Epitaph for a Peach (5 page)

The best farmers know how to coax nature, massage and nudge her along. With seaweed sprays I could neutralize the negative effects of light soils and hope to make amends for selecting the wrong peach variety. The ultimate answer might be to bulldoze my Spring Lady trees and plant something that better matches my farm. But an interim solution might be to keep building my soils, hoping that eventually good earth would compensate for human errors and I could stop micromanaging with Band-Aid foliar sprays.

In May we harvested good Spring Lady peaches. They grew to a nice full size, and the market prices justified all the extra work. I felt a sense of accomplishment, proving to the world that I could grow decent early peaches despite my light ground.

I still believe that Sun Crest peaches are the perfect crop for my soils and climate, and their flavor and sweet juices just confirm that belief. Yet when I stare at my Spring Lady orchard, I see a world full of farmers sprinting with their fruits. We think nudging nature along can't hurt, and, after all, what's so bad about making a little money early in the season?

Zen and the Peach Twig Borer

It hatches with the first warmth of spring and immediately seeks virgin green leaves. It begins feeding, munching on tender foliage and fattening its dirty-white body. Within days it will bore into a delicate green shoot, mining the fiber, carving a home out of the tissue, hiding from predators, gnawing and growing.

I've never seen the hatching of a peach twig borer. They're as tiny as a sliver and emerge in the tops of the peach trees. But I see signs of their work: tips of shoots dry out from their dining, tendrils turn brown and wither, hanging lifeless, dangling in the spring breeze. If I'm lucky, the worm is still inside, but most often the dead shoot is seen only after the creature has left to pupate elsewhere. In a few weeks it will emerge as an adult moth, laying eggs for the next invasion.

The aroma of a ripening peach lures caterpillars to its juicy nectar. They creep to the hanging fruit and gorge themselves, their bodies grow fat and change color, their bulbous flesh transmutes into brown and white rings. They feed on the surface, nibbling on the skin before gouging hunks out of the meat. They leave a crater where rot and mold find shelter. Some fruit will begin to bleed, juice oozing from the surface and dripping on leaves and other maturing fruit below. A stream of decay spreads from the wound.

The assault begins when a first generation of peach twig borers appears in early spring. By June a second generation is born, followed by another generation and then another. With the summer heat and long days, they multiply in shorter intervals, discovering a wonderful abundance of green shoots for homes, boring into the twigs and munching on fresh peaches during their summer picnics.

A few summers ago I discovered a peach twig borer invasion at harvesttime. My first bags of fruit were picked and dumped into large wooden harvest bins three feet deep. I reached in to taste my first juicy peach of the early morning and the fruit gushed in my hand. It can't be overripe yet, I thought. Then I turned it over and shuddered. The back side had been gouged, the peach violated; rot festered in the wounds. I picked up another and another, only to discover pockmarks strewn across the pink and red flesh.

I immediately inspected another bin, praying the infestation was isolated to one tree. The second bin was better, only about 10 percent of the fruit was damaged. Frantically I began tossing out the fruit, leaning into the bin, shoveling out dregs, purging the diseased. I panicked, wanting to destroy the evidence, to cleanse my fields.

I was in denial, and with justification. Should marketers learn of my affliction, they would scrutinize all my fruit, searching for more damage. I imagined my name blacklisted on brokers' desks, a thick red
WORMS
stamped across invoices.

But it was hopeless. I had a cancer. The fruit packers would cull heavily and produce brokers would be wary. I would help no one by trying to sneak a few extra fruits past inspection, only to learn that in a distant city someone bit into my peach and discovered the proverbial worm poking its head out of the fruit. The only worse nightmare would be if they found half a worm, and I'd have to claim that the peach twig borer is a surface feeder, so it couldn't be my worm. But that would not alter the hysteria. I still had worms.

Most worms usually are taken care of by spraying. Many farmers use a chemical in the winter that provides control for months, a worm toxin that destroys eggs and caterpillars during the cold temperatures. The spray also kills most everything else in the field. By early spring those orchards are sterile of life; lady beetles and lacewings avoid the area, repulsed by a natural quarantine of residues and the fact that there is no food for their hungry appetites.

Some of these chemicals are now prohibited. One university study revealed that, in damp moist conditions, droplets from a winter spray can travel great distances. Chemical particles become suspended in the air and ride the air currents. Our valley is susceptible to this kind of acid fog that drifts from field to field. I conjure overblown images of radioactive clouds rolling across the countryside, hovering above children in school playgrounds, marching toward suburban tracts. The study proved our sprays don't stop at property lines. Suddenly what a neighbor might do affects you more than you imagined. Having good neighbors is more important than ever.

Damage from peach twig borer occurs inconsistently. I've seen years when spray programs didn't work and my neighbors scratched their heads wondering why. I've also heard pest control advisers who sell farmers their chemicals explain the damage with the claim, “It was a wormy year.” No one has proven that borers have developed a resistance to chemicals, but I've learned never to underestimate the ability of pests to adapt.

Bill, a friend and University of California researcher, is developing a new method to attack peach twig borers. He is a veteran of many years of battles, having seen the industry change with the deluge of new chemicals and sprays that have been developed since World War II. In the late forties and fifties, the nation shifted a wartime industrial complex from the European and Pacific fronts to my farm. I can imagine the nation's consciousness: “We beat the Germans and Japanese, why not go after insects next?”

Bill is exploring a novel idea: Why not use a less toxic treatment on the peach twig borer? Not fewer sprays but different ones. He advocates using a bacterium called
Bacillus thuringiensis,
or BT for short. Worms eat the BT and die, but the poison is very selective, leaving natural enemies and people unharmed. The major problem with these bacteria is their short life—they last only a few days in the field. Timing is therefore crucial. The spray must be applied precisely when the caterpillars are emerging.

I picture the peach twig borer making a mad dash for a green shoot, and in that window of opportunity I must apply my BT spray. It would be like those hundreds of little turtles that hatch and make a mad dash for the ocean, only to be snatched up by gulls and other critters. Must I be a gull, hovering above the beach front, patiently waiting for the hatch? Timing like that doesn't seem possible.

But Bill has a plan: spray early in the life of a peach twig borer while they're still young and much more vulnerable to a minute amount of poison. The idea is to use BT before the peach shoots are very long, when the worms are feeding on small leaves. Also BT will last a little longer in the cooler spring weather, when there are fewer leaves to coat with the bacteria and the worms are more exposed. Bill's plan is to lengthen the beach, so to speak, to shift the odds in favor of the farmer. But I will still have to time the spray with the hatch.

A realization: I don't understand the life cycle of the peach twig borer. For years I have killed it without thinking. But if I hope to raise my peaches organically and battle pests differently, I need to learn more about the life in my field, including the pests. I have never seen a peach twig borer infant worm. I hear they hatch in the tops of trees and somehow crawl to their first meal. But no farmer I know has ever seen a newborn borer.

Pat, a graduate student from the University of California at Berkeley, was completing his doctorate in entomology. We became friends and talked for hours about politics and farming. Walking through my orchards I often joked about our height differences; he was almost a foot taller. I claim that, at six feet four inches, Pat can see into the trees much more easily than I can, literally providing a different perspective on my peaches. His dissertation subject: “Peach Twig Borer.”

We slip into hour-long conversations about this worm. I ask questions only a true scientist would get excited about, and he gently educates me with terminology a nonresearcher would understand. I demand he not use Latin on my farm. He explains to me the life cycle of the peach twig borer, its habits and characteristics. I ask questions about the borer's lifestyle: “What does it like to eat, when, and where?” He ponders for a moment, digesting my use of the term
lifestyle.
At times we digress into philosophical conversations: “Which came first, the peach or the peach twig borer?” Sometimes the questions develop into constructive dialogue about adaptation of a species and life biology.

My favorite question is: “When does the peach twig borer know when it's time to hatch?” Pat pauses, wondering if I'm asking some type of trick Zen question. I try again: “What triggers the hatching mechanism in the peach twig borer? If it hatches in the middle of winter, it will freeze. If it hatches with the first leaves, it will have a food source. If it hatches when there's lots of leaves, I don't have a prayer of nailing it with BT.”

For once Pat doesn't have an immediate answer. The farmer stumps the scientist—and I grin. First he mumbles something about temperature and collects himself, then he corrects me. “Peach twig borers don't hatch, they overwinter in trees as very small caterpillars
in
hibernaculum
and—” He stops when my face contorts with his Latin. “They hibernate in tiny cells that look like miniature chimneys,” Pat continues, back on pace. He rambles about monitoring “temperature degree days” or the number of warm spring days until the first borer hatches, all of which sounds like a scientific method that takes all the fun out of the miracle of life and birth. Finally he counters, “Well, how do peaches know when to bloom?”

I answer with silence.

Still, I could not visualize the peach twig borer and sense that my run-for-life-to-the-ocean metaphor doesn't apply. But Pat has monitored some hatches and noticed that the new green shoots were too short for the worm to drill into. The hatch seems to be timed with the blooms and first leaves, before the first shoots grow beyond an inch or two. Perhaps a beachhead battle plan is appropriate.

Bill first mentions the term in a passing conversation. I corner him at a University of California agricultural field day, where researchers parade their projects to farmers. Actually the farmers are paraded around the 160-acre research station on vineyard wagons (pulled by tractors) from field to field, where a different scientist waits with bullhorn and a few charts and his research project tucked in the orchard behind him. I think of the old Soviet Union's October parades, with the generals standing as an arsenal of military hardware passes in review, only I'm not sure if the farmers are the generals or if we are the tanks and missiles.

I ask Bill about the spring arrival of the peach twig borer. He repeats what Pat taught me: peach twig borers overwinter in the tops of the trees and emerge in early spring, with the first leaves and shoots.

“They immediately bore into the shoots?” I ask.

“Well, no. There's not enough leaf growth for them,” Bill answers.

My run-for-the-ocean image collapses.

Then Bill casually adds, “For those first days they wander. If there aren't many leaves they'll even eat blossoms, nibbling at them. They just graze until the shoots are long enough to bore into.”

Graze. Peach twig borer grazing. I picture the worms slowly crawling out of their winter chimney homes, stretching, then making their way to their first good meal in months. They smell the pink blossoms, sense the fresh green leaves, and start their spring picnicking. After spending a winter cooped up in tiny sawdust mounds, they enjoy a few days out in the fresh air. So they graze, munching on some leaves, taking in some sun, listening to the spring birds, doing lunch with a dessert of peach blossoms.

I explain my vision to Pat and he smiles. Now I can see the peach twig borer and understand how a simple treatment of BT can work. Later I spray the bacteria onto the leaves, the tiny but hungry caterpillars gorge themselves, and the stomach poison does its job. Even if BT lasts only for a few days, the borers keep grazing, slowly feasting on a suicidal diet.

“They kill themselves,” I claim. I grin at Pat and raise my eyebrows. He blinks, surprised at the look in my eyes. “It's the perfect crime,” I conclude.

Shovel of Earth

The blade slices into the soil. My muscles tense and push the shovel into the moist ground. Dark and damp, the sweet warm smell of wet earth. The tool eases through a mat of weeds, the ground flush with activity. The metal face slides partially in, the soil is heavy and gently resists. Roots extend deep into an underground tangled mass beyond my sight.

I can't count the thousands of shovelfuls of earth I have moved in my life. But I like to think of the thousands that lie in my future, if I am fortunate.

Spring irrigation brings life to the orchards and vineyards. Peaches ripen and the scent of bloom lingers in the air. The vine buds push and the pale green of fresh growth emerges pure and delicate. My shovel blade pierces the earth again and again. I guide the water into my fields in an act of renewal, a confirmation of one more season.

The work frees my mind. Each shovel of the heavy, dank earth nurtures my soul with meaning about this place. My thoughts wander—to images of work to feed the soil, of harvests to feed the thousands. My labor renews the spirit as fields become invigorated with life.

Another spring unfolds.

Changing Shades of Green

Pat and I walk my farm. We are an odd couple: he's trained as a scientist and an entomologist, I'm a farmer with a degree in sociology and rural studies. We compare what we see on the farm, but what's more important is what we don't see.

I've walked these fields thousands of times, he's entered hundreds of orchards. Oddly, those facts interfere with our perspectives, for we sometimes overlook the obvious. We both agree that walking may be the best management tool for farmers and researchers. Nothing replaces the personal and intimate sensibility of walking a farm, feeling the earth, seeing and smelling an orchard. But it's getting harder and harder to walk. Walking takes precious time, we can't cover a lot of ground, and first we have to break old habits and relearn the very act of walking.

I remember watching my children take their first steps. Walking was far more than a physiological task of muscle control and balance; it was driven by something inside, a motivation to explore. Adults often think of walking as merely a function of getting from one place to another, the start and finish is all that matters. But for children, a new dimension bursts open when they start walking, a new world of motion, of adventure, of discovery. They see a new world when they learn to walk.

Pat and I try to re-create our first steps into an orchard and see what's really in front of us, to capture the magical innocence of children and their endless curiosity about a new world. We wander through familiar workplaces with no questions in mind, attempting to walk without a destination.

“It's slow,” I warn Pat.

“Almost painful,” he adds.

As we leave the farmhouse porch and head toward the Sun Crest peaches, we agree to think out loud and share observations. Pat comments about my small five-and ten-acre blocks of vineyards, with dirt avenues dividing the fields. My equally small parcels of peach trees rise above the vines and break the horizon line. Other farms have been replanted in large forty- or eighty-acre sections, solid blocks of vines and trees. We both try to envision my farm from the sky, I imagine it looks like a patchwork quilt with a green appliqué.

“Think my small field size makes a difference?” I ask.

“It might,” he says.

We allow ourselves to explore the topic. I can see him thinking of the possibilities: the advantages of mixed habitat for beneficial insects, the rich diversity of species, the problems of monocropping and the spread of pathogens or pests. I interrupt his mental calculations. “Small fields mean if I screw up in one, I only mess up a little.” We smile. It's so easy to get too technical about this farming game.

We approach the Sun Crest orchard, and I focus on the weakest tree. Daily I pass this spot and am reminded of its frail condition. “I can't figure out what's the matter with that tree. It just doesn't like me,” I comment.

“What tree?” Pat says and grins.

Pat slowly pans the entire field. Then he crouches to peer down a row. I join him. “Ever notice the changing shades of green?” he says.

I think of Paul, a farmer and oil painter friend. He enjoys experimenting with green, capturing the subtle nuances of a fresh leaf or the thriving growth of mid-spring or the weak yellow green of a cover crop on bad soil. When a group of us visit Paul's house, the farmers tend to gather around certain paintings. Paul knows his paintings work when we gravitate toward a few, attracted by the colors, and begin talking about his greens. The true green of a field has depth, like the mysterious colors of a clear but deep lake. Each shade has meaning we all interpret differently. Paul says farmers are his best art critics, we know of more greens than anyone else.

Pat and I enter the field. Sounds envelop us, birds call and sing, insects buzz and flutter. Each step sounds distinct. Underfoot lies a rough collection of stalks and stems, sticks and twigs, leaves and wildflowers. Diversity dwells in my fields.

We both experiment with the mechanics of walking and looking. I crouch low, feeling like an imitation Native American in my desperate effort to be one with nature. I try listening to my footsteps and establish a deliberate, methodical cadence that forces me to go slower. It's uncomfortable. I compare it to riding in a car with someone who drives with excruciating caution.

I hear myself breathing and discover a type of efficiency in movement. With a slow, patient stride, I can check the vigor of the cover crop, the dryness of the soil, the health of the leaves. I begin to notice the slumping peach shoots where a worm has struck, the different shades of green where mites establish their home. Instead of making three or four different checks of a field for specific pests or problems, I find I can get an impression of the whole orchard in one visit. This means decisions will be easier to make.

I turn to ask my companion how he's doing. I discover he's on the other side of the field. He looks dazed, without direction, almost expressionless, and I realize I must appear exactly the same.

I try to move even more slowly, turning my head from left to right, right to left, consciously panning the orchard. After a while my method seems to work, I begin to see hints of color I had overlooked. The younger limbs, perhaps only a few years old, push vibrant green shoots, the hue is light, and the surface appears shiny. Growth on the old thick branches seems darker and duller. Then I realize that the two sets of leaves are not the same age. The green on the established branches is maturer, with longer, more developed shoots, while not only do the young limbs have newer shoots but the nodes are closer together. The vibrant green may be a result of denser growth.

I'm not sure this makes a difference, but I do know that, on the same tree, peaches from old branches will ripen days earlier than those on younger limbs. Dad claims that old-growth peaches taste sweeter, but I've always thought he had an affinity for the old wood.

Tiny peaches cling to the slender limbs, and I catch myself envisioning them a few months from now at harvesttime. Two or three old branches do not look right, and I sense they may die before harvest. My conclusion is based only on a hunch that comes from having worked with these trees for decades. The trees provide subtle clues in a grand mystery that can alternately frustrate and torment or amaze and initiate.

I hear steps behind me. Pat is smiling. “We're getting the hang of it,” he says, breaking the spell.

We continue to walk in silence. Then he turns.

“I'm sorry but I just can't help it.” He pulls out a small hand lens dangling around his neck. “I've been trained as an entomologist for too long. I have to revert to my old ways.” I give my approval, thankful he doesn't ask what I was just thinking. My thoughts have wandered too. I am calculating how many boxes of fruit I can pull from this orchard and what the different pricing schemes and potential profit margins will be this year.

He drops to the ground and examines some drying cover crop leaves. “They're full of mites,” he announces.

A knot instantly forms in my stomach. Immediately I think of the damage mites can cause and what I could spray to control them. Old habits are hard to break.

“But I've never seen this species in a peach tree.”

I relax, embarrassed by my reaction. I look through his lens, don't recognize the little spiderlike creatures, and am happy they would rather stay in the clover. We both walk out of the orchard with the knowledge that the peach crop will probably be fine. Should we become too confident, nature will put a stop to our foolishness. In the meantime, it's wonderful to feel satisfied without knowing or even caring exactly why.

Five Worms

“Five worms.”

I ask Pat to repeat.

“Five worms, I found five worms in your peaches.” Pat has just finished one of his weekly data-gathering searches at my farm.

“What kind of worms?”

His voice is calm. “OFM. Oriental fruit moth.”

That's not what I mean. I want to know the size of the worms, their color, and are they eating leaves or peaches? I ask, “Are the worms ugly?”

He pauses and I try to collect my thoughts. Then he says, “I'm not as familiar with OFM,” and tries to comfort the shaken farmer by adding, “The peach twig borer populations are low, real low.”

My eyes grow wide and I stare blankly out toward my fields. I mumble “Five worms” to myself.

I drive out to the field and Pat follows in his truck. The green peaches are growing fat, the size of Christmas decorations. The leaves flutter in a breeze like thousands of baby bird wings. Nervous anxiety builds and I start to search for worms, but I stop. I have no idea where to look.

Pat sits in his truck, procrastinating with a data log before joining me in the field. I plunge into a dozen questions. “What do OFM larvae look like at this time of year? They aren't after my green peaches yet, are they? Do other farmers have an outbreak?” I end with my most important one: “Pat, how many more worms are there?”

Pat shrugs. “I'm not sure. Like I said, OFM's not my thing. But I did do some reading.” He launches into a ten-minute lecture on oriental fruit moth, and I learn more in those few minutes than in all my years on the farm. When five worms munch on your trees, your learning curve accelerates.

Initially I want to quantify the problem, break it down into dollars and cents.

Before, I used to apply a pesticide in winter that took care of all these worm problems. It wasn't expensive, maybe $20 per acre, for which I'd also get a low-stress spring and summer. But my natural-farming attempt is quickly becoming expensive for the nerves.

I ask, “Where did you find the five worms? Does each tree have five worms? Each branch?”

“Oh, no,” Pat answers. “I looked at dozens of trees.”

I relax a little. Five worms divided by two dozen trees means only a few worms per acre. But this could be the beginning of a new hatch, with only the first wave having emerged.

Pat explains how he found the worms. He inspects each branch for tiny half-inch or smaller worms or any visible signs of their feeding. It requires hours to inspect a dozen trees. “You've never found an OFM?” he asks.

“To tell you the truth, I've never looked,” I blurt. “And I doubt if any farmer has ever committed an entire day to searching hundreds of branches for worms. No wonder you found some, looking so damned hard.” I occurs to me that I may always have had five worms in my spring orchard and never knew it because no one spent hours obsessed with finding them. I ask again, “So how many worms do you think are out here?”

Pat shrugs again.

I'm not used to that kind of answer. Pesticide salesmen never shrug their shoulders. In fact they would love my situation: five worms, peach crop threatened, worried farmer, instant sales. Farmer paranoia and good sales commissions go hand in hand.

“What do five worms mean?” I mumble out loud. Pat smiles and says that sounds like a Zen master's question. I glare at him and he wanders over to another row of peaches.

The five worms challenge my attempt to farm these peaches differently. Their discovery threatens my organic methods, all the work I've tried this year. I sense a coming crisis of faith, knowing I could spray and kill all the worms in the field but then possibly repeat another ordinary harvest of homeless peaches. I have been hoping my alternative farming practices would become a marketing tool, leverage to get attention for these wonderful-tasting fruits.

But how can I live with nature? By learning to live with five worms and my stress? I realize that for the rest of the season, with the early morning rising sun or at nightfall with the heat lingering in the air, I'll stand on my farmhouse porch thinking about five worms.

I join Pat and we scan a few branches of leaves and green peaches. “Thanks for letting me know about the five worms,” I say. He nods. “By the way, what did you do with them?” I grin. “I'd like to see their squashed bodies.”

Pat turns to me with wide eyes and a blank look.

Learning to Fail

The farm is never far away from my family. Our produce comes from the work of family. On the Masumoto farm our fruits and garden vegetables have been family food for generations.

My eight-year-old daughter, Nikiko, has witnessed both the successes and the failures of our farm. She has touched and tasted ripening fruits and has watched the power of weather unleashed on the fields. She knows her father is vulnerable to things out of his control. The farm is part of her picture drawing. She watches spring thunderstorms march into our valley and ravage tender green shoots with a downpour of hail. As the first ice balls crash down from the heavens, she sees me stand outside under the darkened sky and cry out, “Stop!” Later she draws a picture of the storm with a farmer wearing a big hat to protect himself.