Epitaph for a Peach (17 page)

The next day at lunch, Dad talked about his gopher problem and I told him about the pile of bones we had found. I wasn't going to mention the owl, but then he asked where the bones came from and I described the great bird. I tried to avoid any conversation about our shooting, mentioning only that we'd tried to scare it. Dad asked how, and I blurted “With BBs” before I could think. For days my brother was furious at me and Dad was disappointed. He visited our neighbor to apologize, but the neighbor already knew.

I regret the senseless killing. If I had known more, could I have saved the owl? Should I have protected the owl and opted for the rabbits that fed on tender vine and orchard plantings? Could I have drawn a line between foolish killing and the sport of hunting?

 

A
S A CHILD
, I recall asking my parents about hunting but heard few answers. Instead, things like rabbit roundups linger in my memory. Local farmers organized this annual Washington's Birthday gathering, where the community would get together for a hunt to protect vineyards and young orchards from hungry rabbits. The roundup day began with a breakfast at the American Legion hall. Men with shotguns would drink coffee, visit, and enjoy the holiday. Then they'd walk to their stations, which were spaced about fifty feet apart along a road. At the signal (probably a gunshot) they'd march westward in a four- or five-mile-long line, loudly advancing, scaring rabbits out of their fields, shooting many along the way. A truck would follow and the dead rabbits would be tossed in, their bodies piled like trash.

I sometimes wonder: Had I farmed during the age of roundups, would I have protested the killing? Or would I have accepted these traditions and walked alongside a neighbor? An old-timer says he misses roundup days. During a conversation I sense that what he misses is having young people on our farms. Fewer and fewer shotguns are being passed down to the next generation of farm boys.

 

I
WELCOME THE
owls that come and call in the night. We can join forces as hunters. But where will my new owls live? The old red barn where owls once roosted was demolished ten years ago. It was built for hay and dairy cows, not for forklifts and peach bins. Also missing from the farm are the old thickets of willows and cottonwoods where owls could roost. Today we farm the entire landscape. I conclude I will need to do more than simply stop hunting owls, I will have to build them a home.

My owl box will be made from old raisin sweatboxes. No one uses sweatboxes anymore. They're from the generation of raisin farmers that predates forklifts. We have a few hundred boxes stacked around the shed, more of a weather break than anything else, but they're occasionally useful for odd jobs like carrying dead vines or broken cement valves. The boxes have aged, their wood now a dark gray from rain and dust. I try washing one, and my rag scrapes decades of dirt from the wood. No matter how long I work, the water only loosens another layer of dust. I sense owls will appreciate old sweatbox wood for their nests as opposed to clear, smooth green lumber from the mill. I believe they won't trust something new, which would appear more like a trap, too clean and unseasoned.

I'll construct a simple two-by-four-foot box, with an opening about twelve inches long and a layer of shavings lining the bottom. I plan first to nail it to my remaining wood barn, sister to the old hay and dairy barn we once had. Facing the east, protected from the summer afternoon sun, the owls can look out over a low vineyard. I'll be able to see the box from my front porch, hear the
hoo-hooooo-hoo-hoo
of the great horned owl, and sleep well knowing I have a guardian perched there, watching over my farm.

The owls may not like the location. It may be too close to the farmhouse, too close to our car engines and tractors. The ghost of the old great horned owl may warn them, and I'll have to wait another year and put my owl box someplace else in time for nesting. But my invitation will remain. The owls can't go home to old barns that are no longer here, nor can I rebuild the past. But we can both enjoy the pruned vines and trees and revel in the winter cover crops teeming with life.

Farm Junk Piles

Most family farms have their own junk pile. Tucked behind the barn or out back near an outbuilding sits a gathering of old tools, machine parts, and remnants of discarded equipment. It lies hidden, obscured by the fog. Moisture paints the rusting metal a dark brown. These piles tell a story of memories and histories, of who you are and where you have been. This collection links generations of farmers to a piece of shared land.

In junk piles the past resides with the present. Scraps of sheet metal become patches on leaking raisin bins. A frozen drive chain from a retired spreader is split into dozens of pieces and lent to repair broken chains on other machines. A set of old pickup wheels and axles is borrowed from the pile and fashioned into the frame for a vineyard wagon. Our collection has an old, rusting hay baler we cannibalized for parts. A large pulley gear easily becomes a tractor weight that helps us gain traction in soft orchard dirt.

When I took over the junk collection from my father, the presence of an old hay machine prompted questions. Where did they grow hay on our land? How long was the field a pasture? Was it used for grazing dairy cows or other animals? Later I learned that my Sun Crest peaches now grow in that pasture. The lush trees and juicy fruit are well aware of this history. The manure has composted well within the earth, and the soil passes it on to my trees with vigor. My harvests are still part of the farm family before me. The old junk pile, shrouded by the mist, helps remind me of the historical landscape.

I visit my junk pile whenever things break. I often have to rely on the grape farmer's Band-Aid—of old vine trellis wire, a throwback to the age-old habit of fixing things with baling wire. There must be a phrase, “to baling-wire it,” maybe originating in the Midwest amid the small farms of dairy cows, hay, and baling wire. Wire holds the hay together until feeding time, when the sage farmer will toss the three-and five-foot lengths of metal string into the junk pile until something needs repairing. The wire is perfect for quick fixes; it's pliable, simple to use, and offers the cheapest repair job available. If something breaks you can easily “baling-wire it” one more time, even over the old strands.

Once I witnessed its strength when a neighbor's teenager accidentally ran over an old wire pile in a pickup truck. The wire got tangled and wound itself tight around the axle. They had to call in a neighbor with a blowtorch to melt it off. I could hear the father yelling at the teenager a half mile away.

During the winter months, I have time to consider buying new equipment. First, I visit our old junk pile. Modern machines offer the excitement of possibility, sleek tools that promise efficiency and reduced labor bills. Just before the purchase, though, a visit to the junk pile helps me compare the claims of the new technology with the reality of the old. Junk piles are a history of what didn't work, a documentation of the names of companies no longer in business, along with a collection of each farmer's hopes and unmet expectations.

The purchase of new equipment creates opportunities, but a machine's potential is usually realized only with modification from my junk pile. Few pieces of equipment work as well in my fields as they did on the dealer's videotaped demonstration. I must make adjustments with odd parts, pulling something out of the junk and adding it to the modern implement. An old Bezzerides blade on my new hydraulic drag disk works wonderfully when attacking weeds. Together the two are a perfect blend of old and new.

My junk pile grows gradually, it is well seasoned. My part remains relatively small. I am still considered a young farmer and have taken more from the collection than I've added. Yet already I have contributed a bulky portable metal drum irrigation system. It is designed for someone younger than I, with stronger arms, who can reposition a barrel loaded with water. In my twenties, I had no problem with the weight, but today I'd be sore for days.

My father has a mental image of the pile as it looked during his reign on the farm. When we need a particular spring or metal shank he often recalls “seeing something” and heads toward the pile. He tests his vision by searching for a particular piece of old pipe or an unused furrow blade. So far he has passed each examination. I worry about what will happen on the day his memory becomes confused.

Dad's history is buried in the junk pile. The story of the farmer who worked this land before us is folded on the bottom, in stuff I cannot identify. I have no idea how many of the objects were actually used or what type of machinery they came from. They are from a different time and age. My layer is on top and includes roofing from the old barn I had torn down and bent metal grape stakes. The stakes will date my farming as the era when metal replaced wood for grape trellises. I also add a pallet of odd machine pieces, a collection of tool bar shanks, and some furrow blades from a good friend who no longer farms. His legacy joins my pile, our friendship renewed whenever his junk fits my needs.

A farmer's roots are exposed in his junk. The pile contributes to a sense of place about a farm that includes the people who are born there, grow up there, and work there. Over the years, I too have left my mark. As the pile swells, it records the time I farmed and lived on this piece of earth.

Touchstones

People often venture back into the valley after an absence of many years. They may return for Thanksgiving or Christmas to visit family. They wander into little towns, amazed that the landscape looks the same, happy to see the mom-and-pop corner grocery store still open and the big oak growing. They rediscover old landmarks: the grammar school alma mater, the old cemetery, the dry irrigation ditch near where they once lived. They look for the familiar because they long for continuity, searching for a permanence lacking in the rest of their lives.

People don't want to see farms change. They drive through the countryside oblivious to the abandoned barns, modern vineyards, and new suburban tract developments with rustic names like Dancer Meadows or Sierra Vista. They enjoy meeting old family friends, who engage in long discourses about parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts, followed by friendly orders to “come by” and ending with warm handshakes, hugs, or slaps on the back. I've seen travelers wink at their city-born spouses, grinning and whispering, “This could only happen in the valley.” Visitors don't want to acknowledge change here because it would disrupt their sense of stability. This world at least is supposed to stay the same.

 

O
NE NEIGHBOR WOULD
often talk about the farm she grew up on in the Midwest. She has a knack for diverting talk about my grapes and peaches back to her family's small dairy, vegetable garden, and apple orchard.

My raisins would work themselves into discussions about her mother's holiday raisin cookies or raisin turkey stuffing for her Thanksgivings. My peaches connected with her stories about fruit preserves and winter pantries stocked with jams, jellies, and canned halves and wholes, along with pickled peaches and peach chutney. She skillfully shifted conversations into her memories of farmhouse basements, with details about the racks of hanging sausages and the bushels of potatoes and apples stored in the icy cold.

Then she often paused and a sharp sigh would escape from deep within. She'd shake her head and tell me how much has changed back on the farm. Her brother-in-law destroyed the old family farm, let it crumble and decay. She'd speak fondly of the old apple orchard, then frown as she described it today: the field abandoned, trees dying, and every year the apples shriveling and falling on the ground to rot.

At first I too resented the brother-in-law and his “attitude problem” (her phrase for his drinking). But during each conversation I asked questions. “Are there other siblings who could farm? Why did you leave home? When was the last time you were there?”

It took years before I realized that the farm she longed for was the farm of her childhood.

 

I
N TRYING TO
save my Sun Crest peaches, I discover that they are more than just food, they are part of a permanence, a continuity with the past. People who enjoy my peaches understand what juicy, sweet ones taste like. Biting into one may send them back to the orchards of their childhoods and that warm sense of constancy of family found in their memories. Individuals leave for the city, but the memories of farms stay behind to anchor personal family histories.

My peaches find a home with these folks, a touchstone to their past.

Culling Old Friends

A few of my Sun Crest trees are dying and need to be replaced. A year ago I convinced myself to keep them one more year, and I spent four seasons throwing both money and labor at them. But the trees are old. Removal will put both farmer and tree out of misery.

Old trees can fool me by looking remarkably well twice during the year. Once is in the spring, with fresh green growth and the promise of blossoms that perfume the field. Hope blooms abundantly in the air as I compliment myself for having faith in these trees. But as the season wanes, the fruit never grows and matures, the inspiring crop of peaches aborts, shriveled pits with wrinkled skin dangle on brittle, dried, naked branches.

In the autumn, when all the other trees have dropped their leaves, these old trees also look good. Their lifeless branches blend into the landscape and are harder to see. I slip easily into a quasi-religious fever in autumn, and a new year of faith begins. I think with conviction, perhaps my trees will snap out of their lethargy and rejoin us for the coming harvest. I plot my missionary work, nurturing and pruning out the weak growth, channeling the tree's energy to the remaining branches, adding extra compost and soaking roots with sweet pump water. I fail to compare the weak trees to the rest of the orchard, with their thick limbs and deep blanket of fallen leaves around each trunk.

But now the yellow plastic tape hanging from the frail trees I cannot ignore. I marked them during the heat of summer when the other trees stood heavy with peaches. I recall a group of my farm workers taking a break from peach picking. Next to a feeble and fruitless tree, they crowded around a small fire and makeshift grill to heat a tortilla lunch. I remember the joker who thanked me for raising this nice shade tree specially for them. We all laughed, and the next day I located my yellow marking tape and tagged the tree.

At a break in the winter rainstorms, I maneuver a tractor into the orchard. Dangling from the draw bar, a heavy chain rattles and announces my arrival—this is the day I'll uproot and remove the dying old trees. I wrap the chain around a tree trunk and mount the tractor, preparing for a battle between man and nature. The engine roars, the chain snaps taut, and with only a slight tug the tree gives way. It happens so quickly and easily, the top of the tree comes crashing down toward me. Luckily I had placed the tractor between two large branches, and the tree falls like a huge
V
, with me in the center.

Each old tree topples with a slight tug. I drag the carcasses out to the ditch bank where they will be burned. While pulling a fallen tree down the row, for a moment I feel like a hunter dragging the hunted. I imagine having a conversation with the other trees, parading one of their own, trying to scare them into production “or else.” But the drive through the orchard is more like a funeral procession, the remaining trees honoring their dead with limbs stretched over us in a common salute. The fallen trees lived a full and productive life and are ready to be culled.

Pruning

Early winter begins one of my favorite times on the farm. It has taken all of autumn to recover from the rigors of summer, especially the stress of that final sprint to market and the recurring nightmares of harvest disaster. I have a friend who also has night terrors. In one of his dreams an irrigation pump goes berserk and floods a field, and eventually the water breaks over a ledge and pours into a river, sucking his trees and topsoil into the gorge. We try to decipher the meaning of his imagery and conclude, “It must have been harvesttime.”

By the first frosts, though, enough weeks have elapsed to distance me from wild imaginings. I can celebrate the beginning of another year while leaving one year behind with a sense of accomplishment.

My body becomes anxious for work. I find myself unable to sleep through the night, my legs restless for movement, my muscles hungry for activity. My mind relays messages to relax and enjoy the shorter days and long cold nights, but the rest of me is overwhelmed, antsy and restless to get out on the farm and do something. Dad claims that city folks don't get antsy, they become stressed. That's why they join health clubs or take up jogging. But that doesn't work for farmers. Farmers' physical activity has to be productive, like that of worker ants. Ants don't ever seem to relax and just lie in the sun, and neither does my dad.

My thoughts turn to the work of pruning. Ideally the first blasts of winter have left their mark and stripped the trees of leaves. But I've seen antsy farmers prune while lots of leaves still hang in the tree. The work is slow and it's hard to see. I delay my pruning because for me vision is crucial. The art of pruning involves seeing into the future.

I begin with a walk through the orchards looking for dead limbs that need to be removed. I carry a small chainsaw for this tree surgery and do the work myself because it's hard to find a worker who can see into the future. I call this work “shaping” the tree, cutting out main scaffolds fading with old age, disease, or assorted problems. They are thick and may constitute a full fourth of the tree.

I force myself to think in the long term and allow imagination to guide my cutting. I can easily spot the dead branches by their dried, dark, almost black wood. But it's hard to envision new growth and the new shape the tree will take two or three or four years from now. When I prune I have to keep that vision in mind. Otherwise I'll hesitate and grow timid and insecure, as I gaze down the just-worked row and see all the butchered trees and fallen limbs lying in the dirt.

With a sense of optimism, I can imagine new shoots filling the blank spaces, a newly regenerated tree replacing the old. With healthy, vigorous trees the process usually takes care of itself. In fact, in some cases nature acts as my guide. A young and robust shoot may already stretch upward to replace a dying elder. My job here is simply to take care of the dead and saw out the old. I just need to stay out of nature's way.

But it usually isn't that simple. New shoots require guidance, a gentle pull to bend them toward the open space, away from the center and their natural rigid growth straight upward. I have to see with next year's eyes. I visualize a young branch replacing the old, a new limb that will hang heavy with fruit. Some trees have no new wood to work with. I try to coax smaller, weaker shoots in the right general direction. This requires very good vision and the ability to imagine these small, scraggly limbs growing into strong scaffolds and, in two or three years, pushing out new, healthy wood to fill the vacated space.

I've worked on some trees for five or six years and still haven't found good wood. I'm tempted to give up on a few trees, the ones that stand half dead with little new growth. But I maintain an optimism that new growth will come and new shoots will appear.

The hardest decisions come when an old limb is dying but not quite dead. It may have borne a partial crop last summer and probably can carry a limited harvest next year. But it's dying and the question remains: When do I cut it out and make way for new growth? As I grow more experienced, I find it easier and easier to make that decision. There comes a time when you see the inevitable. The limb gave ripe, juicy peaches for years, but this past season was its last. Its time has come.

With each dead limb there's hope for new growth. That's why I enjoy this part of pruning: I'm always working with the future. I'm like a bonsai gardener with my peach trees, shaping each tree for the long term. When working with dying trees I feel one of the most important and strongest emotions a farmer has: a sense of hope.

 

A
LL GOOD PRUNERS
have their favorite old shears with wooden handles worn smooth and oiled naturally by working hands year after year. Armed with such a simple tool, each winter I'll contribute to the shape and future of my trees and vines.

My best pruning efforts seek order out of the rank growth while acknowledging the seeming disorder nature has left me. Each tree will have branches I don't like. Some are too horizontal, with flat surfaces begging to be burned in the summer sun. Others may fork too close to a neighbor and will compete for sunlight. A few thick and vigorous shoots push straight upward from the main trunk, and I'll have to trust the weight of the fruit to pull and bend the branch down into a graceful, natural bow shape. A good pruning job forces me to acknowledge and live with the wild.

 

I
SCHEDULE A
pruning crew, but before they arrive I try to prune a few trees. I used to think my pruning would be a model for them, an instant bridge between my English and their Spanish. But one of the bolder workers would always ask
“¿Por qué?”
and point to one branch. Then he'd show me how he would have pruned it. In most cases the worker was right. These men have pruned more than I have; the old-timers have years of experience I could never match. So now we exchange a few comments, they nod, and then they disregard my model.

My pruning begins in the crisp winter air of early morning. I bundle up. I can see my breath as I walk out to the orchards. Even the wooden shear handles are cold to the touch. As the sun warms the air, I shed my clothes in layers, leaving a trail behind me, a day's pruning route tagged by jacket, wool cap, and sweater; finally, when the fog lifts, off comes the flannel shirt. After a few trees a familiar rhythm returns, a
clip-clip-clip
of the shears. My thoughts merge with each tree, the art of pruning returns.

For peaches, the essential element is in the spacing. I first learned this from my father. He described pruning as counting, leaving one or two or three hangers, the first-year growth that branches off the stem almost at right angles, per limb.

Later, I learned how to count these hangers for the whole tree. Each hanger holds a few fruits and each fruit variety performs best with a certain number of peaches. For example, my Sun Crests are strong and vigorous, and I wasn't overly concerned about their ability to grow large and make good-sized fruit. So if I expect over a thousand peaches per tree, and each hanger produces two to three fruits, I'll need to leave about 400 to 500 hangers per tree. But my Spring Ladies, which ripen in May, could never hold such a large crop. And so for them I plan about four hundred peaches per tree, only one or two fruits per shoot, which translates to 250 hangers.

I could simply count each hanger to get a total per tree. But there's a better way. I look for space between branches. This works best on clear blue-sky days. When I look up into a tree I should see a pattern: the Sun Crests should be dense with hangers, the blue sky partially blocked out, the open space limited. On any given branch, if I can see lots of blue space, there isn't enough wood left; too little blue space means too much wood. The best farmers and gardeners understand this. They may call it by different names and use different approaches but they share that same feeling when they prune. The best pruners in my fields do too. They may count the hangers per branch, but at a certain point intuition takes over. Besides, they don't have time for such a calculated and quantitative approach. With over a hundred trees per acre, farmers can't afford to allow too much time for pruning. On my small farm I spend tens of thousands of dollars annually on pruning alone. It's a huge expense with harvests still six to seven months away and many more bills arriving between now and then. The best pruners dance with their shears, slicing and cutting and snipping with a cadence. Their eyes guide their movements, building to a crescendo where enough space is opened between hangers and the pruning feels complete.

Dad once told me a story about the time he learned to prune trees as a young farmworker. A crew boss showed him the same technique we still use: chop away and open up spaces. When the five-minute lesson was completed, the crew boss wondered if anyone had questions. No one did.

“Doesn't anyone think this is a sloppy job?” he asked.

Again silence, although a few heads nodded.

The sage boss answered his own question. “Work fast and clean. You better learn to prune this way, or you're not going to make much money.”

Part of pruning has nothing to do with the art of bonsai and everything to do with the business of farming.

 

I
BEGIN PRUNING
with the first frosts and end when the spring sap awakens plants from their dormancy. It may take months to prune my farm. I'll hire help, and together we'll work every tree and vine, lingering at each as if to revive an old acquaintance. I may recognize my pruning scars from seasons before, large cuts scoring the bark like initials carved in a tree trunk. I sense a permanence in these marks, as if my initials are etched there forever. But wood is not stone and the letters change as the tree ages, an acknowledgment of the passing of time. I return and discover the marks are different, yet they survive.

Planting New Orchards

Grape and tree fruit farmers are deprived of an annual rite that many other farmers have: planting a new crop. I may plant cover crops every year, but it's not the same. Peaches are planted every fifteen to twenty years. Grapes are planted once in a lifetime.

Planting an orchard begins about the end of January and early February. I consider it winter work because the trees still lie dormant, the sap is not stirring, the buds have yet to swell. The earth remains cold and damp from winter storms. A new peach orchard will be my first planting of the nineties. A new variety will replace the old Red Top orchard that was taken out last autumn.

I planted my last orchard eight years ago, the same year my daughter was born. I have watched them both grow, hoping both would bless the farm with their presence. My daughter has more than lived up to my expectations, but the peaches have performed only adequately. The trees are not quite as strong as they could be, the crop is often small, and the fruit size is mediocre.