the Vermont border in New Hampshire, syrup runs in the family for Bruce Bascom as well.

>>My great-grandfather moved to... to part of this property in 1853.

He was tapping maybe 500 trees- probably in wooden buckets.

>>But times have changed and maple means money.

Bascom maple farms is one of the biggest producers of maple syrup in the world.

They take a more modern approach.

So these trees were here when you were a little kid, huh?

>>They were about 4 inches- 4 inches in diameter when I was in grammar school.

>>Well come in here and show me how this works, because it looks really, really cool.

Everywhere you look there is a sea of taps and tubes.

Today they are filled with flowing sap.

>>You see the bubbles moving?

And what it does, is you're using up about half a dozen of these hooked together into a larger pipe.

See, sap is flowing right now.

>>Bruce has 24 hundred acres, 63 thousand trees, woven together by a plastic tubing system, that makes Maple Mountain farming high tech.

>>And you can see with the newer technology and the plastic tubing you can consolidate it all into one spot so one person can actually obtain sap from trees that are in remote hill sides, like there, you'd never gather buckets with a pail, it'd be almost impossible on that slope.

>>Right across from the crop, Bruce can boil 4,000 gallons of sap an hour, thanks to a reverse osmosis machine, which quickly removes water from sap for processing.

Bottle after bottle, barrel after barrel, and box after box, is filled with syrup, and shipped for sale worldwide.

The push for this product is on.

>>What's happened is the demand in Asia, like Japan, Korea, China, all through Europe, demand in the United States, is way up, and so there's- it's a specialty crop that they can't make in the other countries.

>>Translation, a cash crop.

The beginning of the 21st century brought a rise in price per gallon.

The sweet success has us in the mood for some tasting!

>>You have to drink it all the way down, you know.

Whatever's left we'll let him eat >>Mmm... man that is delicious.

Bruce grades each barrel with this device he calls his color comparator.

But Bruce can even walk into a room and smell the grade of syrup!

I imagine you've had quite a few sugar highs.

[laughing] >>Well you can taste several hundred barrels in a day but you don't want to break for lunch.

It works good to sit down after about 15 minutes, have a glass of water, have a pickle, something that's sour >>There is nothing sour about this booming maple industry that is branching out across New England and Canada with liquid gold.

But it all began with a tree, something Arnold Coombs never forgets.

As a sugar maker, do you feel a connection with these trees?

>>Oh I do, especially there's a older tree out back and every time I tap it I just kind of give it a pat, you know, and every time I gather, it's like- thank you.

[laughing] You know they're giving up some sap for us, so I do appreciate that.

>>Although maple trees grow in Europe, Europeans were unaware of the potential uses of the sweet sap until colonists learned how to tap the trees from Native Americans.

When Britain imposed heavy taxes on sugar the maple sweetener became even more popular.

>>If you took a survey on favorite desserts, strawberries would certainly be near the top of the list.

Think about it, strawberry shortcake, strawberry tarts, strawberry pie.

Team up strawberries with rhubarb or lemon and you have even more choices.

Well, our Akiba Howard takes us to California where one farm family sees a sweet future in raising these ripe, red berries.

>>Enjoy a day at a fair or festival anywhere in the heartland and it's a good bet that strawberries will be a popular pick on the snack food menu.

That's certainly the case at this festival in Santa Maria, California: a town surrounded by fields of the bright, red berries.

Daren Gee knows a lot about strawberries.

He's been growing them for more than 25 years.

>>I think we did over 100 pallets for 'em on Tuesday.

>>Daren and his brothers raise hundreds of acres of strawberries with the help of some 12 hundred employees.

>>Everyone has a very important part to play, regardless of what portion of the business they're involved in.

If they can do that to the best of their ability they're gonna to help everyone else.

>>California leads the country in strawberry production with some 500 growers planting more than 35 thousand acres of berries.

Daren's DB specialty farms is located in the rolling hills of California's Central Coast which have an almost perfect climate for Strawberries.

>>We have one of the best weathers on the coast.

It's not too hot in the day and it's not too cold at night.

>>On this spring morning, Daren and his crew are harvesting strawberries to be shipped across the country and enjoyed on a very special Sunday.

>>We're getting ready for the Mother's Day pull and Mother's Day, as it turns out, is the number one strawberry day of the year.

>>Really?

>>Yeah, more strawberries are consumed on that day than any other day in the whole entire year.

>>Daren's crew is picking a strawberry variety called the Albion.

Daren and University of California plant breeder, Doug Shaw have worked together to foster new varieties.

They call it building a better berry.

>>The process of releasing a strawberry variety takes about seven years from the time we make a cross to the time we release it to the industry.

This is our primary seedling test plot.

This is the first stage of our field testing.

If you look out here, each one of these plants is a potential cultivar in our program.

>>Doug typically starts out with about 10,000 seedlings in the test plot which eventually researchers will narrow down to an ideal cultivar through cross breeding.

Once satisfied with their new breed, researchers create genetically identical copies of the plant otherwise known as runner plants.

>>If you look at Daren's field for example, and you look at the Albion cultivar, each one of those plants in his field traces to the runners that came from a single plant out here.

>>The technology and chemistry have vastly changed the industry in just one generation.

>>I think if you put somebody in a strawberry field that was a strawberry grower forty years ago, they wouldn't recognize it at all today.

>>We've had absolutely massive changes.

I mean the consumption of strawberries in the United States is definitely hard to believe, I mean last year we- we sold 172 million boxes of strawberries in the United States.

>>Which keeps Daren and his crew planting multiple strawberry crops year round.

>>Every one of these plants were hand planted.

Every single one of 'em.

We planted this year 16 million of them.

>>Out of the field, the strawberries are sent off to be cooled.

>>It's 85,000 square feet of cooling space.

We have to get them all the way down to 34 degrees, 33 degrees, as close to freezing as we possibly can without freezing them.

Then what we do is wrap 'em up in like a plastic and suck all the oxygen out and put CO2 in.

Now the C02 is to reduce the aging process.

>>And from there, they make their way to grocery stores as well as being shipped overseas.

>>California Giant markets these strawberries all over the United States, Canada and we're scheduled to go into France sometime in mid-May.

>>Research, planting, harvests and sales, challenges faced by farmers here and all across the heartland.

>>It's the challenge of dealing with nature and being successful at it because she's really competitive and then having a product that people can eat and enjoy and that's actually nutritious.

I love strawberries.

>>Lots of sweet and tasty things on the show this week, I am ready for dessert.

Hey, before we go let me remind you about our America's Heartland website.

You'll find video from all of our programs, recipes and lots of information about agriculture in America.

That's AmericasHeartland.org And if you like social media, you can connect to us through some of your favorite sites.

We'll see you next time right here on America's Heartland.

You can see it in the eyes of every woman and man In America's Heartland, livin' close to the land There's a love for the country And a pride in the brand In America's Heartland Livin' close... close to the land >>America's Heartland is made possible by... >>Farm Credit - Financing agriculture and rural America since 1916.

Farm Credit is cooperatively owned by Americas farmers and ranchers.

Learn more at FarmCredit.com >>CropLife America- Representing the companies whose modern farming innovations help America's farmers provide nutritious food for communities around the globe.

The Fund for Agriculture Education - A fund created by KVIE to support America's Heartland programming.

Contributors include the following: