Farmers and ranchers are very creative when it comes to finding new ways to utilize their land and, hopefully, increase their profits.

Many farmers diversify, they offer farm stay vacations, they may have seasonal corn mazes, or they plant crops that give them more than one harvest a year.

They're also willing to try something new.

And that was the case at the Souza farm in Central California where bright orange sweet potatoes were not heading for the supermarket, they were heading for the bottle.

♪♪ >> Some folks call them yams, others sweet potatoes.

Doesn't matter to David Souza.

He's selling them by the box full.

California's Central Valley is well known for crops that range from wheat and rye to almonds, citrus, grapes and cotton.

And Souza is the latest generation to turn this dusty Central California ground into a profitable farming operation.

>> I started working on the farm when I was 7 moving watermelons in the roadways.

That was my job until I was 10.

Then I started driving tractor in the watermelons.

Then I started, my dad kind of helped me get going on my own.

>> Today D and S farms grows almonds and sweet potatoes.

About 75 percent of the potatoes end up in grocery stores across the United States.

The rest are sold to be used as sweet potato seeds.

But a few years back David had another idea for these sweet spuds.

>> So yeah, you can see it's starting to boil there.

>> Oh look at that!

>> Turns out that sweet potatoes make pretty good liquor.

In a corner of the farm property is a distillery.

>> So basically I bought a book off the internet and I made a makeshift still in my garage and I did it for 3 years in my garage cooking it night after work, cooking sweet potatoes on my kitchen stove and it would take me 12 hours to distill a bottle on my, on my makeshift still, so I would sleep in my garage in a lawn-chair, because I didn't want to burn my garage down [laughs].

>> To understand where David got this unusual idea, you have to trace his life's journey.

♪♪ And the story of a farm boy turned Las Vegas promoter.

>> Well at that time I wanted to farm, um, didn't think I'd do anything else, I went to college for business, but kind of knew I was going to stay farming, and then when I hit my 20's, I kind of like, yeah, I might want to do something different, something was just totally opposite from farming, I always had an interest in music and listening to music and didn't have really any talent to play it, so I started doing concert promoting, car shows, and kind of that realm of the entertainment business is kind of what kind of led me to want to go to Las Vegas and look at different ah..., business aspects there.

>> As you might imagine, the idea of distilling liquor on the farm was not an immediate hit with everyone around these parts.

>> I think at first they thought is this thing going to make it?

Is it going to?

How is it going to work?

But now they're seeing the value.

>> But persistence paid off.

He convinced his family to take a chance.

Today you'll find his Sweet Potato spirits at liquor stores across the United States.

Named Corbin Cash, after his son.

>> There you go, a little sweet potato stew there, take a look at that.

>> So this is, they're chopped up, and then as they emulsify it'll turn into like a tomato bisque, it will be the consistency of the, of it when it's done, so right now these just got put in a little while ago as you can tell.

>> And these are crushed up, sliced up, sweet potatoes.

>> Yeah, they're pretty much diced up, they go in diced up and puréed, and then they, we break them down, and ah..., and they'll eventually look like a, like I said, tomato bisque soup.

>> It's amazing that it goes from this to vodka.

>> Vodka, correct.

>> Vodka is how he got his start.

His vodka has won prestigious national awards.

But in the liquor game, whiskey is where the money is at.

So David is most proud of his Corbin Cash Rye Whiskey.

He sells his brand as premium at a slightly higher price than average liquor.

And it's the only liquor on the market made from sweet potatoes.

>> The reason it's a premium product is the labor intensity behind it, so you know, by the time it starts in the field to the time it leaves the distillery um, you've got almost a year to 18 months involved and you've got over 50 people that have touched that bottle before it leaves the distillery.

>> David's timing is right.

Craft distilling is a growing trend across the country.

Can a California farm kid make it in the liquor game?

You might say David Souza is 100 percent proof.

♪♪ >> When it comes to agriculture, California is a major player in the nation's food game.

It's the country's number one dairy state.

Produces more wine than the other 49.

Contributes large quantities of fruits and vegetables.

And is the primary U.S.

source for almonds, walnuts, raisins, kiwi, dates and figs.