Epitaph for a Peach (8 page)

I too can remember sharing the dark sky of hot summer nights with my brother. We sometimes camped out in the fields. During a break between the summer fruits and the family packing-shed work, we pitched a homemade tent made from an old bedsheet and a tree rope. You would think working all summer with these peaches and grapes, we'd be weary of them, let alone want to sleep among them. But we wanted to sleep “in the wilderness” and drew no lines between our fields of play and the fields of work. This wasn't just any farm, it was our home.

We'd spend a night outdoors and witness the midsummer show of shooting stars. We'd play a game of spying the first meteor and then racing to point to the next and the next. We divided the heavens into sections, guessing whose would have the most meteors and how many we could see at the same time.

Just before we fell asleep I would hear Dad open the back door. I think he'd purposely let the door slam shut so we'd know of his presence. He'd stand listening to the sound of his fields with his sons sleeping out in the darkness. I knew he could smell us. In the windless summer nights, the smoke from our campfire would drift toward the house, a beacon revealing our location. After a few minutes I would hear the door slam shut again. He'd go to bed knowing all was well.

When I tell these stories to friends, their eyes widen and smiles come to their faces. They tell me how fine it must be to raise children on a farm. I now realize that the silence I experienced in college arose from a youthful notion that we could get away from our families. We were hoping to journey beyond the horizon, ignorant that what some of us actually sought was right in front of us.

I now know that saving my peach will involve more than competing with nature. It will necessarily include family as I create something called home.

Home Pack

I can no longer delay the hunt, I force myself to stop walking the fields and embark on finding a market for these wonderful-tasting but homeless peaches. Too easily I've procrastinated with the excuse, “I grow the fruit, that's what I do best. Let someone else worry about selling it.” I hope a miracle will happen, a produce retailer reading the
L.A. Times
article about my peaches will become obsessed with my fruit. I base my fantasy on the thought that good things happen to good peaches. Marcy claims I am becoming a real farmer, “hopelessly naive.”

I read a fruit marketing report that concludes that the majority of peach buyers either have children or are fifty-five years or older. This reinforces my belief in peaches as family food. My Sun Crest peaches are the ideal fruit for both a mature generation and for children.

I pitch my “family food, not fast food” slogan to a few fruit brokers. These middlemen (and most of them are men) supposedly do all us farmers a favor by using their professional skills to find the best buyers for our fruits, creating a perfect match. On paper the system sounds fair, but in reality the buyer most always has the upper hand, especially with a perishable crop. Few deals are negotiated in advance. Instead, frantic brokers search for buyers as soon as the peaches are picked and packed in boxes, thousands of packages waiting shipment in cold storage.

“It's a stacked deck,” one farmer explains. “There's a reason why we call them brokers. They're good at helping us farmers go broke.”

I start with a series of phone calls, and over half the brokers laugh when I mention Sun Crest.

I ask, “Why the chuckle?”

They refer to a mysterious blacklist with Sun Crest near the top, tainted with a reputation for lousy color and terrible shelf life. Fruit brokers want peaches that last for weeks in cold storage without becoming mealy and soft. “We want color and shelf life, shelf life and color,” I hear over and over. Sun Crests are stereotyped, condemned by a deeply entrenched prejudice. It would take a sixties-style revolution to overcome the bigotry.

“But the taste,” I plead.

That brings even louder laughter from some.

I sense some hope when a few brokers ask, “What other varieties do you have?”

After a few calls, I learn more about the broker mentality, their high-stress jobs, and their appetite for humor. I learn to start conversations with my best joke (often about lawyers or sex), followed by name dropping (everyone seems to know one another). Eventually, conversation leads to a discussion of peaches. I first talk about my newer varieties, Elegant Ladies and Spring Ladies, then I nimbly slip in Sun Crest with a quick mumble.

I discern a positive breakthrough when one broker doesn't laugh and only asks, “How long do you plan to keep the Sun Crest?” A high school friend who is the salesman at a nearby packing house agrees to take my Sun Crest crop, providing I give their house the rest of my peaches. He understands some of my feelings about this peach and patronizes me. “We'll work with you and try our best,” he assures me, then adds, “And if our price is less than it costs you to pick and pack them, we'll let you know before you throw good money after bad.”

Not pick the crop? That is not one of my options. I think of becoming a broker myself, to find a home for at least some of my peaches. I could honestly say to buyers I know these peaches and have tasted their flavor. I could describe what's actually there: “Spring Lady peaches are sweet yet with the tangy flavor of early season fruit,” or “Elegant Lady peaches are rich with flavor because I hang them on the tree a few days longer,” and, of course, “Sun Crest has a buttery flavor that melts in your mouth, smooth and sweet with the message of summer in each bite.” Perhaps my realism would be refreshing, especially if I got beyond the buyers to the actual retail produce people and consumers.

I talk with a few local produce managers about my peaches, and most agree to take some. But how will I deliver them, with my own truck? Suddenly I picture myself in the wholesale produce business instead of farming.

Some of my farmer friends tell me of their success in the farmer's market circuit. Many cities are reestablishing open-air markets: a downtown street closes for a morning, farmers back up their pickups and trucks and sell fresh local produce to eager shoppers hungry for good quality. The atmosphere is festive, the downtown is revitalized, and farmers make good money, providing their operation matches the weekly routine. But my farm is a long drive from the major urban markets in the Bay Area or in southern California, and instead of ten or twenty different peach varieties, with a staggered ripening time, my Sun Crests come all at once.

Still, I try to devise a farmer's market business plan. I envision Marcy quitting her job to work the San Francisco market, I'd handle southern California, and we'd each take one child to hand out peach samples. I imagine that once we total the travel expenses and the long hours we will not even make minimum wage, and our kids could turn us in for violating child labor laws.

Another option is to pick and pack some of the peaches myself. Perhaps I could harvest a specialty pack, an exclusive box with the best fruit commanding a higher price. By home packing I can sell a few hundred boxes, dealing directly with retailers and maybe covering enough production expenses to justify keeping the Sun Crests.

With the thought of home packing, a flood of memories rushes through my mind, a childhood of summers spent packing our own fruit. For kids growing up on a farm, summers were filled with family working together. It wasn't until I was about ten years old that I discovered that city families took summer vacations and kids got bored with nothing to do. I wasn't sure if I was lucky to have my summers filled with activity or cheated out of a vacation and a child's lazy summer memories. For us, summer meant work.

Our family was not unique. Much of the tree fruit industry of California began in a similar fashion. Before World War II, small family operations were the norm. In what was called “shade-tree packing,” farmers parked a wagon under a large tree and packed their fruits into boxes destined for the nation. Some gradually expanded and moved into a barn, adding more equipment—a set of rollers and packing stands or later conveyor and sizing belts—and eventually developed today's sophisticated operation, which uses electronic-video-sensing sorting and computer-controlled belts and printouts. The industry matured with a great deal of cooperation, farmers banding together for marketing and quality control. The tree fruit community has remained a diverse collection of thousands of growers supplying a nation with summer fruits. We are still a community bound with a common history of home packing operations dependent on the hard work of family and neighbors.

 

I
PLAN TO
keep my specialty harvest very small, a throwback to the shade-tree era of farming. But first I need to round up the old fruit packing equipment to re-create the family operation.

I talk with Dad and plant the idea. I can see him searching his memory, wondering where he stored a certain roller or lidding stand. For the next few days I monitor his steady supply caravan as he drives the quarter mile from his place to mine, his latest discoveries hanging out the back of his pickup. He unloads them in my shed and returns home for more rediscovered treasures.

He locates pieces of equipment we haven't seen for years: a twelve-foot roller with a ninety-degree turn extension unit, a collection of ink stamps with fruit variety names, a wooden stand that held three boxes on top with lower shelves for packaging pads. Dad unveils a prize collection of picking buckets spanning the eras—from a wooden pail with metal bands (which I label
FROM THE FRUIT STONE AGE
), to the steel model that had a “reshaping” capability should a teenage farm boy run over it with a tractor (I recognize the place where I pounded out the dent with a hammer) and the most recent nineties all-plastic version.

I celebrate Dad's finds with long talks about the old days of home packing. Once we finish a conversation with a walkthrough of the future packing shed, and Dad drags a stick in the dirt to draw outlines of where equipment can be set up.

My peaches will journey through a series of work stations, beginning with a type of brush-cleaner machine (which I still have to find or make), then onto a sorting table for packing. Sometimes the peaches will go directly from bucket into box, if they are not too fragile and if the buyer doesn't mind a little fuzz. The fruit will be packed into wooden boxes and pushed toward a lidding stand. A cover is then nailed on and the boxes stacked on a pallet, ready for shipment. Over the years, in the larger packing houses, new technology has been introduced: a washer and hydrocooler are used before the fruit is packed, along with conveyor belts with automated sizers, and cardboard boxes, and hot-glue-gun sealers. But for our home packing operation, the people matter the most.

I remember the division of labor among family members, the women doing almost all the sorting and packing, the men bringing the fruit in and taking the filled boxes for lidding and palletizing. Each kid had a job. My older brother started lidding the boxes as soon as he could swing a hammer. Later, when I became of lidding age, my brother advanced up our corporate ladder and was promoted to truck loader. My sister packed fruit at the work station behind my mom. I remember Mom often turning around and checking on her daughter's box, monitoring for odd sizes or shapes of fruit and inspecting overall appearance. Even when my sister grew proficient and could pack better than anyone else in the shed, she remained at the number-two packing stand, part of a hierarchy that was entrenched in the family operation. I did lots of the little jobs, stamping and padding the boxes for the packers, assisting my brother when his roller got too full, tossing culls when they overflowed their boxes and needed dumping. Everyone worked as a family team, even cousins, who came to work and stayed with us every summer. At the age of ten I started supervising my cousin.

We worked during the day, but having a live-in cousin as a best friend meant long hours of summer play after work. Every evening we'd have an instant family gathering, with ten kids running and playing games through the long sunlit hours after dinner. Every harvest, family relationships were further solidified to last a lifetime.

Drawing from those years of memories, I reconfigure my packing operation. Childhood memories guide the location of a roller or how I'll stack empty boxes for the packers. I rely on family traditions to devise a workable system. I recall Mom's concern for meticulous detail. I place empty boxes precisely within her reach; I prop open the boxes of pads for her daily inventory. I realize Dad must be a whole-brain thinker. Before making suggestions, he first scrutinizes my system, the transporting of fruit from the fields to shed, the sorting and handling of the delicate produce while packing, and the delivery and shipping of the final product. I won't need my cousins or nieces or nephews. Marcy and the kids might help, but my parents will provide the veteran skills I'll need for my small operation.

The next day my folks come over to review the setup, and we quickly slip into the old roles. Mom takes charge of organizing her packing station, asking, “Where do I toss the culls? How do you want the packing pads stored? What kind of pack are you looking for?”

I slow her down, reminding her I envision a few hundred flats per season, not per day. She ignores me and proceeds to stake out her territory. She is once again matriarch of the packing shed, queen and court simultaneously.

Dad checks my system of picking and hauling in the fruit from the orchard. He has learned to keep his distance from Mom's domain, his turf lying in the fields. He inspects our ladders. I expect him to select his favorite one, but instead he takes four home to tighten the rungs. Like a professional, he readies the team's equipment before the game begins.

Dad and Mom never mention anything about getting paid. They too know the pain of watching good fruits drop to the ground, homeless, with no one wanting them. We work in a partnership, not for the money or even to save these peaches but for family.