- [Narrator] Coming up on "America's Heartland".

When the leaves turn yellow and the air grows crisp, it's time for this fall crop, persimmons.

Meet a farm family that's been growing this golden fruit for more than a century.

- Some of the persimmon trees that we have on the property are from that original planting.

- [Narrator] Health expert Dr. Daphne Miller unpacks all the nutritional benefits of eating persimmon fresh from the tree or served in a dish.

Farm to Fork host Sharon Profis demonstrates how to make a seared skirt steak with an olive tapenade - The key to a delicious skirt steak is for it to have a nice crust on the outside, dark brown, and pink in the middle.

- [Narrator] Plus, see what it takes to start a small farm in California.

These two farmers share their ups and downs and why they have a passion for growing culturally relevant produce.

We'll also tour a chile farm in the Arizona desert where fresh chiles are transformed into sauces and paste.

- We still do everything a little bit by hand in that, that we see the chile, we smell the chile, we taste the chile all the time.

- It's all coming up next on "America's Heartland".

"America's Heartland" is made possible by (bright music) ♪ 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 ♪ (warm music) (gentle music) - This is my home, this is Twin Peaks Orchards.

We are an 80 acre orchard located in the foothills of Placer County.

So we're in Newcastle and we've been here since 1912.

- [Narrator] The colors of fall leaves and fruit paint these rolling hills with crimson and gold.

Camelia Enriquez Miller is the fourth generation to farm this sun kissed land, made sweeter with the help of her husband, Justin Miller, working side by side every day of the year.

The Millers grow dozens of varieties of fruit trees, filling the air with the smell of handpicked peaches and plums, nectarines, and citrus alongside their best seller, persimmons.

Camelia's great grandparents first farmed this land, planting their family roots and persimmons more than a century ago.

- When they came over from Japan, when my great-grandfather and grandmother came over from Japan, they came to scout the land out first.

My grandfather went back to Japan and brought back things that he wanted to grow, one of 'em being persimmons.

So we grow four varieties of persimmons and we grow one variety in particular that's very special to our farm called an Amagaki.

That's a name that my grandfather gave this persimmon to differentiate between all the other persimmons out in the market.

Some of the persimmon trees that we have on the property are from that original planting.

- [Narrator] Generation after generation has been perfecting persimmons, the life source for the family farm since day one.

With roots that run so deep, they would one day save their sacred space.

You cannot buy an Amagaki persimmon tree.

It was created here through many years of experimentation and cross-breeding.

- There are going to be some older Japanese farmers that are familiar with that process and there's a couple other farms that do a similar process.

There's only two that I know of, one in Spain and one in India.

- [Narrator] The Amagakis are picked and shipped within 48 hours.

At the peak of harvest, more than a ton of persimmons are packed in and out each day.

- How much does a tree produce?

- That's a good question, it depends on the age of the tree, the size of the tree, how the tree's been maintained.

But we can usually get about 400 pounds off of a mature persimmon tree.

- Geez.

- 400 pounds and if we have a couple thousand trees, that's a lot of fruit.

- These Hachiya persimmons are being transformed into cookies and pies from a member of the third generation of this farm.

Tell me about Carol.

- Carol is third generation, she grew up here on the farm.

She probably has the most farm knowledge and she's in here.

- Come on in.

- Making goodies in the kitchen.

This is what she does.

- Good to see you.

- Good to see you.

I see you all the time.

- Well, it's nice to see you in person.

- Yes.

- And what are you doing?

- [Narrator] Carol's food is phenomenal, but her favorite place, the sweet spot of her family's farm, is the memorial to her ancestors.

- There's a certain thing that you've gotta have.

My grandmother taught me, my dad taught me.

And there's a certain thing that you gotta have in your soul that says get off your butt and work.

- Camelia bought Twin Peaks Orchards from her parents in August of 2020.

One month later, she almost lost it all.

During the height of the COVID pandemic and the 100 degree scorching summer heat, the centerpiece of the family farm, their beloved historic barn burned to the ground.

It was a total loss destroying the processing plant, cold storage, and all of the farming equipment.

- This was the time when we were going out with like a bang, right?

I mean this is the big harvest before the end of the season.

So we were full of fruit, we had customer commitments, we had a full staff.

The fire happens, we don't know what we're gonna do.

If we didn't continue, the fruit's still gonna ripen.

There's still fruit that needs to be harvested.

- [Narrator] And guess what fruit?

The Amagaki, ripe and ready to harvest.

The trees that have stood the test of time would save Camelia's treasured Twin Peaks.

- The community really pulled together to get us through that summer harvest because without that persimmon crop, without this Amagaki crop, our farm would be done.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Today, Twin Peaks Orchards is thriving, even becoming 100% certified organic.

Camelia leads the way with her husband, Justin, Aunt Carol, and a dedicated team by her side.

She wouldn't have it any other way.

- I want something to hand down.

I want this to be my legacy too.

(bright music) - Hello, I'm Dr. Daphne Miller and today you're finding me in the beautiful Sierra Foothills at the Twin Peaks farm.

You can probably guess what color I have on my mind today.

Orange, I'm seeing this in the gorgeous persimmons and the mandarins.

I'm also seeing it in the leaves all around me.

And as an eater, I'm so excited to bite into one of these orange fruits and taste it.

(fruit crunching) Mm, that is perfect.

Oh, there's also these little jujubes, which are known as Chinese dates.

But I have to say as a doctor, I'm also super excited about this orange because what it represents is a whole class of nutrients called carotenoids.

You've probably heard of like beta-carotene or lutein.

And these are super important for our health.

They aren't made inside our body.

We need to get them in our diet from fruits, vegetables, or from animals who've eaten those fruits and vegetables.

So when I'm looking at one of these beautiful fruits, I'm thinking, what is the value of this over going to a pharmacy, let's say, and walking down the aisle of your local drugstore and buying a supplement like lutein or beta-carotene?

And the answer to me is pretty obvious.

I mean, when you eat a fruit, obviously you're getting something delicious, full of flavor that you can slice up and cook and eat in a whole variety of ways.

So you're getting the pleasure of the fruit, but you're also getting this perfectly packaged series of supplements, possibly hundreds of them, that are put together by nature in this perfect way that we can digest them.

So this big family of carotinoids has beta-carotene, which in your body, in your liver gets converted to vitamin A.

And as we know, vitamin A is super important for our bones and other parts of our health.

It also has these other nutrients, lutein and zeaxanthin and these are important for lots of different things, but particularly for our vision and our brain.

And lutein is actually that nutrient that you need in order to be able to hit a ball or stay on balance or I really care about it these days because it helps you drive in the dark and I'm finding that more and more challenging.

So we also need at least 25 grams of fiber a day as adults to help us with our digestion and to grow the good bacteria in our gut.

And these persimmons are super rich in fiber as well.

Persimmon are great lunch foods 'cause you can eat them like an apple so you can just throw them whole in a lunchbox and there will be a unique, delicious fruit.

In terms of getting that daily dose of beta-carotene that I talked about, one sliced persimmon over a couple cups of let's say spinach in a salad will pretty much get you there.

So I'm super excited to go home and start including these persimmons in my daily salad.

Thanks for joining me at Twin Peaks Farm, where we just learned all the different ways that a farm can be medicine.

- [Narrator] Still ahead on "America's Heartland", join us as we tour a chile farm in the Arizona desert where chile sauce is made right on site.

Plus what does it take to start a small farm these days, lots of trial and error as these two farmers are discovering.

But first, our Farm to Fork host Sharon Profis shows you how to cook a perfectly seared skirt steak that makes for an easy weeknight meal.

(upbeat music) - On a weeknight, when I don't have a lot of time, I love making a simple skirt steak.

Today we're making it with a crunchy olive tapenade and it really only takes a few ingredients.

So let's get started.

First we'll begin by seasoning the skirt steak.

We'll just use a little bit of salt and pepper.

Skirt steak is a pretty thin cut of meat so it doesn't need a lot of time for the seasoning to really start to sink in.

Just be very generous with your salt.

It may seem like a lot.

This is kosher salt so it's not as salty as table salt.

And then we will hit it with a little bit of pepper.

(upbeat music) We will give us about 15 minutes while we make our olive tapenade.

I'll wash my hands and be right back.

Now let's get started on that tapenade.

For this, we will actually begin by dicing our shallots.

We'll do a few horizontal slices through very much like slicing an onion.

We get these beautiful little teeny tiny, diced pieces of shallot.

Before we juice this lemon, I want to make the most of it.

So I'm actually going to zest it.

Remember, you only want the very outer part of the lemon skin.

Then we will take our lemon.

I like squeezing it over a little strainer like this to catch all of the seeds.

I have two types of olives today I have Kalamata olives.

These are the briniest and saltiest of the olives.

And then I have Castelvetrano olives, arguably some of the best olives on earth, buttery, a little bit briny, and we're just going to roughly chop them.

This does not have to be perfect.

What you want to look out for for this dish in particular is that they are packed in brine rather than olive oil.

Get it in the bowl.

Now let's add our parsley.

You always want to make sure that when you're making a sauce to go with any meat, that you have a nice fresh herb.

(knife cutting) Perfect, that was half a bunch of parsley going in.

Now I said this was a crunchy tapenade.

And that crunch is going to come from hazelnuts.

Rough chop here.

These are already roasted, which just gives you even more depth of flavor.

Our hazelnuts are ready to join the party.

Last ingredient and don't freak out, but we're putting anchovies in here.

Anchovies add an umami flavor to dishes.

I promise this will not taste fishy at all.

So two filets packed in oil.

Give it a nice small, small, small, small chop.

We basically have a rough paste that goes in.

The olives and the anchovies are salty so you don't need to add a lot more salt.

But about half a teaspoon is going to bring it all to life.

And then a few turns of black pepper.

And finally, this is a sauce after all, so the olive oil, let's mix it up and see how it turned out.

We'll let this sit and have all the flavors hang out together while we finish up our skirt steak.

The key to a delicious skirt steak is for it to have a nice crust on the outside, dark brown and pink in the middle, I'm going to dab these steaks.

Before they go inside, we have to add oil, brush the outside with oil before it hits the pan.

I have this pan on high heat and now it's time to add the steaks.

(steak sizzling) And after each side has had about three to four minutes to cook, I'll check to see if they're ready.

(steaks sizzling) These look perfect.

We achieved exactly what we wanted, so we'll transfer them to this plate to rest for about 10 minutes before we serve our dish.

We got such a beautiful exterior on these skirt steaks.

I'm going into the steak this way and as we start to slice in, you can see we got a beautiful, medium, medium rare finish.

Now let's serve this dish.

I will transfer our steak over to this plate.

We'll get our crunchy olive tapenade right on top.

(upbeat music) Who said you can't have a fancy meal on a weeknight?

This is our seared skirt steak with a crunchy olive tapenade.

And now all that's left to do is eat.

(upbeat music) (gentle music) - Now what happened here on our tomatoes is essentially we had an overabundance of tomatoes.

- Yep right, mistakes.

- [Narrator] Dilip Sharma and Hektor Calderon's farm is very small, just two acres.

So the challenges and setbacks for these first time growers are a sort of microcosm for what millions of bigger farmers across the US deal with every day, every year.

- Everyone has tomatoes and the challenge of farming is we can't sell everything we grow.

So that's what we are looking at here.

- [Narrator] This year they planted too many tomato varieties too late in the season.

They battled weeds, prices fell, and there was an early frost.

Tomatoes couldn't be sold and got left on the vine.

Lessons learned and they hope applied to next season.

- The focus should be all right, so I figured out this is a problem this year.

So next year how we'll approach it differently.

How are we gonna farm different?

So we are innovating or we are experimenting and we are adapting, we're changing.

- [Narrator] Learning from mistakes, trying new things.

Innovation is the essence of American ingenuity and agriculture.

Innovation and ingenuity are what these two farmers share.

Dilip from his other job in high tech, Hektor from many years working as both a farm hand and farm organizer helping diverse growers start their own farms.

- There are different types of producers.

There's Black and natives and Indians and Mexicans and Vietnamese folks who are producing our food daily and are making these very much so amazing types of crops that sometimes aren't really showcased.

- [Narrator] And showcasing those unique crops is what Three Feathers Farm is all about.

In the field, Dilip and Hektor are harvesting curly and dino kale and broccolini.

Here in the greenhouse, they're gathering seeds from test plots, everything from bitter gorge to frog melon, specialty crops that are favorites in the Indian and Mexican cultures that are part of Dilip and Hektor's heritage.

- And next year we are hoping to plant them and grow and be able to sell it a community.

It'll be a produce a community can enjoy.

- [Narrator] But selling culturally relevant crops to their own communities is just part of the goal.

Dilip and Hektor want consumers from all backgrounds to discover their bounty of organic products.

One way is at farmer's markets, but they're also working closely with local farm to table restaurants like Mohi in the nearby town of Morgan Hill.

- One of the number one, almost like cornerstones of this restaurant is we want to be part of community.

And community means supporting other members in that community.

Whatever we can do to help these local farmers, we're gonna be there to lend a hand.

- I think that makes sense then.

- Yeah, we should dry farm just to do the experimentation thing.

- [Narrator] A modest farm perhaps.

But the two men who work this land have big goals and dreams to connect with the many diverse communities here, to grow sustainably, and to help both underserved and mainstream consumers experience the fruits of their labor.

- The big takeaway here for folks to hear is that we exist, this is a viable business and it can be as long as you put the effort and you really lean on the community that you are hoping to foster and cultivate here.

- There has to be more of a story behind where our food's coming from and who we wanna work with.

And I know that these are the stories that our guests love to hear.

- And I hope in long term my children will look to farming as an option.

I feel like the generation has lost a connection to food, the connection to the land, connection to the farmers, connection to the mother earth.

But that's something I want to instill in my children that, look, this is where the food comes from.

We've gotta take care of the land.

(warm music) (gentle music) (speaking Spanish) - [Narrator] It's a warm afternoon in the arid desert landscape of Arizona.

But here on Ed Curry's farm, it's always chile.

Ed spends a lot of time in what you might call a heated conversation with his workers.

Together they're careful attending long rows of chile plants with a single goal in mind, creating the perfect pepper.

- It's a very tedious, slow process, the breeding, but it's also very, very rewarding because it's our babies.

- [Narrator] Those babies include more than 200 acres of chile peppers of all kinds.

Ed's parents started the farm in 1957.

He spent more than three decades carefully pollinating and cross-breeding peppers.

- My dad taught me the beauty of farming and the love for it and doing a good job.

My mom taught me the side of always improving something and always trying to make it better.

- [Narrator] Today Ed's helping cover these plants with a fine mesh to make sure his careful pollination efforts aren't diluted by a random bee or butterfly.

The careful science and hard work seem to be paying off.

A significant portion of all the chiles grown in the US can trace their spicy roots back to Ed's farm.

- I always kinda lean to making sure that we do things that give our growers really good yields where they can be profitable, but ultimately it's all based around are we given a flavor?

- We still do everything a little bit by hand in that, that we see the chile, we smell the chile, we taste the chile all the time.

- [Narrator] That flavor is what appeals to Jeanie Neubauer.

She's the owner of Santa Cruz Chile and Spice Company.

It was started by her father 70 years ago.

As her business grew, she went looking for a place to build a bigger factory.

She says Ed had a hot idea, build the plant right in the middle of his chile field.

(upbeat music) Each year she uses more than a half million pounds of just pitched peppers to make chile paste and other products.

(lively music) - What people expect from Santa Cruz Chile Paste is a consistent flavor, a consistent color, and a consistent heat level, and he's always been able to provide that for me.

- [Narrator] Speaking of heat, Ed's happy to roast up some peppers and fire up a recipe.

In this case, cheese filled chile rellenos.

(food sizzling) And maybe he'll show you the biggest green chile pepper on earth.

This bad boy weighs two thirds of a pound.

- Will you ever eat it?

No, it's a trophy.

(both laughing) - [Narrator] A certified Guinness World Record.

- This is scotch bonnet or habanero, this is a Thai pepper, very hot, this is a cascabella, some of 'em call 'em Yellow Hots.

This is a Fresno, red jalapeno hot, this is a sorano.

This is ancho, this is jalapeno.

- Walk the fields with Ed and you'll learn that it's not the chile seeds that create the heat.

It's the oil inside the plant called capsaicin.

- [Ed] So this oil right here, and we judge how hot a pepper is by how far down it goes, - [Narrator] Even after 30 years, Ed says this vast landscape and fertile soil continue to fire his imagination and keep his enthusiasm running at a fever pitch.

- It's been a real blessing to be involved in something that you could change an industry.

I feel like for the most part we've been able to help our fellow man.

And at the end of the day, isn't that what it's about?

(warm music) - [Narrator] 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 ♪ - [Narrator] "America's Heartland" is made possible by.

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