(upbeat rock music) - I'm Tyler Harper.

As your agriculture commissioner, I have the honor of representing one of the hardest working groups of people in our state, our farmers.

That's why we invite you to take the Georgia Grown Challenge.

Try any Georgia specialty crop against any other state's produce, and you'll pick Georgia Grown.

(bright music) ♪ Picture perfect ♪ ♪ Hang the picture on the wall, mm ♪ ♪ I see you shine from afar ♪ ♪ Yet to me, you are the star ♪ ♪ All right, baby ♪ ♪ Feels good, feels right ♪ ♪ Take the feeling, pass it on ♪ ♪ Just pass it on, na, na, na, na, na ♪ (upbeat rock music) - I'm Tyler Harper.

As your agriculture commissioner, I have the honor of representing one of the hardest working groups of people in our state, our farmers.

That's why we invite you to take the Georgia Grown Challenge.

Try any Georgia specialty crop against any other state's produce, and you'll pick Georgia Grown, - The fascinating and ever-changing world of agriculture.

(bright music) Let's hit the road here in Georgia, 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."

(melancholic blues music) ♪ I came from the mud ♪ ♪ There's dirt on my hands ♪ ♪ Strong like a tree ♪ ♪ There's roots where I stand ♪ 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 end game remains the same, results.

(bright music) It has been fun to watch restaurants evolve over the past couple of decades.

Chefs around Georgia seem to have stepped up their game overall, not only in taste, but in their overall mission of what they aim to bring to their customers through both the dining experience and local ingredients used for each dish.

This week, we get to know Chef Karl Gorline of the modern, alpine-inspired West Side Atlanta restaurant, known as Avize.

We explore a farm in Buchanan, Georgia where many of his menu items are grown.

And journey with him down to Americus to meet a farmer who educates Chef on the seeding and harvesting of the world's most tasty legume.

(melancholic blues music) Let's begin our journey with Chef Karl Gorline en route to the Jamspread Farm in Americus where a six-generation peanut farmer shares some knowledge and puts Chef to work.

(bright music) - My name is Karl Gorline.

I'm a chef in Atlanta.

I've worked there for years in places like Watershed, Atlas, and most recently, The Woodall.

Now, I'm opening my own restaurant, Avize, in Atlanta's West Midtown.

One of the cool things about Avize is we'll have our own farm, but we won't be growing peanuts, which I know are a big deal here in Georgia.

As a chef, I like to know all about the food that I serve in my restaurant and as much about how it's produced.

So I'm headed down to Americus, Georgia to meet seventh-generation peanut farmer, Jess McNeill, to find out exactly how these peanuts are grown from the experts.

- [Jess] Karl, welcome!

- [Karl] Jess, how are you?

Thanks for having me.

- Yeah, man, welcome down here.

Good to see you.

- [Karl] Yeah, good to be here.

Check out what y'all got going on.

- Yeah, today we're planting seed peanuts for the University of Georgia, so they own the genetics, so we'll talk a lot more about that in the field.

- [Karl] Pops, how you doing?

- [John] Karl, John McNeill.

- Karl, nice to meet you, John.

Thanks for having me out here.

- [Jess] He's the chef.

- [John] Oh, he's the chef.

- [Karl] Yeah.

- [Jess] Yeah.

- [John] Hey, cook us some lunch.

- I'm the guy at the end, yeah.

(laughs) - [John] Cook us some lunch.

(laughs) (upbeat rock music) - [Karl] So, what we doing right here?

- We're filling it up with seeds and with peanuts.

We're planting like 150 to 175 pounds per acre.

About every seven acres, we have to fill up, so it's constant.

(peanuts clattering) This is for the University of Georgia.

I'm one of the growers that grows their stock every year.

- [Karl] What was the type on this again?

- [Jess] It was a Georgia 06.

- 06.

- 06G, and it's been around for 20 years now.

I mean, it revolutionized the industry as far as yield and things like that.

It's been a good one.

- [Karl] These peanuts, they're not the eating kind, right?

- [Jess] Correct, these will go... Next year, these will be planted for food.

So this is what they call grower stock.

So, I get peanuts straight from them, and next year, they'll be sold to growers for food, for whatever.

We pride ourselves on quality, not quantity, so we take a little extra time and try to do things right, and that's what we're after in seed production.

One thing I love about being in the peanut industry and why I have a vested interest in it is it's still in the public domain.

There are no big chemical companies, big ag companies involved in peanuts, just the University of Georgia.

It's Auburn University, University of Florida.

A lot of your land grant institutions, they own the variety.

(bright country music) Peanuts are a legume, okay.

One of the things I love about peanuts is they are taking nitrogen outta the air, and they're putting it in the soil.

- Yeah.

- Well, this crop over here, it really likes nitrogen.

So by having peanuts this year, I'm getting more nitrogen in the soil that I don't have to spend money on.

- True.

- That I'm not having to put synthetic nitrogen on.

We have to supplement, but I'm probably getting, I'm getting a significant amount of fertility out of the peanut crop.

But, so we inoculate peanuts, so these are bugs, which is Bradyrhizobium bacteria.

We're doing it with these liquid tanks.

We're doing it with the powder as well, and it helps that peanut do what it naturally does, it's just souping it up.

Bradyrhizobium vignae.

- So the microbiotics, the micronutrients, that's- - It's just like probiotics.

- Essential for the genesis of this plant.

- Yeah, yeah, it naturally does it, and so what we're doing is juicing it up so that it does it at a heightened level, and we need all the horsepower we can get.

(energetic music) With the peanut planter, what we're able to do is we're able to monitor the seed flow of each individual row, so we're planting 12 rows at a time.

And we have electric motors that are doing that work, and I'm able to monitor the seed flow, the speed at which they're running.

We're also applying liquid inoculant, when we have rows shut off, so that we're not overlapping.

When the planter sees a spot where it's already planted, it turns itself off.

(bright music) - [Karl] What are we looking at right here, Jess?

- [Jess] We're looking at the seed.

So see that good moisture we're planting into, that's what we want.

- [Karl] Oh yeah.

- [Jess] Look it there.

- [Karl] Yeah, all right.

- [Jess] And there they are.

- [Karl] Perfect.

How far down is that?

- [Jess] We're about two inches down.

We want 'em in that moisture really good.

- [Karl] Yeah, that feels really good.

I saw some of the older equipment at the property.

Tell me a little bit about how much more functional or efficient that thing is nowadays or how impressive it was that they were able to do what they were able to do on the old stuff.

- Right.

Well, I've told my dad, I've told my grandpa, if I had to farm like they did, I wouldn't farm, because it would take them five days to plant this field, and we'll knock it out in four or five hours.

- [Karl] Wow.

- And they would have to have either a team of mules- - Yeah, yeah.

- or three tractors and a dozen men to try to do this.

- [Karl] Wow.

- [Jess] So I go back to just standing on their shoulders.

It's a great perspective to be able to see where we've come from- - [Karl] It is.

- because it's all gonna work out.

That's kind of what I tell myself, like it's gonna be okay.

If they made it, if I'm here based on how they did it, I'm gonna be fine doing it the way we do it.

But it's like space shuttle technology out there in the field these days.

- That's awesome.

- I can't wait for you to be back for harvest.

- Hey, I can't wait to be back.

- Because you're coming, right?

- Yes sir, I'll be here.

- You're coming back for harvest.

- I'll be here.

- Leather seats in the peanut picker.

- Oh, that sounds good.

That sounds good.

It's been awesome, man, Jess.

- Yeah, Karl.

- Pleasure to be out here, man.

Thanks a lot.

- [Jess] Yeah, I'll see you in the fall.

- [Karl] Yes sir.

(melancholic blues music) - [David] So as we wait for those seated peanuts to grow, let's journey north to Bremen Farms in Buchanan, Georgia and meet Farmer Grant, who helps grow the menu for both the food and the bar at Avize.

(bright country music) - [Grant] My name is Grant Wallace.

I'm the farm manager at Our Apothecary at Bremen Farms.

- [Karl] I guess we're in the herb garden here.

- Yep, we're in the one-acre perennial herb garden.

I've been working on this for a few years.

It's kind of like an ecological experience in this herb garden, because it's all put together.

It's all kind of jumbled in, kind of like a food forest is what we're going for here.

So a lot of these herbs go to restaurants in the city, specifically Avize.

I have a history with bartending and cooking, so I take a lot of that experience with blending different flavors and deciding what I want to grow from that.

- [Karl] It's neat that a lot is for the restaurant and the food portion, but it sounds like a lot is for the bar.

- [Grant] Yeah, the bars love using my stuff too.

Like at Avize, I'll go in there, and I'll bring longer stems, like that for the bar and so there's more opportunity for them to decide how they want to use it.

So it could be like a real long stem, like in a tall glass like that, or they could break it and use something for a shorter glass.

We also tincture a lot of them, make teas, use it in soaps, making essential oils.

- [David] This gorgeous old red barn serves as the farm market and apothecary.

Many of the herbs, oils, and spices from the farm go into products like tea, candles, perfume, and scents that Grant and his team create.

- [Karl] All kinds of patches out here.

- So that's a shiso.

It's a Asian herb.

And it's kind of been super trendy with bartenders right now for the flavor extractions on it.

So bartenders will make a syrup out of that and then capture that flavor and then use it in their drinks.

All kinds of stuff tucked in here.

Here's a little beauty berry, the sawtooth sunflower.

Then if we come around here, you'll notice too, just bunches of hay mulch everywhere.

- [Karl] And cats.

- And cats, yep.

(Karl laughs) So the hay mulch helps me in these gardens to really build up soil fertility, create ecosystems for bugs and create shade on the ground so the worms could live up on top levels of the soil.

It's all decomposing and creating more microbial life in the soil.

- [David] So after getting to hang a little with the resident donkey known as Daisy Duke, Chef Karl and I got to explore what was in season here at Bremen Farms.

And today, just about everything seemed to be ready to harvest.

(upbeat rock music) - [Grant] Holy basil, all volunteering throughout this whole area, creating a real diverse ecology right here.

We got perennial kale that I've been trialing out recently.

- [David] How often are y'all able to get together and go over what's being grown, what could be grown?

- [Karl] Well, we talk all the time, every couple days.

- [Grant] And it's nice just to keep him up to speed too, because things change so much out here.

So I have to let him know what everything is looking like, what he can look at for coming in the next week, two weeks, month.

- Yeah, and then we find a use for what we have now, utilize the land, tell our story that way, as opposed to, "Oh well, we're looking for X, Y, and Z."

It's more, "This is what we have now.

"This is what we can do with it."

- There's a bit of that sumac, right, so this is not the poisonous one.

This is a winged sumac, so it makes those real tangy red berries.

- Yeah, we're using the sumac and the spice bush, any of these Indian perennials, native plants in our program extensively, seasoning our duck, and making different tinctures for the bar as well.

- So I'll be collecting more of that for you.

I got some paper lanterns on this other field we're about to go to.

- [Karl] Yeah, let's go check those out.

Paper lanterns, they make some of the best hot sauce.

(bright music) Red paper lantern.

- [Grant] It's not the super spicy.

- It's not the insane category with Carolina reapers and scorpion chilies.

This one's gonna be down closer to the habanero range, but it's, I mean I can feel the heat through my skin.

- [Grant] Makes you nervous.

- (laughing) I need to put this thing down.

This is getting wild.

This is kohlrabi that we're gonna turn on a vegetable slicer and cut into noodles for our sea bass dish.

- Kohlrabi, it's a brassica, so it's same family as broccoli, cabbage, kale.

It's bred basically to be a swollen brassica stem.

This one swells up, you know, is bred to swell up at the base really quick.

- Yeah, really delicious, super hearty, easy to grow.

- All right, so let's check out some bok choy down here.

- [Karl] That's gorgeous.

So we've also been cutting a little bit of the bok choy into the Caesar salad to give it a little bit more crunch.

- [Grant] Your rutabaga crop that you're trying to use.

- Yeah, yeah, I need rutabagas actually for the duck set for this week.

It's going over really well, man.

- [Grant] Good.

- [Karl] 10-day dry age on the duck.

It's a series of two roasts in the oven, and it puts off so much fat.

We strain all that fat off, and we're confiting the rutabaga in that duck fat and then charring it.

- [Grant] Beautiful.

- Yeah, on the charcoal grill.

It's unbelievable.

- Incredible.

- Yeah, it's unreal.

- We have arugula here that's starting to bud and starting to flower, and all of this is edible as well.

So you get the little arugula buds by the pint, and you have the opportunity to take those and break 'em up and sprinkle 'em on things or chop 'em, use 'em up in sauces.

- [Karl] Really concentrated, rich flavor.

- And then you get these flowers too.

So, and that has the same kind of floral arugula flavor, a little bit softer, but the flavor's still there, because you got that vegetative part right there that still carries a lot of that arugula flavor.

- And they're beautiful, you know?

That's a big part of our program with people.

We eat with our eyes first, you know?

- [Grant] Rutabagas.

- This is an unbelievable bite of food right here.

Ah man, I can't tell you how that smells.

I don't even have the words for it.

This is unreal.

Mm, coming to a plate near you.

- [David] So, as Chef heads back to Atlanta with a variety of herbs and veggies for his delectable dishes, Farmer Grant continues his creative and sustainable practices here on the farm, growing new ideas for the restaurant for his apothecary, for his community.

(melancholic blues music) A few months have passed since seeding the peanuts with Farmer Jess, so Chef and I headed back to Jamspread Farm in Americus where it was finally time to harvest.

(upbeat music) - All right, I'm back in Americus, Georgia after the summer.

We were here for seeding.

Check on our buddy Jess McNeill through those storms that came through recently and learn how to harvest some peanuts.

- Karl, what's up, man?

- How you doing?

- [Jess] Welcome back.

- [Karl] Yeah, glad to be here.

- Good to see you, yeah.

Looks a little different now, doesn't it?

- Yeah, we got some stuff to do.

Put me to work, man.

- A lot of stuff to do.

Well, we're gonna do it.

You're gonna pick peanuts today.

(upbeat rock music) What we're gonna do today is we're gonna use that big machine there to physically pick the peanuts off.

So it's gonna take the peanuts off, it's gonna go through there, and then all of this is gonna get thrown out back into the field.

- Okay, say, I'm a little hungry from the road, you mind if I get some?

- Yeah, yeah, go for it, load up.

- [Karl] So these are almost ready to harvest?

- [Jess] These are almost ready.

Before we dig some up, we're just going to peer down in here.

So when I pull these up, these are what we call pegs, okay?

So the peanut will make a little yellow flower, and then right there, there's a great example, see it going down in the soil?

- [Karl] Uh-huh.

- [Jess] You scrape away that soil right there, and there she is.

There's a little Easter egg right there.

These are still waiting to mature, so you can see they have, they're kind of white.

- [Karl] Oh yeah.

- [Jess] So they're just not quite ready yet.

They've still got to fill on out and get mature.

So, I'm bringing my trusty fork here to mimic digging them, and look at that.

- [Karl] Oh wow.

- [Jess] Great looking wad of peanuts right there.

- [Karl] I always played in the dirt growing up.

It smells pretty awesome.

- That's my favorite part about being a peanut farmer is that smell right there.

- [Karl] Man, that's awesome.

- So one of the great things about peanuts, so peanuts take nitrogen out of the air, and they put it into these little nodules right here.

So these nodules are taking nitrogen, it's a lagoon, it's taking nitrogen out of the air, and we're making, these are little factories to make nitrogen, and they're putting it back in the soil.

- Oh wow.

- So it's taking it, it manufactures itself, so when we harvest these, we'll leave all this in the soil, so we get credit for next year's crop.

(bright guitar music) The way to check maturity on peanuts is you wanna scrape away that outer part of that shell, that really pretty part of the shell there, you scrape away to see the color of the inside of it.

So that kind of a chocolatey brown right there.

That one's not ready.

If it's black, it's ready.

- [Karl] Okay.

- [Jess] That one's more ready but still brown, so they need a couple weeks, which is what we would expect.

So, these are gonna yield great.

- Yeah, I wish the camera could smell and taste these as they are right now.

- [Jess] I'm telling you, if I could bottle that right there up, this is about as good a peanut ground as we have on our farm right there.

We'll flip those up, so that's the idea.

You come in here, and you'll flip 'em up, and they're gonna make good peanuts.

I'm excited about these.

- Amazing.

(energetic music) I know we're doing a lot of work with seed peanuts, but you making peanut butter by chance?

- Yeah, yeah, we are.

So yeah, when you were here, we were planting some peanuts that are part of a seed program with the University of Georgia.

So some of these peanuts will be shelled out just like that, and then they'll be planted for seed next year.

They'll be all over the state, all over the country, really, all over peanut country.

These are an 06G variety, 06 Georgia is the variety these are.

But another exciting thing we're doing, the serial entrepreneur in me and my wife so we're making peanut butter.

We've got a section of these peanuts out here that'll wind up in our branded peanut butter, which we're really excited about.

- [Karl] Yeah, I can't wait to try that.

- [Jess] I can't wait to get your feedback, you be in the food business, 'cause we think it's really good.

- [Karl] Yeah, these are ready.

- Yeah, these are ready.

This is a perfect harvest day.

Not a cloud in the sky, a good breeze.

So, let's go do it.

- Let's take a run.

(upbeat rock music) - So what we'll do, we come in, the peanuts are green, and it'll look like a map out here, just a green map.

And we'll come through and there's a specialized piece of equipment that comes in and basically lifts up the peanuts and then inverts 'em.

So, and it puts 'em into these, we call 'em a winrow, and that way- - [Karl] These plants are upside down.

- [Jess] These are upside down.

- [Karl] You gotta drill underground.

- [Jess] That's right.

- [Karl] First day on planet earth.

Peanuts grow underground.

- [Jess] That's right.

Peanuts are on the root.

They are a root crop.

And then once they lay on top of the ground for a few days, it's all weather dependent, generally three to five days, it just depends on the weather.

So let's just say they stay on top of the ground for three or four days, they dry down naturally.

Again, we want weather like this, bluebird conditions, nice breeze.

Then we come back through, and we harvest.

(upbeat rock music continues) All right, your turn now.

- What's it take to let me drive this?

- Yeah, it's happening.

Today's the day.

- All right, I ain't scared.

- [Jess] All right.

- [Karl] Oh yeah.

That's pretty nice right there.

All right, bud.

- Push that little pedal, bring your steering wheel back to you.

- This one?

- Yep.

- All right.

- You got your foot pegs right there.

You can prop your feet up.

- [Karl] All right.

- All right.

Now, first thing we're gonna do is turn the machine on, the actual threshing component.

- [Karl] All right.

- So you're gonna take that one, press down and forward.

- Down and forward, all right.

- Okay, machine's on, horsepower.

- [Karl] Horsepower.

- Now we're gonna turn the header on.

Same thing for that one.

- Down, up.

- Now you got your header going, right?

- Yeah.

- All right.

Now this is your forward and reverse, very sensitive.

You want to go 1.5 miles an hour.

- 1.5.

- Yeah, 1.5.

Miles an hour is right up there.

- All right, I'm ready.

- Go forward.

Now hit your auto button while you're at it, right here.

Hey, look at you!

It's not so hard, right?

(Karl laughing) - Nice.

- [Jess] So now, you can flip it up and ride.

- That's it.

I can get used to this.

- (laughing) Yeah.

When you get to do this all day, it's a good day.

When everything's running good... - This is the fun part.

- Yeah.

We work all year to get to this point to be able to harvest.

(bright country music) Great job.

- [Karl] Yeah, that was awesome.

- Great job.

Thanks for coming.

(melancholic blues music) - [David] So now that we have the veggies, spices, and the peanuts, we head to Chef Carl's restaurant known as Avize to see what he has in mind for these fresh Georgia peanuts.

(upbeat music) - Grilled chicken thighs always remind me of like outdoor, like street festivals or Mardi Gras growing up.

It just has that cooked-in-the-backyard flavor to it.

It's gonna be great for this recipe.

So, we want to do the chefy thing.

We toasted our chicken skins.

Man, listen to that.

And we use the fat to season our chicken thighs.

And then we also used the chicken fat to season our peanuts, so I think this is gonna be really cool to get a peanut and toasted chicken skin crumble for our peanut chicken.

Put a little boiled peanut jus in there, touch of soy sauce in here, start the fats together without the coconut milk.

(energetic music) I've got my chicken thighs.

That's our grilled Georgia peanut chicken thighs with satay sauce and crispy chicken skin, peanut crumble.

This is our sea bass that we spoke about on the farm.

It's got our roasted turnips and bunya calda.

Part of the sustainability for small farms like ours for the ingredients that we can grow, we gotta use the root and the greens.

So it's a sauce verte made from the turnip green, so classic french salsa verde preparation, and we have shaved raw turnips for bright punch and flavor and roasted charred turnips with the fish as well.

(drum beating rhythmically) - So this is the Alpine Swizzle.

It's a swizzle-style cocktail, features planteray, Mr. Fogg, Navy-strength rum, a little 10 to one white.

We have acid-adjusted pineapple juice, touch of simple and then chartreuse végétal with a little bit of saline solution.

(jazz music) For our garnishes, we have a little bit of pineapple mint from our farm, blue basil, standard mint, a little lemon roses and some pineapple fronds.

- So, this is our amuse-bouche.

It's a Arpège egg.

It's an homage to a dish from restaurant L'Arpege in Paris.

This one has a butternut squash custard with a maple pine jule, sprouted buckwheat from our farm, pumpkin seed praline, and it's topped with a yeast foam made from spent saki leaves, and some squash pollen, marigold, squash blossoms, and bee pollen from the farm, one of the shelf-stable items that we can put back in a larder.

All right, this is our cured North Georgia trout.

It's from Fannnin County.

Crudo served with barbecued cabbages with granny smith apples, daikon radish, and then battering of Mexican tarragon flowers, dill, and cilantro blossom.

This is our barrel-aged apple cider ponzu.

It's got a blend of apple cider, caraway, dashi, and smoked black tea, Lapsang Souchong.

(bright music) - [David] Delicious was an understatement, and that's just one of many fine locally-sourced dishes that Chef Karl has dreamt up.

So whether you choose to enjoy your modern, alpine dining experience beside the mountain goat centerpiece or somewhere else in the restaurant, just know that you're in for a tasty and true farm-to-table experience.

I'm David Zelski.

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

"A Fork in the Road" was brought to you by... (bright music) - [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.

(bright music) ♪ Picture perfect ♪ ♪ Hang the picture on the wall, mm ♪ ♪ I see you shine from afar ♪ ♪ Yet to me, you are a star ♪ ♪ All right, baby ♪ ♪ Feels good, feels right ♪ ♪ Take the feeling, pass it on ♪ ♪ Just pass it on, na, na, na, na, na ♪