Coming up on America's Heartland...
It's the perfect summer treat.
Fresh sweet peaches are the top crop at this family-owned farm, where the juicy fruit is picked, packed and marketed to customers around the world.
[Mike Thurlow] This is more than just a job.
It's our lifestyle.
It's our culture.
Meet a farmer whose family emigrated from India and settled in California's fertile Central Valley.
See why they say they've "found their home" in almonds.
[Mallvinder Kahal] We are currently distributing almonds all across the globe.
Demand for almonds is as strong as ever.
Farm to Fork host Sharon Profis takes you step by step through a Peach and Tomato Panzanella Salad recipe, with crispy shallots and homemade dressing.
[Sharon] The stars of our dish are the peaches and tomatoes that are in peak season right now.
We'll meet an Alaskan family who's built a flour factory right on their barley farm.
Discover why they are passionate about sustainable farming, healthy food products, and sharing their knowledge with other farmers.
[Bryce Wrigley] Farmers learn best by actually coming out to a field day and seeing what are you doing and how are you doing it?
It's all next- on America's Heartland!
America's Heartland is made possible by... ♪♪ ♪ You can see it in the eyes of every woman and man ♪ ♪ in America's heartland, living close to the land.
♪ ♪ There's a love for the country and a pride in the brand ♪ ♪ in America's heartland, living close, ♪ ♪ close to the land.
♪ ♪♪ When your family business is to grow, pick, pack, sell and ship stone fruit by the millions of pounds, you know a thing or two about cooking with peaches.
I'm Peggy.
I'm Alexandra, and this is The Kitchen at Summeripe.
Peach salsa, smoothies, even street tacos!
Just ask Alexandra Thurlow.
[Alexandra] My main day today is marketing and... and developing recipes with my mom, which is my favorite part.
This is home, and I really...
I really love working with my family.
Family is at the heart of Mountain View Fruit, founded in 1994 by a few area farm families with an eye on innovation.
Mike Thurlow is owner and CEO.
His wife, Peggy, and their two children, Alexandra and Michael, are involved in the day-to-day business of the company.
[Mike] So, my wife Peggy helps on the recipe development and logistics and entertainment.
My daughter Allie works in the media marketing department.
My son Michael, um, works in the sales office.
We wear many, many hats during the day.
It... it doesn't get boring, that's for sure.
Peaches are their biggest seller, but that's not all that's grown here.
[Mike] As soon as the sun comes up, we send out literally thousands of workers into all the fields throughout our area here.
And they're harvesting 25 different varieties of peaches and plums and white peaches and white nectarines.
So, the workers are highly skilled.
It is not unskilled labor at all.
Um, it's very difficult to be a good harvester.
They are trained to pick just the ripest fruit that's ready for harvest.
It's brought directly to the packing shed where it's washed and waxed, graded, sorted and packed into the particular package that's going to the retailers across the globe.
A fact that shocks many people is how many varieties we pack to give continuous supply to the chain stores across- and ultimately, our customers across the country.
They specialize in stone fruits at Mountain View Fruit, called stone fruit because of the large pits inside.
Most people think that the pit is the seed, but the seed is actually inside the pit or stone.
From picking to packing, each piece of fruit needs to be handled with care to avoid damage.
Many folks call this area "the world's fruit basket," and for good reason.
If you're talking crop value, in recent years, no county in the United States beats Fresno County.
In 2020, the county sold nearly $8 billion in high-value crops like stone fruits, nuts and citrus.
[Mike] Pretty much anything can grow here, but especially stone fruit.
Um, in probably as little of a seven mile circumference area around here, is what's considered the premier stone fruit land in the world.
It surprises some people when they find out where our fruit goes.
And I'm not talking about our personal fruit, but all the fruit from this area.
It goes all over the globe from the Middle East to cruise ships across the world to chain stores across the United States, to Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, New Zealand.
It's absolutely amazing where our fruit ends up.
We get proper dormancy.
We get, hopefully, enough rain.
Um, we get sun and plenty of heat to create the sugars.
So, this is the absolute perfect place to grow peaches and nectarines and plums and pluots and apricots and pretty much anything you can think of.
The region's climate gets most of the credit for its agricultural abundance.
Access to water and a hard-working migrant labor force are also critical factors.
[Mike] It's intensely rewarding to deliver a piece of fruit to a consumer's house that they associate with Summer.
Uh, that's why we named one of our labels "Summertime."
We want you to smell a peach or a nectarine and think of summertime.
Summertime in California's Central Valley means hot temperatures, often well over a hundred degrees.
It's hot work out here, and it's getting hotter, with growing concerns here about the impact of climate change.
[Mike] In the past, I'd say, 10 years, we've definitely noticed it's getting warmer here.
The stone fruit trees need cooler temperatures to rest in the winter, and they haven't been getting that in recent years.
Despite these challenges, the Thurlow family says there is nowhere else they'd rather be.
[Mike] I went away for a couple of years, but, you know, this is where home is.
Mike Thurlow's son Michael knows all about the uncertainty that comes with agriculture, but he's hopeful for the future.
[Michael] I saw my dad deal with hail, short crop, uh, long crop, I mean, just every imaginable problem that a farmer would face so, um, you know, he... he told a lot of people it's... it's not for the faint of heart, farming.
You know, the family farmer lifestyle seems to be becoming more difficult, so that's... that's, uh, a difficulty I see in the future.
But, um, you know, we... we've survived through the decades and we'll continue to do so.
There are lots of ingredients at work here at Mountain View Fruit: hard work, innovative ideas that increase efficiency and help the bottom line, reaching customers in new ways, and, of course, tasty, fresh fruit delivered year-round.
But Mike Thurlow has an idea as to what's really behind their success.
[Mike] This is more than just a job.
It's our lifestyle.
It's our culture.
We want it to be our children's culture as well.
So, we're here for the long haul.
♪♪ Peaches have a lot of good things going for them.
High in vitamin A and potassium, they're also a good source of dietary fiber.
Oh, and did I mention they were lucky?
Peaches originated in ancient China, where they were thought to have mystical attributes bringing good luck, abundance and protection The United States provides about a quarter of the world's supply of peaches, and there are some 700 varieties of peaches around the globe, including some varieties that are almost flat, like hockey pucks.
♪♪ [Mallvinder Kahal] You're making a commodity that people are going to eat, that's going to sustain people.
You know?
It is busy.
It is hard to sometimes sit down, take a breath.
But when you do get those times, I think that's when you absolutely appreciate everything you have going on.
Mallvinder Kahal is a second generation almond farmer in California's Central Valley.
He and his brother run their family's growing and packing operation on nearly 2500 acres of land across Madera County, in the heart of the Golden State.
The family's farm roots stretch back many years and many miles.
[Mallvinder] So, about 40 years ago, my parents immigrated from India.
Historically, they came from an area that was all farming.
Their parents and their parents before them were doing farming in the Punjab region in India.
And so, when they came out here, they were looking for opportunity, and farming was something that naturally attracted them, you know?
It was already a part of their heritage.
And so, slowly but surely, they settled in the Central Valley, and they bought their first farm well over 30 years ago.
They dabbled in a little bit of everything that California was doing at the time.
They did wine grapes, apples, peaches, pistachios.
But ultimately, I think we just kind of found our home in almonds.
It's what made the most sense to us.
Thanks to its Mediterranean climate, nearly all of the almonds Americans enjoy come from the Central Valley, and California supplies close to 80% of the world's almonds.
[Mallvinder] There are countless almond varieties, and each one of them has a different purpose, a different market.
The variety of almonds Mallvinder is harvesting today are called Monterey.
[Mallvinder] Harvest typically spans from August to the end of October.
You know, it's very time sensitive because we want to make sure when we go in, the nuts come completely off the tree.
And that's where our shakers come in.
They're grabbing the tree at the perfect speed, you know, for four- three to four seconds of shaking all the nuts off the tree.
And then it moves on to the next tree, and the next tree, and so on and so forth.
From there, we're able to collect the almonds and they're picked up, dropped into a cart, and then the cart takes them to an elevator and that elevator dumps them into these, uh, hopper trailers that are pulled by semis.
The almonds are then sent to the processing facility where they are cleaned, graded and packed.
[Mallvinder] We are currently distributing almonds all across the globe.
Demand for almonds is as strong as ever.
Rick Kushman of the Almond Board of California says that's because of all of the new ways these nuts are being used.
[Rick] Among all the products on Earth that get introduced every year, almonds are right at the top, and there's been 12,000 new products introduced with almonds just last year.
And all of them involve health, and that's one of the things that's really driving it.
[Mallvinder] You know, in the last decade, we've seen a lot of great trends in terms of how almonds are used from almond milk to almond butter.
I think people are really valuing the nutritional density that almonds provide and how it can be great alternatives to other food sources.
And so, we've seen an explosion of creative uses of almonds.
♪♪ Being a farmer requires you to be, you know, essentially, a jack of all trades.
You can't rely outsourcing every single thing in your operation, but I think farmers are used to that.
What can be challenging, even more so, is learning to adapt.
The world is constantly changing.
California, changing more so than a lot of other places.
[Rick] California farmers all face the same challenge, which is climate change and drought.
Almond growers, uh, have been funding research back into the 1980s.
In fact, uh, in the- in recent decades, they've increased their water efficiency, in essence, reduced the amount of water to grow the same amount of almonds, by 33%.
And we have a goal in the industry of another 25% by 2025.
And by all measures, we're on... we're on target.
So, they understand that water efficiency is huge and they try to be as sustainable as possible in everything they do.
[Mallvinder] So, the industry is always finding ways to be innovative on not letting anything go to waste.
The consumer eats the kernel, but there's also the shell, there's the hull, even those are recycled for things such as cow feed, bedding, amongst other uses.
Even when we're done with the orchard, you know, and it's reached the end of its lifecycle, we even recycle the tree itself.
We'll chip those trees and reincorporate 'em into the soil to provide value for the next crop coming in.
We try not to let a single thing go to waste.
[Rick] I would love for people, when they pick up an almond, to see a face like Mallvinder's and to understand, you know, the love that goes into it and the care for the land and the trees and everything else that goes into that product.
[Mallvinder] I think the future of California almonds is bright.
The fact of the matter is we're evolving.
We don't stop evolving.
We're providing a great product, and I think it only gets better from here on out.
♪♪ Ancient Pagans worshipped almonds as fertility charms.
Romans showered their newlyweds with them as a marriage blessing, and they were an important part of the economies of countries all around the Mediterranean.
Spanish missionaries brought almonds to the Americas.
They were first planted on the coast of California but the cooler climate inhibited their growth.
And when they were planted in the Golden State's Central Valley, almonds flourished.
Today, the area is one of the premier almond producing regions in the world, and I bet you didn't know that, botanically, almonds are stone fruits related to cherries, plums and peaches that are low in saturated fat and a good source of protein and potassium.
Still ahead on America's Heartland... Visit a barley farm in Alaska, where the long summer days and short growing season create ideal growing conditions for this crop.
The family behind the farm operates the only commercial flour mill in the state, churning out pancake mixes and other products.
But first, a panzanella salad made up of fresh peaches, tomatoes, and toasted bread.
We'll show you how to prepare this dish with your own dressing.
♪♪ Today, we're making a peach and heirloom tomato panzanella salad and it's a great way to use these ingredients when they're at their peak in the summertime, but in a slightly different way than maybe you have before.
A panzanella salad is an Italian dish that came about as a way to use day-old bread.
So, I'm just going ahead and slicing up this bread.
Actually, it doesn't really have to be a day old.
You can do what I'm doing now, which is toast the bread.
The drier it is, the more of those flavors it'll soak up.
What I'm looking for is about three cups total.
Now, I'll put them on a baking sheet.
So, it's going in plain like this.
I don't want them to start browning.
I just want them to dry out.
While the bread is toasting, let's make the dressing for this salad.
To get started, you'll need a cup of shallot oil- not typically something you can find in the grocery store, but something you can make really easily at home.
Here's how.
All you need is one cup of olive oil and three shallots.
Start by thinly slicing your shallots.
My favorite and the fastest way to do this is with a mandoline.
Once the shallots are sliced, it's time to fry.
Add the olive oil to a frying pan over medium high heat.
You can check to see if the oil is ready by adding a sliced shallot and seeing if it sizzles right away.
If it doesn't, wait a couple of minutes and try again.
Add the rest of the sliced shallots and use a slotted spoon or spatula to make sure they're all covered.
While the shallots cook, stay close to the pan.
It really only takes a few seconds to go from golden brown to burnt.
When they're crisp and golden, transfer the shallots to a paper towel for draining and reserve the now shallot-flavored oil for the dressing.
To this bowl, I'll add half a cup of lemon juice.
I have sherry vinegar here, I'll do a quarter cup of that.
A tablespoon and a half of balsamic vinegar, which is sweeter than sherry vinegar.
Of course, we want to keep balancing this out with some honey, some salt, and pepper.
Now, we'll start to drizzle in our shallot oil.
There are lots of ways to mix a dressing to get it emulsified, so all the ingredients come together as one.
But I find that this is just the most consistent way to do it- slowly drizzling in.
Our bread is toasted.
Our dressing is done.
Now, we just need to put together this salad.
The stars of our dish are the peaches and tomatoes that are in peak season right now.
And what I find is that oftentimes, especially when you're making something like a salad, ingredients that are at their peak in season just naturally go together really well.
So, peaches and tomatoes are a beautiful pairing.
Now, let's get into those heirloom tomatoes.
So, here, we'll use a little bit of that one.
I also have a gorgeous yellow heirloom tomato here.
♪♪ To add even more brightness to this dish, I'm adding a few different herbs here.
I have basil, and I love adding mint to my salads, and some chives.
You can mix it up, use whatever herbs you might have on hand.
Even parsley goes really nicely in this salad, but I love this combination of mint, basil and chives.
I'm going to add about half of that dressing we prepared.
We'll give it a toss and then I'll let it sit for about 10 minutes.
The bread will really start to soak up that dressing, and then any residual juices that start to release from those tomatoes and even those peaches.
And in our final step, I'll add four ounces of fresh baby arugula and get it coated with all those juices.
The more this sits, the more the tomatoes and the peaches start to release their juices and that's a good thing.
We want that.
And now, a couple final ingredients that really make this dish.
Burrata, this is a very soft mozzarella cheese.
And finally, we have the crispy shallots from when we made that shallot oil.
We'll sprinkle them right on top.
This is our nice textural crunch to this dish.
How beautiful is that?
This is our Peach and Tomato Panzanella Salad.
And now, all that's left to do is eat!
♪♪ ♪♪ [Laughing] It's breakfast time at the Wrigley farm, a scene playing out every morning on thousands of farms all across the heartland, a meal shared and cherished by Bryce Wrigley, wife Jan, son Milo, daughter-in-law Leah, and their kids Payton and Chett.
[Sound of griddle sizzling] What makes this breakfast unique?
Well, the hot cereal and pancakes are made from barley grown and harvested right here, on this 1700 acre farm about 100 miles outside Fairbanks.
What's more, the mixes are manufactured at the Alaska Flour Company, built by the Wrigleys in 2011, and also right here on the farm.
[Milo Wrigley] This is the only commercial flour mill in the state of Alaska.
We were farmers and this was a really big step for us to take on.
I realized that... that we have the potential to do something great.
The family says they built the flour mill for several reasons.
They wanted to grow this area's barley products beyond cattle feed, they wanted consumers to experience the health benefits of barley, and they wanted to provide a reliable Alaska-grown food source to consumers in the state and beyond.
[Bryce Wrigley] We really started getting focused, uh, hard on food security after we watched the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
We were just trying to market a crop that would become, uh, an alternative to hunger, in the event of an emergency.
And... and then, we find out that what we're building is actually really healthy for you.
[Jan Wrigley] When people understand our love for what we do, and the value of taking care of what we have will also benefit them... We are here to provide healthy food for them that we would do for our own families.
♪♪ That focus on helping others is also deeply rooted in the Wrigley's desire to help fellow farmers and the environment.
That means sustainable agriculture.
Since 2010, they've practiced "no-till," reducing soil disturbance and allowing residue from the previous harvest to remain on the soil.
Fallowed fields are planted with a mix of up to 15 cover crops during Alaska's short growing season.
Here are long rows of cover crop test plots, each planted with different species.
Cover crops feed the soil microbes that build organic matter and enhance soil health.
Healthier soils result in better barley harvests, and also help prevent carbon from entering the atmosphere.
[Bryce] To me, sustainability means just being able to have something that goes on perpetually and in perpetuity.
You're not, um, degrading the soil, so- and... and you're always looking for something to improve it.
If you want to try something but you're not sure you can afford it, try it on a small scale.
Bryce shares the benefits of sustainability at gatherings like this one, the third annual Soil Health Field Day, hosted by the Salcha-Delta Soil and Water Conservation District at the Wrigley's farm.
Here, soil experts like Jay Fuhrer offer hands-on demonstrations, showing farmers how no-till and cover crops reduce erosion, save water, protect the environment, and restore nutrients to the soil.
♪♪ This demonstration brings a smile.
Men's cotton briefs are buried for six weeks in different fields.
"Okay..." The "tighty whities" dug up in a no-till cover crop field are the most decomposed, a sure sign there's a lot of healthy microbes hard at work.
[Jay Fuhrer] We bring the... the full array, the full complement, a full suite of soil health practices.
I think we, at the end of the day, we'll... we'll have a much more sustainable future for everyone.
[Jim Eastwood] I think we're still learning and it's a curve that you learn, but, uh, we're coming along, I think.
[Bryce] Farmers learn best by actually coming out to a field day and seeing what are you doing and how are you doing it?
Because I've always been one that, not only did I want to do things that were good, but I also wanted to make sure that other people could... could learn from me.
It's all part of the values shared by the Wrigleys and many other farmers: a desire to leave the land in better shape than how they found it, and a hope that the next generation will be able to continue this noble profession.
[Bryce] We want this farm to be not only available for Milo's generation, for our son's generation, but for his kids.
And we hope that this continues.
[Jan] Every day, we come out here and look out at our fields and what we have, and we just, you know, we realize we're very blessed and fortunate.
♪♪ Agriculture may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Alaska.
However, there are more than 800,000 acres of farmland in the state.
Root vegetables like potatoes, beets and carrots do especially well in Alaskan soil.
Berries also grow abundantly in vast wilderness areas.
Although the Alaska blueberry is often top of the list, there are nearly 50 varieties of edible berries that grow in the great land.
That's it for this edition of America's Heartland.
For more stories, full episodes and recipes, visit americasheartland.org or connect with us on Facebook.
♪ You can see it in the eyes of every woman and man ♪ ♪ in America's heartland, living close to the land.
♪ ♪ There's a love for the country and a pride in the brand ♪ ♪ in America's heartland, living close, ♪ ♪ close to the land.
♪ America's Heartland is made possible by... ♪♪
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