- [David] "A Fork in the Road" was brought to you by.

- [Announcer] From produce to people, the best things are grown and raised in Georgia.

Even in tough times, we come together, work hard, and grow strong.

When you purchase Georgia-grown products, you support farmers, families, and this proud state we call home.

Together, we will keep Georgia growing.

♪ Picture perfect ♪ ♪ Paint a picture on the wall ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ I see you shine from afar ♪ ♪ Yet to me you are the star ♪ ♪ All right, baby ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ Feels good, feels right ♪ ♪ Get the feeling, pass it on ♪ ♪ Just pass it on ♪ ♪ Na, na, na, na, na, na ♪ - The fascinating and ever-changing world of agriculture.

Let's hit the road here in Georgia and meet the farmers, producers, makers, and bakers who keep us all fed and keep us coming back for more.

Straight ahead at "The Fork in the Road."

♪ Mm, mm ♪ ♪ Mm, mm ♪ ♪ I came from the mud ♪ ♪ There's dirt on my hands ♪ ♪ Strong like a tree ♪ ♪ There's roots where I stand ♪ - [David] Georgia farmers, artisans, merchants, and producers, we depend on these men and women every day of our lives through the choices we make and the food we consume.

Their strategy and approach is always shifting, but the endgame remains the same, results.

(gentle guitar music) Georgia is a state known worldwide for its agricultural excellence and superiority.

The Peach State is also home to the Vidalia onion, the watermelon capital of the world down in Cordele, and even by popular acclaim, the grits capital of the world.

So that's a lot of titles for one state to boast, but there's one product that grows in Georgia's rich soil that accounts for over half of all that comes out of the entire US of A, and that's the Georgia peanut.

In this episode, we begin a two-part series to learn all about the peanut, its uses, its benefits, those who roast, those who grind, the ones who inspect, and of course, the hardworking peanut farmers who grow this amazing legume.

Let's begin this episode down in Byromville, where a talented peanut partnership shares a wealth of knowledge about this important Georgia crop.

(gentle guitar music) So much of of farming is instinct augmented by study and research, experience, or just understanding the land where you work.

Howard James knows this land, these crops, and has that natural instinct of knowing how to make things grow and grow well.

Fellow farmer David Leary has partnered with Howard to grow a variety of crops on this beautiful farm, from rows and rows of muscadine and cabbage to bright orange persimmons that flourish in this fertile soil.

However, this visit was all about the peanut, and these two gentlemen were a pleasant company and delivered a wealth of knowledge.

(upbeat music) - I'm David Leary.

I grew up farming about three, four miles to the east.

Farming was put into me, so to speak.

(laughs) It was kind of forced into me, but I do it because I love it.

It's not all about making a whole lot of money all the time.

I look at farming as I'm feeding America, and if I'm able to feed America, and America is not hungry, I've done my purpose.

- Howard James.

I'm the third generation of this farm.

It's been in the family since the 1800s, and my father sold it to me.

I got two names.

One is just James Farm, and the other one is Jibb's Vineyard.

Jibb's covers the fruits and vegetables, which is muscadines, plums, peaches, watermelons, collards, turnips, mustard, rutabagas, cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower, and on top of that, peanuts and cotton.

- [David] I think it's amazing how much you do.

(Howard laughs) - All of that was part of the workforce of us growing up.

So out of eight kids, I'm the only one that had the desire to farm.

I knew at five years old I wanted to farm, so I didn't have to decide on it.

I didn't have to worry about it or think about it.

It was just naturally something I wanted to do.

(laid-back music) - This is peanuts, and the stage that we're at right now is within about seven to 10 days from actually digging.

We're kind of waiting on a rain.

You run the irrigation to keep it healthy, but when you get the rain from above, it's like you go from a peanut being the small size of your pinky, and then it rains, and all of a sudden, that peanut is that big.

It just swells up after you get the rain.

- This is a variety called 06G, which is pretty popular.

It's probably 90% of the peanuts grown in Georgia.

Growing up around peanuts, it's like an intuition where you can look at the vine.

You can see the change in the texture of it and the looks of it.

You can see that there's some brown in here, but the most thing we're looking for is the color of this stem here.

It goes from green to more like yellow-green, and that's an indication that it's reaching its peak.

We wanna get the maximum grade out of this peanut.

Peanuts are graded, and anything above 70 is considered acceptable.

Anything below 70 is considered immature.

Well, we like to hit 74, 76, 78, anywhere in that neighborhood.

You get a premium price for your peanuts, and you're being docked for immaturity.

So that's kind of what we're after.

This peanut here, the old people would call it a mother peanut because it's so far advanced ahead of the others.

Now, all vines won't have one.

It's just maybe in this whole field, you might only find 100 mother peanuts.

But right here, you see that orange-brown?

That's immature.

You see the difference in the two?

- [David] Yeah.

- This one is more mature, and this one is less mature.

What we're looking for as close as possible to what they call black beauty.

A black beauty is one that's completely black.

We wanna get as many as we can toward that dark color without losing the oldest ones.

See, eventually the old peanut is gonna wind up just like the mother peanut.

So we wanna get it before that happens but at the same time bring as many of the immature ones into the category of mature.

- These peanuts here, once we harvest them, we take 'em to the buying point, which is Birdsong.

From there, they could end up for peanut butter.

They could also end up in your little peanut snacks that they give you.

You really don't know until you get here with the tractor and the digger, and you start turning it over, and that gives you hope.

Your hope is here just looking at fields like, yeah, man, it's gonna be, we're gonna have a good crop.

But then, you know, once it gets to the buying point, and they grade 'em, and you get that 72 or 78, that's when like, yeah, we had a good crop.

We depend a lot on God.

We always say we do our part.

We make sure that we plant on time.

We spray as far as for weeds and weed control.

You just don't get out there and do this.

It's a lot of faith.

You gotta have faith in what you do.

♪ Mm ♪ - [David] So let's take a step back to the seeds of life when it comes to peanuts.

And for that, we journey to the Georgia Department of Agriculture's Seed Laboratory in Tifton.

(enchanting music) So I never knew a place like this existed, but I'm glad it does.

And once I stepped foot inside, I had no clue what to expect.

And what I found was nothing short of fascinating.

Time to explore the seed lab with DeeDee and discover this amazing laboratory that tests the seeds of life.

(uplifting music) - My name is Dedria Smith.

I am the director for the state seed lab for the Georgia Department of Agriculture.

We test everything from December till about the 1st of May, mid-May.

We test approximately 12,500 peanut samples in this lab.

It's everybody in this room doing their part to accomplish that 'cause that's a lot of samples in a short period of time.

This is our receiving room for our seed laboratory samples.

We have three different types of samples that come in here.

We have official samples, service samples, and certified samples.

Our official samples are pulled by our state inspectors that work for the Department of Agriculture.

Our service samples could be any farmer or gardener or anybody that walks through the front door and says, "Hey, I got this seed.

Will you test them for me?"

Sure we will.

And that's the service we perform for the consumers in the state of Georgia at no charge for a farmer.

Our certified samples are in conjunction with Georgia Crop Improvement Association.

They manage the certification program for all crop kinds.

It's to make sure that we're putting a top-quality product in the marketplace for the consumers and the agriculture industry for the state of Georgia.

This is where our samples come from, the courier here for our ongoing and outgoing.

This is our germination lab, and in this lab is where we actually prepare in the sample.

For every sample we test of peanuts, we test 200 seed.

We do eight reps by 25 seed.

So those towels are wet with an Ethephon solution to promote uniformity and germination and to break seed dormancy.

Once those samples are prepared, they go into our walk-in chambers here.

We have four walk-in chambers.

What we have up here, right up here, is called a humidistat.

So that's on a timer, and it just pushes in moisture occasionally into this chamber.

And you can see it just came on.

These samples have been in the chamber for four days, five days, and you can see the growth as they're growing.

You look for abnormalities.

You wanna know what's a normal seedling, an abnormal seedling.

On this towel, we had all of these, and you can see we had a few that didn't do anything but grow a little bit of mold.

You have one here, this is called Aspergillus niger, and the green mold is called Aspergillus flavus, which causes aflatoxin.

And here you see some more abnormalities.

You can see where you had that little bit of mechanical damage here, and this seed is trying to grow a new root.

We record the percentage of normals off of all of our reps. We report the percentage of germination to the company.

To be sold as a peanut in the state of Georgia, it has to germinate 70%.

To be sold as a class of certified seed, it has to germinate 75 or better.

- [David] And those shady seeds that you hear about that sometimes come in the mail will most likely come here to be tested.

They have the tools here and the knowledge and experience to know what seed is what, what seed is healthy.

- This is a herbarium.

Thousands and thousands and thousands of different kinds of seed, vegetables and watermelons and cantaloupe and cucumbers and rapes and radishes.

And we have a vast majority of everything that we normally see and deal with.

This is a squash, and that's actually only at seven days, and you can see how healthy it is.

And on this one, we have cucumbers.

This is a turnip, if you like turnips, and here we got some cabbage, some red cabbage.

This is an annual ryegrass.

This is a cool-weather grass.

You see that used a lot in the northern counties of Georgia.

So most people that you see that has a beautiful lawn in the wintertime, this is what they have, this or a type of fescue of some kind.

This is a brown top millet sample, which is used for forage grass.

Animals graze on it and feed our cattle so we can eat some T-bone.

This is what all the ladies are in here doing.

They're planting peanuts.

And then Ms. Terry, if you wanna watch something different, she's planting some pelleted tomato seed.

A lot of hybrid tomato seed are very expensive, and these companies only send us a very minimal amount.

She uses that vacuum system.

She places the seed on there, and the rolling process is the same as the peanut.

You cover it with two towels for the adequate moisture, and then she's gonna roll it up.

(intense music) And here, Marilyn is planting some actual fescue seed.

That's actually a creeping red fescue.

And on that head, there's exactly 50 holes.

You want adequate moisture.

You want 'em spread out throughout the testing period.

It makes it easier on the evaluation phase when you're looking at what's normal, what's abnormal, and what's dead, to make your germination percentage analyses.

This is a Bermuda grass sample, and this is a blower.

And what it does is this seed you see bouncing around in here, it blows the lighter seed, maybe a glume or a piece of trash or a small stick or some dirt.

It's gonna blow it up that tube and down into this cup.

(metal clangs) And you can see how it's a very clean sample.

She's got one piece of very light trash that blew over in there, and that's it.

So it's a really clean sample.

Judy's our other certified analyst.

She's actually on this screen.

She's preparing a test to be evaluated tomorrow.

She's doing a TZ test, which is a tetrazolium test, on a Pensacola bahiagrass.

She has to take that Pensacola seed and slice it right down the middle of the embryo.

So you can see here where you see this nice red, even stain, that's the embryo of this grass seed.

So that's a very normal seed right there.

And this is her abnormal section.

So when you see this white spot, and you don't see that nice, red uniform stain throughout that embryo, that would be classified as an abnormal seed.

Oats come in two different colors, yellow and white.

Every oat sample has to be brought into this room and put up under the black light.

So our analyst has to bring their sample in here, and they're physically going to separate what's white oats to what's yellow oats.

A lot of times, you can see the yellow cast of the seed.

We can turn the lights on.

- [David] Oh wow.

- [Dedria] Makes a big difference, huh?

- [David] Yeah.

- But you see, that would be my yellow oat, and that would be my white oat.

(tranquil music) When you're talking about buying seed in the state of Georgia, we try to encourage farmers to buy certified seed because when you're buying certified seed, you're buying that seed that has a higher standard.

It's required higher germination standards, higher purity standards, to be sold as a class of certified seed.

So you may pay a little bit more for it, but you're getting a lot better quality.

- [David] So the seeds come here if they want that certification, and the folks here make sure that the title is earned.

A fascinating and essential lab in the heart of farm country.

♪ Mm, mm-mm ♪ - [David] We continue our nutty journey in the small town of Oglethorpe and meet the hardworking farming family of Chase Farms.

(upbeat music) Down here in Oglethorpe, peanut farming is just a way of life.

You don't ever really retire.

You just change responsibilities.

- We're here today at Chase Farms in Oglethorpe.

We're right on the banks of the Flint River.

And I farm together with my parents, Glen Lee and Ellen Chase, and my wife, Michelle Chase.

And we're here in one of our peanut fields before they get harvested this week.

- [David] Who's this?

- [Donald] This is Ginger.

Hey, girl.

- [David] And Ginger does?

- Ginger eats peanuts (David and Donald laugh) and keeps me company all hours of the day and night when I'm working, and that's kind of cool.

- [David] Hey, Ginger.

Growing and growing successfully is just one part of the peanut process.

For starters, different farmers grow for different purposes, for consumption or for shelling.

(laid-back music) - [Donald] Georgia produces a little over half of the peanuts grown.

- [David] Over 50% of peanuts grown in the US.

- The predominant market types are a runner type, which are used in peanut butter and in some candies.

But the important thing about peanuts, and I've told people this for a long time, that it takes heat, humidity, and gnats to grow good peanuts.

(record scratching) Now, the gnats is sort of superfluous, but if you've been to South Georgia, you know there are gnats, and it's that sandy soil.

So in a way, the gnats are important, okay.

But that heat and the fact that we get thunderstorms all summer long, and that keeps our soil temperatures cool, and we've got a good long growing season, that is what is critical in making a flavorful peanut that we can produce here in Georgia.

- [David] So we're looking out beyond.

We see all kinds of peanuts there, and there's a reason why they're sitting like this.

- [Donald] Yes, that's true.

We dig them and invert them when they're at their peak maturity, trying to maintain the highest level of maturity without those oldest peanuts sprouting.

So we have dug them, and now they'll sit for two or three days.

We actually dug these yesterday.

Then we'll come and harvest them and which is taking the pods off of the vines.

And the vines stay right here for fertilizer.

And then the pods are sold, in our case, as peanut seed.

(gentle upbeat music) - [David] And tell me why that's important.

- [Donald] There is no real difference in a seed peanut and one that is in mixed nuts or is in peanut butter.

But we do a lot to preserve the identity of it and to make sure that we don't damage the germination in them in our curing process.

And additionally, we're wanting to make sure they have a good calcium so they can be a good seed for someone else next year.

So there are a few minor differences.

- [David] And what's the danger of leaving them out too long?

- We don't want these peanuts to dry out too quickly because if that skin slips off, and the nut breaks in two, it no longer is a seed.

It's just a peanut.

And it takes both halves of that seed to make a peanut plant grow next year.

And it turns out that splits work really well in the peanut butter-making process because it allows for maybe better roasting.

And that's good because we want a good, flavorful peanut butter so people will continue to buy Georgia peanut butter.

(upbeat guitar music) All peanuts are taken to a central buying point where they're cured.

We try to harvest our peanuts at about 18% moisture.

And for commercial sale of peanuts, we need to have that moisture down at 10.49% so they will store properly all winter long till we use them next year.

So we do all our own drying and curing, and then we sort the peanuts out.

Some farmers do this.

Some farmers don't.

At some point, though, all peanuts are cured and sampled for the proper moisture, and then they go into storage somewhere, most likely in Georgia.

- [David] All right, what's going on here?

- Well, I'm gonna stick this down in the load so that I see the moisture throughout the load.

So we probe this down through there and then get a sample.

Whether they do it at a buying point, or I do it myself, this is the way it happens.

And so then Michelle is gonna shell those peanuts and get me a moisture level on 'em, and I'll know whether or not to turn the dryers off.

- [David] Ellen, how long you been doing this?

- About 30 years.

- [David] 30 years, how fun is that?

- Well, I really do enjoy it.

I know people say, "You driving the combines?"

But I enjoy it very much.

- [David] Yeah, and you can drive with no hands.

- No hands.

- No hands.

How's all this work?

You have so many controls and buttons.

You're following GPS here.

- It's programmed in, you know, for the whole season.

They plant with the GPS.

Then my son does all the spraying during the seasons, and then we harvest with the same settings.

- [David] So you're just picking up.

These have been drying for a few days.

- [Ellen] Right, it's been about three days.

This year, they go through the combine really well.

- [David] You're not the only one driving out here.

We see the others out there.

- No, my husband's over there.

- [David] All right.

- I think Donald can put us out here and get us out of his hair.

(David and Ellen laugh) - [David] I was gonna say, are you putting him to work, or is he putting y'all to work?

- We're not sure, but we all work together.

It's a family affair, and we all enjoy it.

He'll get adjusted here.

(combine beeping) Then I'll start unloading.

Smash the button.

- [David] Oh, look at that.

You're doing it on the move.

- [Ellen] Mm-hm.

- [David] So you just page him, sees your full.

Is he just pacing you, or does he also have GPS?

- [Ellen] No, he's not on GPS.

He's just been doing it like me for a number of years.

(soft intriguing music) - Interesting thing I would want to point out is those are nitrogen nodules that the plant has fixed.

So that's what we want to see.

We want to see that good nodulation because that plant has produced its own fertilizer.

Peanuts perhaps are the most sustainable food, I believe, that are grown in the US because they produce their own nitrogen.

They are really efficient in their utilization of water, and they produce an awesome nutritious crop.

- [David] What do you say to a young farmer, someone in college, in high school, maybe wants to get into the world of farming and peanut farming?

I saw you're training somebody just now.

- If a young person really wants to be in agriculture, go find a farmer, and I'll bet you you can find a job.

It may not be the most high paying, but you can learn.

We're not a particularly large farmer, but it may be a small organic farmer.

Learn from that and build what you want to do.

And that's the really cool thing about agriculture.

Everybody talks about, well, there's huge capital requirements but it doesn't have to be big.

It can be something a lot smaller.

And I tell ya, I get to wear shorts every day.

I enjoy being outside.

I enjoy seeing the sunrise.

So those are the kind of things that make agriculture worthwhile.

- [David] So that's it in a nutshell, or a legume shell.

Donald Chase and his family have proudly represented the Georgia peanut for generations and now continue to pass that knowledge down to the next.

(gentle upbeat music) So that's all for part one of this two-part Georgia peanut presentation.

Next comes the roasting, the boiling, a little more growing, some tasty treats, and also a little grinding.

I'm David Zelski.

See you at the next "Fork in the Road."

(upbeat music) "A Fork in the Road" was brought to you by.

- [Announcer] From produce to people, the best things are grown and raised in Georgia.

Even in tough times, we come together, work hard, and grow strong.

When you purchase Georgia-grown products, you support farmers, families, and this proud state we call home.

Together, we will keep Georgia growing.

♪ Picture perfect ♪ ♪ Paint a picture on the wall ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ I see you shine from afar ♪ ♪ Yet to me you are the star ♪ ♪ All right, baby ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ Feels good, feels right ♪ ♪ Take the feeling, pass it on ♪ ♪ Just pass it on ♪ ♪ Na, na, na, na, na, na ♪