America's Heartland

Visit the Sims cattle ranch in Wyoming and learn how they are generating new revenue. Travel to Florida to learn the hardships of growing grapefruits! Discover where the juiciest watermelons are found. Back in Wyoming, meet a rancher who raises yaks and puts yak steaks to the test.

Meet Willie Nelson, who’s emerged as one of the nation’s most visible proponents of soybean bio-diesel fuel. See the biggest and baddest farm machinery in Kentucky. California farmers find and restore tractors and trucks from the past! Celebrate a widely misunderstood animal, the mule, with the people of Tennessee. Compete at nationals to restore old tractors with a group of teenagers from Texas!

A coast-to-coast effort to help farm families keep their young ones safe is in full effect. Examine the struggles farm families have when spring time arrives. Indiana’s famed hardwood stays within its state to be used by local cabinet makers.

Nature always has the last word and there’s nothing any farmer can do about it. Experience the Great Western Show—while cattle industry has faced its share of challenges: import restrictions and dietary trends. Farmers must improvise and innovate when a crop becomes unprofitable or unpopular! Bug farming is a pretty hot business if you grow the right ones!

Work on developing alternative fuel from the highway to the race track. Taste a local brewery’s special beer made right in St. Louis, Missouri. Fish for crustaceans off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. A farmer’s work is hard, and the business of farming can be even harder for a dairyman!

American farm meets the world of high finance at the Chicago Board of Trade. Farmers are seeking new income sources such as tourism! Reap the wild winds of Wyoming! In Texas, rural communities are getting help turning their history and hard work into a selling point for tourists. Start kids young and let them discover with their own hands, the miracle of seed and soil!

A unique program that helped feed America during the darkest days of World War Two as Mexican farm workers were invited north to work as braceros. The descendants of early Spanish settlers in Texas who opened the Lone Star State to cattle ranching and farming. See how Georgia farmers grow and harvest peaches. Meet Mas Masumoto, a California farmer for whom the peach is more than just a fruit.

It’s music that grew up with America, among the mountains, valleys, fields, and ranches—it’s country music! A shrimp boat operator tells a story of how he was affected by Hurricane Katrina. California Almond farmers grow 80% of the world’s almond supply, with the help of honeybees! Tennessee farmers produce freshwater pearls by planting a healthy mollusk into a shell.

Across the heartland, there’s a growing interest and concern about preserving our nation’s precious farmland. Farmers markets are booming across the U.S. Visit a winemaker in Kentucky—not the usual location for a winery!

The Mississippi River, the continent’s largest and longest river, helped grow America from a network of small farms into a great agricultural superpower. Explore Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Tom Sawyer” literature as it depicts farming culture of the Mississippi. Visit the city of St. Louis, one of the river’s great cities. Visit the Ol’ Man River, also known as the Mississippi Delta!

Farming life is very demanding, but the love of it outweighs the long working hours. The Fulton Fish Market has a new location, but the market is still as popular as ever! Find some tasty veggies both in the fields of Iowa and on the rooftops of Manhattan. Caviar is one of the most expensive foods in the world, and a San Francisco restaurant is introduced to many domestic varieties.

America’s agrarian roots that shaped out culture since our nation’s first beginnings. Our farm communities were originally tied together by a common background or religion; some have assimilated into mainstream America. Farmers are both creative thinkers and savvy business-people! Gardening is one of America’ s biggest hobbies!

Greenmarket is a non-profit organization that has been inviting regional farmers into NYC since the 1970s. Rice—bringing back a bit of South Carolina! Arkansas is home to the largest rice milling and marketing operations in the world: Riceland Foods. Visit the Tulmeadow Farm, where they’ve produced everything from chickens to chutney! Visit one of the heartland’s largest alpaca ranches in Ohio.

Help your local farmer and buy their locally produced crops before heading to the grocery store. Garlic growers and local lovers of the herb get together for the Garlic Festival every year in California. Visit our country’s only tea plantation in Charleston, South Carolina. Life couldn't be sweeter for Kristin Ford in Oregon—as she makes her famous hard apple cider!

Farmers across the South roll out massive equipment to bring the crops in! Celebrate the harvest season with a unique event called a tractorcade in Iowa! A South Carolina hog farmer raises them the natural way. It’s a harvest straight from the sea! Meet a female aquaculture farmer who’s a third generation shellfish harvester! Celebrate the end of the harvest with the people who work the land.

Visit the Matanuska valley outside Anchorage, Alaska where summer days last 24 hours—allowing farmers to grow incredibly large vegetables. The Alaska State Fair is the best place to see the state’s agricultural bounty! How hard is it to grow potatoes in Alaska? Alaskan waters produce for than seven hundred million pounds of tasty king crab, whitefish, and salmon!

America’s cowboy heritage is present in fiction and real life, but the main pursuit has always been agriculture. Learn the cowboy profession at a Cowboy College! One week in January each year, thousands of cowboys share their lives as range rhymers. Experience cowboy art as it captures a period of American history. Who was the first American author to capture the grit and spirit of the West?

It’s computers and crops! Potatoes are getting high-tech treatment in Wisconsin. Explore a unique and uplifting program in Wisconsin that helps farmers overcome disabilities to stay on the land. Visit a farm in Death Valley, CA that grows sweet dates in this deathly area! Learn how Oregon farmers keep hazelnut production alive! Get lost in an artistic corn maze in Utah.

Thousands of Midwest farmers cope with the ravaging effects of a drought. Visit Castle Valley Greenhouses where they are producing truckloads of red, ripe tomatoes. You-pick your own produce all over the U.S. A Connecticut family saves their farm by asking for help from their town! Paleontologists flock to St. George, Utah as one of biggest dinosaur discovery sites in the world was emerging!

Poultry is a demanding business with Americans consuming an average of 60 pounds of chicken a year. A farmer works hard to keep birds busy producing eggs! The state of Wisconsin wears the cranberry crown as the prime source of the tart little berries. California is shaking up those trees deep inside the almond grove in search of the ripe ones! Dahlia growing is a blossoming business in Oregon.