Jenna's Journey to the Farm Bureau Convention

Every January, the annual American Farm Bureau Convention takes place and America’s Heartland has been attending since launching back in 2004. This year the location was historic San Antonio, TX and your favorite America’s Heartland Associate Producer, Jenna Cederburg, was selected to go and promote the series. Since I’d never attended a Farm Bureau Convention, I was excited to mingle amongst those who play such an important role in our show’s success as well as get the opportunity to meet fans of the series.




“Forward” was the Farm Bureau’s tagline this year and I was intrigued as this seems to be the common theme in America these days. For many farmers and ranchers, there is a tangible desire to do just that - move forward and adapt in order to flourish during these difficult economic times.

I’m happy to say the America’s Heartland booth drew heavy traffic during the two-day showcase! People who stopped by got their very own copy of an episode of our show as well as fun farm animal erasers and pencils. They also participated in a drawing in order to win a portable DVD player complete with the entire third season of the show. Passers by were also able to stop and watch episodes from our current fourth season.

It was fun to mix and mingle with people from Ohio, Alabama, South Dakota, Kentucky… pretty much everywhere! Fans would recall specific Heartland stories from their region which was quite impressive. It’s clear to me now that people really enjoy the show and truly value the stories we tell.

Now, back home in Sacramento, we at America’s Heartland look “Forward” to a successful fifth season as we continue to bring the people and places of American agriculture straight to your living room.

Jenna Cederburg
Associate Producer
America’s Heartland

Poke Salad Annie

In episode 418 I visit East New York Farms, an urban agriculture endeavor. We stopped by their farmers market on a Saturday morning. There are a lot of former farmers who live in the city taking advantage of the program. I met Annie Wyche, who used to live in the southern US. She had lots of interesting vegetables for sale.

But something she said required some more research:
"And we have callaloo. That’s a vegetable used mostly in the West Indies. We call it a polk salad down South. It’s the same thing. I was amazed that everybody be calling for callaloo, so I said, ‘that’s not callaloo, that’s polk salad.'”

Initially I thought she was calling it PORK salad, assuming that it was just some regional thing. Upon further research Annie was referring to POLK salad. I think. Or POKE salad. Confused. I still am too.

According to wikipedia:

Young pokeweed leaves can be boiled three times to reduce the toxin, discarding the water after each boiling. The result is known as poke salit, or poke salad, and is occasionally available commercially.

And poke salad is also referred to as POLK salad. And it's apparently NOT called PORK salad. It's been around for decades in the south. But before any blog readers go searching out pokeweed and mixing a salad, some caution is in order: it's poisonous.

So is poke/polk (not pork) salad the same as callaloo? Again, according to wikipedia, yes. Poke weed is one of the vegetables used in the dish called callaloo. So callalloo is a dish, not a vegetable? Well, it's both, according to wikipedia:

Because the leaf vegetable used in some regions may be locally called "callaloo" or "callaloo bush", some confusion can arise among the different vegetables and with the dish itself.

Some confusion?

Annie's still making money selling her poke salad/callaloo to folks at the Brooklyn farmers market. It's quite popular, not matter what it's called.

Of all of my questions about this weed would have been answered if I would have just listed to the lyrics of this classic 1969 song by Tony Joe White:



Yes, the name of the song is "Poke Salad Annie." Not POLK Salad Annie like is displayed on the video. And, as far as I know, not Annie Wyche.

Jason

High Definition Youtube Clips

You may have noticed that we have our own channel on youtube. It's a great way for more people to learn about our show. It's also good for embedding videos in other sites. If you really love one of our segments, just embed the youtube video in your blog,site,facebook page, etc. Be sure to include a link to our site americasheartland.org!

We're taking advantage of one of the latest youtube advancements: HD video. Our show is already shot in HD, so uploading clips in HD is a great option for us.

Check out episode 417 "Journey of the Corn" in all of its HD goodness.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

Just click on "Watch in HD" at the bottom right of the video window. You'll need to have a high speed internet connection to watch the videos in HD.

Jason