Posts from Grower

Every couple of years, studies and rumors surface that we're facing the extinction of bananas. While we haven't seen the popular fruit die out yet, things are looking kind of dire.

The journal PLOS Pathogens has published a study that predicts bananas will be wiped out by a fungus called Panama disease.

Who: Hoàng Thị Thẩm and Nguyễn Đình Đạt
What: Rice
Where: Bac Ninh Province, Vietnam

Rice doesn't have the most exciting of reputations. It's often thought of as filler, a background food to hold up dishes with more flavor — but rice has a few secrets you might not know.

Who: Hoàng Thị Thẩm and Nguyễn Đình Đạt
What: Rice
Where: Bac Ninh Province, Vietnam

Growing rice might sound like an easy, straightforward process, but a lot of thought and work goes into taking care of the soil, irrigating the fields, and getting the most out of a rice crop.

Dat shares some of the challenges he works against every season and every day in the field.

Who: Hoàng Thị Thẩm and Nguyễn Đình Đạt
What: Rice
Where: Bac Ninh Province, Vietnam

Rice is enormously important in Vietnam. Each day, Vietnam's population receives three-quarters of its calories from rice. At least lunch and dinner are cooked with rice as the foundation, and breakfast may be rice-based too. It's made into noodles, boiled for hours to celebrate the lunar new year, and even made into pancakes.

I visited Dat and his wife, Tham, to learn how a small-scale Vietnamese farmer grows rice in Bac Ninh Province, the countryside northeast of Hanoi, Vietnam.

Who: Lane Southern Orchards
What: Georgia Peaches
Where: Fort Valley, GA

When you get ahold of nice ripe peaches, it can be tempting to just take a big bite and eat them straight-up. But if you’re using them for a pie, ice cream, or in other recipes, it’s best to remove their skins.

If you’ve ever tried to peel a bunch of peaches with a knife, you know it can be a challenge, often resulting in waste when too much of the peach’s meat comes away with the peel. Wendy Barton, Marketing and PR Director at Lane Southern Orchards in Georgia, shared a quick and easy way to “undress” peaches.

Who: Lane Southern Orchards
What: Georgia Peaches
Where: Fort Valley, GA

There is perhaps no Southern fruit prized as highly as the peach. It's Georgia’s food claim to fame. This time of year, folks buy the soft, red-blushed globes with golden flesh by the bushel to bake up in sticky cobblers, churn into cool ice cream, and enjoy in a hundred other ways. But if you want to end up with a pie that’s “peachy keen,” you’ve got to start with good product.

We asked Wendy Barton at Lane Southern Orchards, in the heart of Georgia’s prime peach-producing area, how to pick a perfect peach.

Who: Lane Southern Orchards
What: Georgia peaches
Where: Fort Valley, GA

Gleaming white rocking chairs lined up across a wide porch send a welcoming signal to visitors of Lane Southern Orchards in Fort Valley, Georgia. And there are a lot of them; Lane hosted more than 350,000 people last year. They come for the farm-fresh peaches – and the variety of incredible edibles made using them – and to get a behind-the-scenes look at the 100-year-old company’s operations.

Who: Lane Southern Orchards
What: Georgia Peaches
Where: Fort Valley, GA

It’s currently peach season in Georgia — the state that produces such an abundance of the iconic Southern treat, it has adopted the fuzzy fruit as it most recognizable symbol. In Fort Valley, Lane Southern Orchards has been planting, harvesting, packing, and selling 30 different varieties of peaches for more than 100 years. Here’s how they do it.

Who: Lane Southern Orchards
What: Georgia Peaches
Where: Fort Valley, GA

For 107 years, the Lane family has been planting, growing, harvesting, packing, and shipping fresh Georgia peaches all over the country, giving people miles from the nearest peach tree access to one of the South’s favorite fruits.

This week we introduced you to Henry Storch, a migratory beekeeper from Oregon and the owner of Old Blue Raw Honey, in a series of posts written by his wife, Camille. If you're just tuning in now, read the whole series right here!

1. 1. How Henry Storch Became a Professional Migratory Beekeeper

   Grower Tour: Part One
2. 2. Spring Break with Millions of Bees: Why Beekeepers Take a California Road Trip Every Spring

   Grower Tour: Part Two
3. 3. A Migratory Beekeeper Gears up for the Honey Flow

   Grower Tour: Part Three
4. 4. How a Migratory Beekeeper Harvests and Extracts Honey from His Fields in Oregon

   Grower Tour: Part Four
5. 5. Shopping for Honey: What to Know About Honey Color, Varietals, and Finding a Honey You Really Love

   Grower Tour: Part Five