Epitaph for a Peach (6 page)

We plant an annual vegetable garden, and this year Nikiko helps plant some of the seeds and seedlings. But after growing initially, they begin to die.

Nikiko's garden is failing. A virus attacks the fragile squash, causing the leaves to yellow and the delicate growth to wither. Her eggplants glisten from a sticky juice secreted by a herd of aphids with a company of tending ants. A phantom creature even munches on the hardy marigolds, taking huge circular bites out of the dangling leaves.

Daily I monitor the slow death, assessing the new damage, wondering if I should do something drastic. I consider using a garden spray, but when I read the label from the typical hardware store garden dust or pest spray, I realize it would be deadlier than anything I use on the farm. It will kill the aphids along with everything else, not the lesson I would want the garden to convey to my child. I face the same dilemma as I try to find a home for my Sun Crest peaches. If something doesn't work right I have to fight the tendency to find a quick solution.

“It's OK, Dad,” Niki explains. “We have other squash plants.” Then she quickly gives the napping dog a hug and skips over to the sunning cats for their afternoon tea together.

Nikiko helps me realize the difference between disappointment and losing. Her garden, like farming, teaches me that at times failure is OK.

I've lost raisin crops, peach harvests, whole trees and vines. I've lost money, time, and my labor. I've lost my temper, my patience, and, at times, hope. Most of the time, it's due to things beyond my control, like the weather, market prices, or insects or disease. Even in situations where I believe I am in charge—cover-crop seeding, management of workers, the timing of harvest—I now know I can never really have complete control.

Ironically, the moment I step off my farm I enter a world where it seems that everything, life and nature, is regulated and managed. Homes are built to insulate families from the outside weather. People work in climate-controlled environments designed to reduce the impact of the weather. The government develops bureaucracies and statutes to safeguard against failure and protect us from risk. In America, a lack of control implies failure.

As a kid I was taught that sports is a great training field for life, where you learn about the difference between winning and losing. But you also learn to make excuses to avoid looking like a failure. It's far easier to blame someone or something—a teammate who couldn't catch a fly ball, a lousy referee—than it is to learn to live with losses.

On the farm, the foul lines aren't marked and nature doesn't play by a rule book. There are no winners and losers and the game is never finished. There's always next year and the next harvest, more dark clouds on the horizon or aphids in your child's garden.

I also learned something about failure from my father. One year it began to rain on our raisin crop. A year's worth of work lay on the ground, exposed and vulnerable to the elements. The rain would soon begin to rot the harvest. I remember running outside to tell the clouds to go away. I came back inside and watched my father grow angry too. Restless, we walked back and forth to the window to check the march of dark clouds and listened to the
tap-tap-tap
of rain on the roof.

“What can we do?” I blurted out in frustration.

“What
can
you do?” he answered. “Make it stop raining?”

We lost most of the crop that year. We failed. But the grapes grew the next year and it didn't rain.

When I farm or garden, I learn to fail without winners or losers.

The
Furin

A small
furin
hangs on our farmhouse porch. Its miniature bell delicately jingles with the slightest breeze. A long strip of paper captures the air currents and translates the movement into sound. I can peer out over the fields, watching the advancing spring season with its green blankets of foliage, and hear the wind.

Nikiko likes the fragile sounds. The metal chime rings like a whisper, the voice tiny like a child's. Occasional spring winds in the valley blow strong enough to snap the outstretched vine canes. Most of the time soft breezes brush our cheeks with such subtleties that we ignore their presence. A
furin
reminds grown-ups what children already sense. Niki says she hears the wind singing.

I spend the spring battling nature, trying to farm differently, hoping somehow I am contributing to the quest to save my peach. The more I struggle, the more the burden seems to weigh. Each new approach generates more questions; the complexity of working with nature slips into a growing pattern of chaos.

I remember a Japanese saying about the power of bamboo. Its strength is not found in a rigid structure that blocks the wind; instead, the stalks bend with the wind. Their power resides in their very flexibility. I'm working on becoming like bamboo. I've abandoned my attempts to control and compete with nature, but letting go has been a challenge.

I'm trying to listen to my farm. Before, I had no reason to hear the sounds of nature. The sole strategy of conventional farming seems to be dominance. Now, with each passing week, I venture into fields full of life and change, clinging to a belief in my work and a hope that it's working.

As I recall the past spring from my porch, the ringing of the
furin
helps me understand as it flutters in a subtle breeze. For the first time in my life, I see the wind.

Summer Dreams

Summer hits with a blaze of heat, defying the calendar and my scheduling of farmwork. Some years it begins in early May, other years the first blast is delayed until mid-June. Temperatures rise to 100 degrees and I begin a routine of the two- or three-T-shirt workday. I sweat so much that by midmorning my shirt will be drenched, so I'll peel it off, leave it in the sun to dry, and pull on another. I repeat the ritual at noon, and by my afternoon work session I can recycle the dry morning shirt. Within minutes, though, I begin sweating. I can never predict the arrival of this first heat wave and instead find myself collapsed on the porch after foolishly trying to work straight through that first scorching day.

The burning heat lingers even as the sun settles on the horizon. The mud caked on my boots, now cured and dried, breaks off in small piles next to my outstretched legs. My damp shirt clings to my flesh, with an odd chill creeping across my back. My face rests on the wood boards, the knots smooth against my cheek. Between the planks I feel a kiss of cool air rising from the darkness below. I listen to our golden retriever, Jake, panting, releasing his body heat. I open my mouth too, trying to allow more heat to escape so I can recover from the annual initiation of summer.

My body knows a full day's work lies behind it. My legs and back ache from trudging through fields, my arms and hands are sore from working a shovel and from the irrigation water, even my worn boots pinch chafed heels and weary soles.

I catch myself dreaming of better weather, better harvests, better prices for my peaches—perhaps I will find a home for my wonderful-tasting produce. Then I scold myself for such fantasies and try to anticipate the inevitable disappointment. Dreams haunt farmers, they drive us through depression, disaster, and hunger and later tease our optimism with hope.

The greatest challenge of my summer remains: to keep the confidence I had when I turned back the bulldozer from my peach trees. If I lack vision of the coming harvest and lose my trust in nature, the year will be a constant struggle and perhaps futile. I'd best arm myself early in the season with righteous optimism.

With the first heat of summer and a glimpse of the coming season of work, dreams creep into my mind. I allow them to visit. For a moment, while resting on my porch, the sweat drying on my back, I feel content. Perhaps this is why we farmers continue: we work from moment to moment with the land, dreams fill us like a song or vision, and, for a brief pause, all is as it should be.

Gourmet Dust

All good farmers become connoisseurs of dirt and dust. We have progressed from trailing a horse-drawn plow and marching through mud to riding modern equipment that elevates us three or four feet above the ground. But no good farmer can escape contact with the earth, we feel it on our tongues and in our throats.

Farm dust varies with soil types and regional cuisines. I don't know how the Georgia red clay tastes, but I have visited the Wisconsin dairy lands and Washington's Skagit Valley. Mixed with rains and lush growth, their dust is heavy and thick and has a richness, like a fattening dessert of chocolate.

Dust from the San Joaquin Valley of California contains subtle nuances of flavor only the native may detect. The denser clays of the northern valley have a smell of river history mingled within them. The Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers drain into this lowland area, depositing centuries of topsoil collected from a valley three hundred miles long. The dust from the western half of the valley is parched, baked. For centuries only sparse vegetation grew there until irrigation water was imported from northern California. Few rivers or streams cross the territory, and underground water tables are buried hundreds of feet deep. Winds blowing over the barren lands churn up storms of dust. The particles whip upward into visible clouds that drift to the east, lightly coating the farms of the eastern valley. In intense winds, I can see a dingy layer of air and sense what dust bowl veterans of the thirties must have witnessed.

My farm is on the east side of the valley, fed by rivers draining from the Sierras. I work land that was once part of an ancient lake that covered the entire valley. I now consider this land a desert because our annual rainfall is often in the single digits.

My dust is a fine powder. The soil is a sandy loam that would be a chef's delight. Add water to the earth and create a rich roux, thick but pliable. Stir, and the air will be filled with a rich aroma of turned earth. Beat the ground with a disk, and the topsoil stands like sifted flour awaiting flavoring.

Without water, my ground is ripe for dust. In the heat of summer a dust cloud follows all movement. Walking creates delicate billows, tiny dirt particles take flight and dance around my boots. I monitor Jake chasing a rabbit by the speeding column of dust suspended in his wake. A truck driving along the field's edge becomes coated with a frosting of dirt.

I work my fields according to the dust. No dust suggests that the soil is too wet; tractor tires will compact the ground and crush the dirt particles together, causing farm equipment to scar the land with cementlike impressions. Erratic puffs of dust suggest that the ground is too dry, the earth baked so hard that little can break through the crust. Disks and cultivators bounce over the parched surface, pulverizing the thin topsoil without penetrating the root zones. A battered and abused layer of dirt is left behind, bared to winds that scatter particles high into the air.

The dust layers on my eyelashes. Blinking creates miniature clouds before my eyes. Even my unexposed skin wears a fine undergarment of dust; it penetrates most every crevice of my body. I've found dust in places I could only see in a mirror. When body moisture mixes with this dust, little streaks appear on my skin and my clothes. The combination generates an uncomfortable friction.

I lick my lips often when working in the dust. It has a delicate flavor, quiet yet seasoned with a certain tanginess. Growing juicy peaches and grapes amid these conditions seems like a contradiction, yet the dust tempers the character of my fruits. My Sun Crest peaches are sweet but not like candy. My grapes have a delicate taste, light and almost surprising. They both perform well in my soils. My land is balanced, and her dust complements my labor the way a subtle dry wine adds to a meal.

Summer Pruning

I know a secret about pruning: it begins in the summer. Years ago I first read about summer pruning in a university research report that examined, in detail, “fruitwood budding physiology during the critical summer growth.” From the author I concluded that good fruitwood—wood that will have a wealth of blossoms by the next spring and strong stems that can bear lots of large, fat peaches—is formed during the summer. But I discovered it would take years to transfer the research from the paper to the field.

Farmers call those branches where peaches dangle hangers, I suppose, either because fruit hangs on them or the slender stems hang down from the main limbs. Contrary to common perception, though, a well-pruned fruit tree does not have all its branches pointing upward. A skinny branch, reaching for the heavens, would probably snap under the weight of two or three midsummer peaches, swollen with juice—a painful sight for the anxious farmer.

During the summer I'm not much concerned about hangers. I'm more concerned about the overall shape of the tree. A properly trained fruit tree resembles a goblet, its major limbs trained upward from the trunk, not too straight up like a champagne glass but rather angled outward with the gentle curve of a wineglass. If a tree adopts the shape of a martini glass, however, it will have a poor structural character, and with a heavy crop the main scaffolds will break. It helps to know your adult beverages when you prune.

Dad once had a nectarine orchard where, over the years, we let all the growth migrate upward. At eye level and below, few branches ever survived because the treetops blocked much of the sunlight. Walking under the lush growth, I felt as if I had entered a natural cathedral, with arches suspended ten to fifteen feet above and hallow earth below. This may have been great for a pious experience but it was lousy for the business of farming, because pruning, fruit thinning, and harvesting had to be done mostly from ladders, with workers precariously perched twelve feet in the air. It was expensive and time-consuming, and it tested one's sense of balance. Each year it only got worse, the top growth reaching higher and higher, competing for sunlight.

To combat such vigorous growth, some farmers bring in a wicked-looking machine called a tree topper. It resembles a mechanical spider with saw-blade arms, something you might see in a cheap horror movie about science gone amok. This machine has four giant circular saws, mounted horizontally on revolving arms that rise above the canopy, which slice and dice and chop everything from about ten feet up. It's a robotic tree barber, attacking an orchard and giving it a flattop. The sound of the buzzing saws and shattering wood terrorizes; what's left behind is a field of slashed and severed limbs.

For a few weeks following the tree clipping, warm sunlight penetrates the trees and they respond with wonderful growth. But a study done by University of California researchers verifies what some farmers have witnessed: cutting a limb at the peak growing season only stimulates new shoots just below the incision. New growth pushes upward even thicker and the flattop soon grows back denser than ever, with two or three new shoots reaching for sunlight where only one stood before. You can't manipulate nature for too long.

A healthy tree will sprout unwanted suckers and water spouts. These lush fast-growing shoots grow from the center of the tree, wasting plant energy and nutrients. Eventually they begin to shade out and kill the lower branches. Pruning them in summer can only help the tree.

I had had no prior experience with summer pruning; most farmers omit the practice. It may have to do with the time—summer is full of other work demands and farmers have to run in order to keep up with the heat of harvest. On the other hand, maybe we just think of pruning as a foggy-weather task. This methodical off-season chore feels odd in the sweltering heat.

Then I discovered why I was one of the few who summer-pruned. In 100-degree heat, when you cut too much growth and expose branches to direct sunlight, the bark roasts and burns. The wood blisters and then cracks, exposing the delicate internal cork layers to insects and disease. Wood borers love wounded limbs and quickly move in and make themselves at home. In one of my orchards most of the trees have lost their east limbs, casualties of my first attempt at summer pruning.

After trial and error, I learned that I can trim my trees in summer, but pruning is the wrong word for it. It should be called summer shaping. I can shape a tree in summer and not only encourage growth near the ground but become a bonsai artist, a sculptor gently guiding a healthy shoot into an open area to fill in space where a branch has died. Done properly, each tree becomes uniquely balanced in a natural symmetry.

Trees don't let you forget your mistakes, especially pruning. Badly pruned trees stay with a farmer for years. I have some trees that will never be properly shaped, and every time I pass them I'm reminded of my mistakes of years before.

I read of a Japanese wood craftsman who spoke about freeing the soul of a tree. Like a sculptor, I too labor to free that soul. But the souls of my trees and vines are alive and they respond to my actions. I live with them daily.

Fixing Leaks

At first, I try to ignore the brown, muddy stain in the middle of the dirt avenue. But the next day a miniature spring with a pool of water sits in the roadway: my irrigation pipeline is leaking.

Like all orchards and vineyards in this area, my Sun Crest orchards use an irrigation system that carries water to the thirsty trees and vines. With water, the valley flourishes from a desert into a garden.

Most of the smaller open ditches of yesterday have been replaced by concrete irrigation pipelines. They run like a maze underground, connecting fields to a pump or other water source. I don't know when some of my lines were laid. A ten-incher is pre—World War II vintage, when most farms had small pumps, small fields, and perhaps lower expectations. In the seventies, Dad added a 15-horsepower deep-well pump that requires a fourteen-inch line to feed his quarter-mile-long vine rows. Other lines lie hidden still and have yet to be identified. I don't know how deep a particular line may be buried, or what quirks would have led a farmer to substitute an odd-sized section when he ran out of standard cement pipe, or where the line curves because the land was inaccurately surveyed and that's where the property line was originally drawn. I could not anticipate these idiosyncrasies of my farm.

I drive closer to inspect the newly formed pool of water in the avenue. The leak grows with each day, the continual water pressure in the line forcing the crack to expand. I hope it will somehow heal itself like a small wound (sometimes fine sand particles can lodge in small cracks and slow the seepage). By the third day, however, I can no longer drive over the expanding puddle without the risk of getting stuck. The time to repair the crack has arrived.

I begin the job by digging a hole but soon discover that I have to know how deep I must go. For pacing, I need to envision my target or I risk the wrong rhythm. I may start too quickly and exhaust my back and arms, which will inevitably lead to a bad attitude. Or I may proceed too slowly, which, with the sun beating down upon me, will drain my energy and spirit.

When I fix a leak, I master some very basic engineering skills: the deeper the hole, the wider it needs to be, not for structural support or safety but for fit. A hole five feet deep requires a working space at least four feet across. I need to have enough room to straddle the pipe and punch a hole in the concrete. I must have space to crouch over and reach into the line to coat the crack with cement.