America's Heartland - Episode 118 Summary

Episode 118

They’re worn by billions around the world, and all the cotton for those denim jeans has to come from somewhere. A great deal of it is farmed in Texas, and Pat McConahay finds a farm operation that decided to think big and turn its cotton into jeans right on location. It’s a fascinating story of "vertical integration," Heartland-style. America’s largest lake is vast and beautiful. Deep, cold, and frightening in bad weather. Lake Superior presents a superior challenge to fishermen who brave its reaches to net its famous trout and lake herring. Paul Ryan introduces a fascinating loner who braves the lake’s western reaches year-round in an open boat to bring in herring, and follows his product through processing, smoking, and preparation at Duluth, Minnesota’s best-known seafood restaurant. Pat McConahay visits the Heartland’s leading mushroom-producing state, Pennsylvania, where this major crop is produced year-round – and in the dark. Truffles — expensive fungi that are found on the world’s most refined menus, yet are a difficult and dirty "crop" to find and harvest. Jason Shoultz goes truffling with an eccentric North Carolinian who’s hoping his truffles make him as rich as their fans. Out west, New Mexico growers celebrates their "hottest" time of year with the chile harvest. Paul Ryan shows how the hot numbers are grown and picked – and how they’re celebrated at the state’s well-known Chile Festival.
	Cotton to Denim Farming is like any business. To stay profitable and competitive, you have to find new, more efficient ways to create your products. That’s what our Pat McConahay found in Lubbock, Texas, where a group of clever cotton growers not only plant the fields and pick the crop, they own the nearby factory that turns it into denim, a fabric used to make some of the world’s most popular fashions.
	Fishing on Lake Superior Cold, vast and deep, Lake Superior’s virtually an inland ocean and it can be a bit foreboding. But at the far western end of the lake, just north of Duluth, Minnesota, a productive harvest is going on virtually year-round: lake herring, a smokehouse favorite. And it takes a special kind of character to brave Superior alone, in an open boat, to chase down this native fish.
	Mushrooms These fantastic fungi are fueling a small fortune for one farm family that’s been growing them commercially for more than eighty years. Mushrooms seem to go with about anything—from soup to salad. One reason they’re so versatile is that there are so many different kinds.
	Truffles If white mushrooms are the Chevrolets of fungi, then truffles products must be considered the Cadillacs! Truffles are an expensive delicacy usually grown and harvested in the forests of France.
	Chili Harvest You may think the chile pepper is a relative newcomer in American ag, but fact is, George Washington cultivated hot chiles on his farm in Mount Vernon. Since then, it’s evolved into an astounding array of species and varieties. Paul recently visited the small town of Hatch, New Mexico, and discovered it’s a real hotbed for learning about – and sampling – this hot crop.

The Monsanto Company and the American Farm Bureau Federation make presentation of America's Heartland possible.

Additional production and promotion assistance is provided by the American Soybean Association, National Corn Growers Association, National Cotton Council, United Soybean Board, U.S. Grains Council and National Association of Wheat Growers.