* HOST: It's a big wide world out there, and agriculture is everywhere.

Did you know that these strange fruits may look like tomatoes, but they sure don't taste like them, that some grains really are for the birds, and that this colorful spice started out underground?

Don't go anywhere.

Stories about the people who grow our food are coming up next on Maryland Farm and Harvest .

ANNOUNCER: Major funding for Maryland Farm and Harvest is made possible in part by...

The Maryland Grain Producers Utilization Board, investing in smarter farming to support safe and affordable food, feed, and fuel, and a healthy bay.

Additional funding provided by... Maryland's Best, good for you, good for Maryland.

Rural Maryland Council, a collective voice for rural Maryland.

MARBIDCO, helping to sustain food and fiber enterprise for future generations.

A grant from the Maryland Department of Agriculture Specialty Crop Block Program.

Mid-Atlantic Farm Credit, lending support to agriculture and rural America.

Brought to you in part by... A donation from the Cornell Douglas Foundation.

The Maryland Soybean Board, and Soybean Checkoff Program.

Progress powered by farmers.

Wegmans Food Markets, healthier, better lives through food.

The Maryland Association of Soil Conservation Districts.

And by...

The Maryland Nursery, Landscape, and Greenhouse Association...

The Maryland Seafood Marketing Fund...

The Maryland Farm Bureau Incorporated...

The Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment... And by... Closed Captioning has been made possible by Maryland Relay, empowering those who are deaf hard of hearing, or speech disabled to stay connected by phone.

* JOANE CLENDINING: Today, we're at MD-Delight Dairy in Westminster.

Here, the Dell family raises cattle, and they also have a grain business just down the road.

Hi, I'm Joanne Clendining, and this is Maryland Farm and Harvest .

Over the years, we've featured a lot of fruits, vegetables, and grains on our show.

But today, we're taking a look at some of the most unusual crops grown in our state.

Coming up, we join the Dell family just in time for the sorghum harvest.

What's sorghum, you ask?

Stay tuned.

But first, if your local grocery store has an exotic produce section, you may have seen a round bright orange fruit there called a persimmon.

Although, it turns out they may not be that exotic, because there's an orchard growing them right here in Maryland.

* SETH SHAMES: People really can't find this anywhere else, and when they discover it, they just get so excited.

JOANNE: Tucked away in Owings, Maryland, you'll find Preston's Orchard, a two-acre grove of trees loaded with bright orange fruit.

And when the leaves start to fall, that's when Seth and Sophie know that it's time to harvest.

SOPHIE KASIMOW: Anything you can do with a peach, you can do with a persimmon.

JOANNE: Although they look like a cross between a tomato and a small pumpkin, persimmons have a mild, honey-like flavor that would surprise almost anyone if they took a bite.

[crunching] SOPHIE: That's good.

JOANNE: And they're good for you too.

SOPHIE: They're known to be really great at preventing heart disease.

So people say, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away," but it's definitely true that a persimmon a day will keep the doctor away.

SETH: We're not against apples.

SOPHIE: No.

SETH: We just also love persimmons.

JOANNE: Although popular in other countries, the persimmon is relatively unknown in Maryland.

So, how did Seth and Sophie come to love this unusual fruit?

SOPHIE: The first time I had persimmons, I was in Japan when I was five, six.

They were really common at the supermarket and they were delicious, so we would get them all the time.

SETH: I grew up in South Carolina, and we had a persimmon tree in our yard.

I have a place in my heart for these.

And so when we learned about this orchard, it was a warm, fuzzy feeling I had about them.

JOANNE: The orchard belonged to a man named Bill Preston, who loved persimmons even more than they did.

SETH: Bill, for many years, sold flowers and persimmons at the Tacoma Park farmer's market, so we met him the first time there.

We just struck up a little informal friendship with him, and we ended up coming out here, like just, "Can we pick sometime?"

JOANNE: Bill wrote the book on persimmons, literally.

Where Persimmon Was King features a collection of forgotten photographs and research on Chinese persimmon growers that Bill found while working with the United States Department of Agriculture.

Through his work with the USDA and the University of Maryland, he developed a passion for the crop.

SOPHIE: Bill worked on a project through the University of Maryland.

They tested over 80 varieties of persimmons that he and his mentors got from China, Japan, Korea.

Over several years, they rated the appearance, the hardiness, cold hardiness.

They rated the flavor and texture.

This is called Gwang Yang.

It's brought back from Korea, and this variety scored... the highest across all of those metrics, so Bill picked it for this orchard.

JOANNE: But Maryland's climate isn't exactly like Korea's, so Bill helped them along with the horticultural technique of grafting, where the root of one type of tree is attached to the trunk of another.

BILL PRESTON: If you notice that every... two- every one or two inches, you have a bud, and this was a bud here.

That's a bud that sprouted.

There's another bud there, bud there.

You graft this onto the top of the seedling, and it's that bud that will sprout out.

And then you're on your way.

SOPHIE: From here down, this is the American persimmon root stalk.

And then the graft line is here, and the branches going up are the Gwang Yang persimmon, the Asian persimmon.

The American persimmon root stalk is hardy for the climate here over the winter, so that's how these trees are able to make it.

JOANNE: Through hard work, Bill created the northernmost single variety persimmon orchard on the East coast.

BILL: Over the years- JOANNE: And he created a great friendship too.

SOPHIE: Do you think you would come to the farmer's market one day this fall, possibly?

BILL: If I'm still alive.

SOPHIE: Yeah.

BILL: We're talking [laughs], we're talking to a guy that's almost 90 years old, you know.

* [sentimental music] JOANNE: Sadly, Bill Preston passed away in 2019, shortly after his 90th birthday, but his spirit lives on through the trees he planted and through Seth and Sophie.

SOPHIE: Briefly, it was owned by another couple.

They owned it for about a year or two, and then we heard it'd come up for sale and thought immediately, "This is our chance," and decided to buy it, and are really happy that we did.

JOANNE: And the two persimmon lovers became persimmon farmers, renaming the orchard in Bill's honor.

SETH: Both of us have day jobs, and we have a three-year-old and an eight-month-old.

SOPHIE: It's a really manageable crop for someone who doesn't want to be farming full-time, because they don't need a lot of work.

These trees have never been sprayed.

They don't need fertilizer.

You don't have to water them.

SETH: We didn't know exactly how he would do it.

It seemed that there was something about this that was you know calling us.

JOANNE: The only busy season for the orchard is harvest time, and on this day in mid-November, the trees are packed with delicious fruit.

Once it's picked, Seth and Sophie load up their trailer... and head into the nation's capital, where one of their distributors is waiting for the next batch of Preston's persimmons.

SOPHIE: Today, we're at Number 1 Sons.

SETH: Number 1 Sons has been buying our persimmons for a couple of years.

They've sent them to people as part of a delivery service, and also used our seconds to make kombucha.

SCOTT PETRISKO: I've been brewing kombucha for this company for about four years.

They're so weird.

Once you juice them, it's like candy.

It's crazy how uh sweet they can get.

Readers voted Number 1 Sons the number one kombucha in the city paper, so that was totally out of left field.

I didn't expect that.

JOANNE: A sign that more and more people are discovering this unique fruit and sharing the passion of a Maryland pioneer.

SETH: There you go.

SCOTT: Thank you, Seth.

SOPHIE: Bill Preston was Johnny Persimmonseed of persimmons.

He was such a warm, kind person, so we're happy to be able to keep it going.

* JOANNE: All right.

It's time to test your agricultural expertise.

Here is our thingamajig for the week.

Do you think you know what it is?

Well, here's a hint.

It's not a fancy soup ladle.

Stay tuned and we'll have the answer at the end of the show.

Whether in a greenhouse or out in a field, there's always something growing in Maryland.

We asked farmers to send their prettiest produce pictures to our Facebook page, and this is what we saw.

* JOANNE: How many grains can you name?

Corn, wheat, barley, oats.

Sorghum?

Okay, maybe you've never heard of that last one, but if you've driven through Carroll County, there's a good chance you've passed a field of this unusual crop, and it turns out there's some advantages to growing it.

* [clipping] JOANNE: It's harvest time at Dell Brothers farm near Westminster.

By mid-November, most of their crops are done except for one holdout.

GREG DELL: It tells you the moisture here, reads all that.

It's running about 15%, which fourteen and a half is dry for sorghum.

So, pretty close.

JOANNE: Yes, you heard him right.

Today, Greg Dell is combining sorghum.

Don't be surprised if you've never heard of it.

As crops go, sorghum is one of the more unusual grown here in Maryland.

GREG: Sorghum is pretty much what corn was before corn was selectively bred to be what it is.

When the Indians were growing crops, they were growing sorghum and crushing it into flour, the same thing that we're doing with it today, and it has a lot of attributes as far as nutrition.

* JOANNE: As corn and sorghum grow, the stalks and leaves look very similar.

But as the grains begin to take shape, they take on a noticeably different form.

Looks aside, corn and sorghum share more similarities than you might think.

GREG: Sorghum is gluten-free, so they make sorghum flour to make breads and different kind of things in replace of wheat.

JOANNE: Like corn, this gluten-free grain can also be used to make silage and biofuel.

But unlike corn, certain varieties can even be made into sorghum molasses.

The U.S. is the world's largest producer of sorghum at 373 million bushels in 2020.

The majority of it is grown in an area known as the Sorghum Belt, running from the Dakotas to Southern Texas.

Most U.S. sorghum becomes feed or fuel, but here in Maryland, a different set of customers flock to this grain.

[birds whistling] GREG: Our crop ends up in east central Pennsylvania for bird seed.

A lot of the sorghum in the country does get exported.

China buys a lot of sorghum, as they do with corn and soybeans.

Most of our, well, all of our sorghum in the past, I'm pretty sure it's been six years that we've been growing it, and all of it has gone into into Pennsylvania to go into bird seed.

JOANNE: But this grain isn't just for the birds.

Historically, sorghum is one of the world's most indispensable foods with a storied past.

As early as 8000 B.C., sorghum was grown throughout Africa, adapting to a range of environments from the Highlands to the desert.

It's believed that sorghum made its way to America with enslaved people... where even Ben Franklin was impressed by the crop.

Centuries later, it's become an important grain here at Dell Brothers with some natural advantages.

GREG: We have this farm and a couple other farms where we have a lot of deer pressure.

For whatever reason, the deer do not seem to eat the sorghum like they sure love to eat corn and soybeans.

And the other thing is rainfall.

Sorghum does not need the rain that a corn crop does.

It is a little hardier, a little more drought-resistant, I guess you would say.

And these farms that maybe the fertility isn't there, doesn't have the organic matter in the soil to hold the water, the sorghum seems to thrive a little better than the corn, especially when we do go without rain for several weeks.

* JOANNE: Harvesting is a nonstop operation, a ballet of mechanical movement, as the grain is transferred from the combine to a grain cart and then offloaded to waiting tractor trailers... where it's taken to the Dell Brothers grain elevator.

* Here, Greg's father, Gary, runs the show.

[rushing grain] Be it corn, soybean, wheat, or sorghum, each truck is weighed and its contents dumped into the grain elevator.

Next, it's piped into a particular silo where it'll finish drying.

Meanwhile, Gary inspects the harvest.

GARY: The normal test weight on sorghum is 56 pounds, and you want to be right around that.

It's indication of the quality and the nutrient value that's packed in that... particular grain.

You can almost tell by the color of it how good a quality is it.

JOANNE: When conditions are right, the sorghum turns a dark amber color, and these grains look great.

GARY: I'll see you next time.

JOANNE: While you may not find Maryland-grown sorghum on your dinner plate just yet, there's a possibility some is already in your backyard.

But regardless of who eats it, for the Dell family, the appeal of this unusual crop continues to grow.

GARY: It gives us another egg in our basket to market throughout the year, and we have been lucky enough to find a good market for it.

And if it's not such a great year, the sorghum can still do okay.

I think we're at a happy spot now.

JOANNE: Did you know in 2017, Maryland farmers grew 473,000 acres of corn compared to just 12,000 acres of sorghum?

JOANNE: Have you ever studied your family tree and learned that you have some, unusual relatives?

Well it turns out you're not alone.

Joe Ligo examines a wild and wacky family of plants known as nightshades on this week's, The Way It Works.

JOE LIGO: I'm not a horticulturalist, but I find plants to be amazing, particularly the family Solanaceae, also known as nightshades.

This group includes tomatoes, tomatillos, eggplants, potatoes, but not sweet potatoes, those are different, bell peppers, sweet peppers, hot peppers, goji berries, petunias, and tobacco.

Even weeds like horse nettle are nightshades.

When you look closely, you can see the family resemblance; similar shapes and colors and even seeds, as well as plant structures.

For instance, even though potatoes grow underground, the plants have little tomato-like fruits that grow on top.

But be careful.

Those fruits are actually poisonous.

In fact, the whole nightshade family is notorious for producing all kinds of dangerous chemicals, from capsaicin, which makes hot pepper spicy, to nicotine, which makes tobacco addictive, to a whole suite of deadly alkaloids in belladonna, making this family member one of the most toxic plants known to man.

Thankfully, you probably won't find that at a farmer's market anytime soon.

As for all of these nightshades, they're perfectly safe to eat, depending on your tolerance, of course.

[crunches] And that is the way it works.

JOANNE: Our next unusual crop has exploded in popularity as a health food the last few years.

You'll find it in smoothies, curries, and even desserts.

Join Al Spoler for this week's Local Buy as he digs up the dirt on turmeric.

Al?

* AL: Turmeric, that very much sought-after spice comes to us from Asia, where for 4,000 years, people have been talking about its legendary qualities.

We're here at Mise En Place Farm in Anne Arundel County to dig down to the roots of the story.

Mise En Place is French for "to put in place," a term used by chefs when organizing their workstation.

Here at Mise En Place Farm, turmeric, also called tumeric, has its place right here in the greenhouse.

J.J. MINETOLA: It's a beautiful crop to grow.

I mean it's aesthetically pleasing crop.

It kind of gives that tropical look in here.

I feel like we should hang a hammock in here and just sit back with a margarita or something.

AL: Sitting back and relaxing wasn't an option for J.J. Minetola when he worked as a full-time chef and now as a first generation farmer, raising a variety of vegetables, greens, and some tropical crops on his two-acre farm.

J.J.: But it's still just as much work, if not more than restaurants.

AL: Looks like that margarita will have to wait, at least until the harvest is complete.

Today, J.J. plans to dig up 10 pounds of turmeric.

This knobby root is scientifically known as Curcuma longa.

J.J.: This is the mother piece that we planted back in March.

AL: Turmeric is part of the ginger family, which means it produces large root stalks or rhizomes, which can be broken up to start growing new plants.

J.J.: It grows underground and spreads itself to sprout individual shoots that grow into these plants.

AL: Turmeric takes anywhere between 7 to 10 months from planting to harvest.

As a tropical perennial, turmeric thrives in warm, humid conditions, but the crop is frost-sensitive.

After some trial and error, J.J. now raises them in his greenhouse.

J.J.: We've tried planting them outside and they don't grow nearly as well.

They end up much smaller.

The roots will be tiny.

AL: J.J., which plant should I select to dig up?

J.J.: You want to look for a good, healthy plant with a wide stem in the middle.

It should be about an inch and a half to two inches at the base.

AL: Looks like I've got myself a winner here.

There's money growing in the ground.

[laughter] J.J.: That's right.

It's gold.

AL: After a quick shower... [hiss of hose] and trim, the colorful, exotic turmeric is ready to hit the market.

J.J.: There's a lot of demand for it at the farmer's market, too.

Ginger and turmeric, it's like I can't bring enough.

It sells really well.

AL: One possible reason for that demand, beyond its beautiful color, are the potential health benefits associated with turmeric.

Studies show it could help prevent inflammation and disease, but one thing's for certain.

It also has a deliciously unique flavor.

AL: Well, here's that turmeric that I dug up in the greenhouse, and this is what it looks like after it's been cleaned up.

I cannot get over how beautiful the color is, this white fading to yellow fading to orange.

It's fabulous.

And J.J. tells me they can cook with this stuff raw and he's going to whip up something for me in the kitchen, so let's go see.

AL: J.J., I am so impressed with this beautiful plate that you and your wife put together.

It's really pretty.

We have rice two ways, with and without turmeric.

We have some pomegranate seeds, some edible flowers.

Very nice.

This is the raw turmeric.

Is that what you used with this rice?

J.J.: Yes.

AL: And what is the typical flavor of turmeric?

J.J.: Very earthy, slightly bitter flavor.

AL: How much more powerful is the powdered form?

J.J.: Powder is about three to four times stronger.

AL: Mm.

So use a little bit less.

I got to tell you, you get that little bit of earthiness and bitterness in this.

It's really, really very pleasant.

What we would like to do is put some of your recipes on our website at mpt.org/farm, so people can try them at home.

For The Local Buy, I'm Al Spoler.

Joanne?

JOANNE: Thanks, Al.

Visit mpt.org/farm to get all our Local Buy recipes, and you can watch full episodes online as well.

Also, don't forget to follow us on social media for show updates, pictures, and videos.

Now hold on.

We're not done yet.

Remember our thingamajig?

Did you guess it?

Our hint was that it's not a fancy soup ladle.

This is an antique grain scale.

A farmer would pour dry grain in here, then use the balance to calculate how much an entire bushel would weigh.

Congratulations if you got it right.

Join us next week for another thingamajig along with more stories about the diverse, passionate people who feed our state.

I'm Joanne Clendining.

Thanks for watching.

Closed Captioning has been made possible by Maryland Relay, empowering those with hearing and speech loss to stay connected.

* ANNOUNCER: Major funding for Maryland Farm and Harvest is made possible in part by...

The Maryland Grain Producers Utilization Board, investing in smarter farming to support safe and affordable food, feed, and fuel, and a healthy bay.

Additional funding provided by... Maryland's Best, good for you, good for Maryland.

Rural Maryland Council, a collective voice for rural Maryland.

MARBIDCO, helping to sustain food and fiber enterprise for future generations.

A grant from the Maryland Department of Agriculture Specialty Crop Block Program.

Mid-Atlantic Farm Credit, lending support to agriculture and rural America.

Brought to you in part by... A donation from the Cornell Douglas Foundation.

The Maryland Soybean Board, and Soybean Checkoff Program.

Progress powered by farmers.

Wegmans Food Markets, healthier, better lives through food.

The Maryland Association of Soil Conservation Districts.

And by...

The Maryland Nursery, Landscape, and Greenhouse Association...

The Maryland Seafood Marketing Fund...

The Maryland Farm Bureau Incorporated...

The Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment... And by...