Epitaph for a Peach (3 page)

I am relieved to see that everything seems adequate and that my workers are being treated fairly. A lot of farmers do feel responsibility for their workers. Most of the older farmers know from personal experience what it is like to work the land for low wages and to live in simple shelters.

As I leave, I think of the disparity between my home and the farmworkers' housing. I remember my first summer after college at Berkeley. I wanted to solve the problems of poverty and inequality immediately. I adopted the popular idea of thinking globally and acting locally by doubling the prevailing wages for our workers. After calculating expenses and income for that month, I realized we had lost thousands of dollars. My idealism was then moderated. I concluded that providing jobs was the best contribution I could make to the world.

Now I try to pay a little better than the prevailing wage and I work out in the fields alongside the workers. And sometimes I still squat with them.

The Lottery

A handful of lottery tickets scatter in the wind and drift into my peach orchard. I count over thirty of them, equaling more than half a day's wages for one man. Four hours of a man's labor and sweat, wasted and lost on a summer breeze.

The next day I ask about the tickets. A few of the workers smile and one razzes another. None of them has ever won more than five dollars.

Why do they keep playing
lotería?
Don't they understand the terrible odds against winning and the squandering of their hard-earned wages? Their answers are probably no different from those of anyone else who gambles, especially those whose lives are and will continue to be a struggle. They play for the chance to dream.

The California lottery payout nears a national record. We all feel the lotto fever, and I joke with the workers about it. They ask what I would do if I won. I say I'd quit farming and give them the farm tomorrow. One snaps back, “You can do that now without winning the
lotería.
”

One of the farmworkers banters with me and says, “
Patrón
would never give us his farm.”

I concede he is right.

“So,” he adds, “if I win the
lotería
, I can buy your farm.” The field roars with the work crew's laughter.

I don't play the lottery and cannot share the dreams of my workers. Occasionally when disking the peaches or grapevines, I'll find one of their losing tickets tossed among the leaves. The blades slice the paper and turn it into the earth, and for hours I'll think about lotteries and hope.

Allowing Nature to Take Over

I used to have armies of weeds on my farm. They launch their annual assault with the first warm weather of spring, parachuting seeds behind enemy lines and poking up in scattered clumps around the fields.

They work underground first, incognito to a passing farmer like me. By the end of winter, dulled by the holidays and cold fog, I have my guard down. The weeds take advantage of my carelessness.

The timing of their assault is crucial. They anticipate the subtle lengthening of each day. With exact calculation they germinate and push upward toward the sunlight, silently rooting themselves and establishing a foothold. The unsuspecting farmer rarely notices any change for days.

Then, with the first good spring rain, the invasion begins. With beachheads established, the first wave of sprouting creatures rises to boldly expose their green leaves. Some taunt the farmer and don't even try to camouflage themselves. Defiantly they thrust their new stalks as high as possible, leaves peeling open as the plant claims more vertical territory. Soon the concealed army of seeds explodes, and within a week what had been a secure, clear territory is claimed by weeds. They seem to be everywhere, no farm is spared the invasion.

Then I hear farmers launching their counterattack. Tractors roar from their winter hibernation, gunbarrel-gray exhaust smoke shoots into the air, and cold engines churn. Oil and diesel flow through dormant lines as the machines awaken. Hungry for work, they will do well when let loose in the fields. The disks and cultivators sitting stationary throughout winter rains await the tractor hitch. The blades are brown with rust stains, bearings and gears cold and still since last fall. But I sense they too may be anxious to cleanse themselves in the earth and regain their sleek steel shimmer.

Even the farmers seem to wear peculiar smiles. Through the cold winter season, they were confined to maintenance, repairing equipment, fixing broken cement irrigation gates, replanting lost trees and vines. Their hibernation culminates with a desk assignment at the kitchen table, where they sit surrounded by piles of papers, laboring on taxes (farmers are required to file by March first). After restless hours of poring through shoe boxes of receipts and trying to make sense of instructions written by IRS sadists eager to punish all of us who are self-employed, farmers long for a simple task outside. We are anxious to walk our fields, to be productive, to work our land. A full winter's worth of pent-up energy is unleashed on the tiny population of weeds.

Within a day or two, the genocide is complete. Fields become “clean,” void of all life except vines and trees. Farmers take no prisoners. I can sometimes count the number of weeds missed by their disks. “Can't let any go to seed,” a neighbor rationalizes. Each seed becomes a symbol of evil destruction and an admission of failure.

Farmers also enlist science to create a legion of new weapons against the weeds. They spray preemergent herbicides, killing latent seed pods before they germinate. Others use contact or systemic killers, burning the delicate early growth of weeds and injecting the plants with toxins that reach down to the roots. As spring weeds flourish between rows, a strip of barren earth beneath each vine or tree magically materializes from a spray applied a month or two before. At times I wonder what else is killed in order to secure the area.

A weed might be defined as any undesirable plant. On my farm, I used to call anything that wasn't a peach tree or a grapevine a weed. I too considered a field clean if it contained nothing but dirt, barren of anything green except what I had planted. All my neighbors did likewise. We'd compete to see whose field would be the cleanest. But our fields weren't clean. They were sterile.

We pay a high price for sterility, not only in herbicide bills and hours of disking but also in hidden costs like groundwater contamination. Some farmers can no longer use a certain herbicide because the California Department of Agriculture tested and discovered trace residues contaminating the water tables beneath their farms. It had been widely used because it kills effectively and is relatively cheap; for about $10 per acre it would sterilize an entire field.

But signatures of a clean field can stay with the farm for years. Behind my house, I planted some landscape pines, hardy, cheap, grow-anywhere black pines—that kept dying. They died a slow death, the needle tips burning before turning completely brown, the top limbs succumbing first, the degeneration marching down toward the heartwood like a deadly cancer. Uncertain of the cause of death, I gave up trying to grow the pines after the third cremation. Staring at the barren area I at last discovered the reason: nothing grew on that strip of earth. The preemergent herbicide I once used remains effective and has left a long-term brand on the land.

But I now have very few weeds on my farm. I removed them in a single day using a very simple method. I didn't even break into a sweat. I simply redefined what I call a weed.

It began with an uncomfortable feeling, like a muse whispering in my ear, which led to an observation about barren landscapes. It doesn't make sense to try and grow juicy grapes and luscious peaches in sterile ground. The terms
juicy
and
luscious
connote land that's alive, green most of the year with plants that celebrate the coming of spring.

A turning point came when a friend started calling his weeds by a new name. He referred to them as “natural grasses.” I liked that term. It didn't sound as evil as “weeds,” it had a soft and gentle tone about it. So I came to think of my weeds as part of the natural system at work on my land, part of allowing nature to take over my farm.

And nature did take over. Once I let my guard down and allowed a generation of seeds to germinate, they exploded everywhere. For years I had deceived myself into thinking I had destroyed every weed seed. I was wrong, they were just waiting for an opportunity.

The first weed of spring is the pineapple weed, covering the vine berms. But it quickly wilts with the first heat of May. Chickweed hugs every tree, growing into a lush mat before dying with the first 80-degree days. This grass may be allelopathic, producing toxins that kill competing weeds. Because few other plants grow through the mat, the yellowed and dry chickweed works like a protective mulch guarding the tree trunks.

By the middle of spring, the grasses flourish and a sea of weeds fills all but the sandiest and weakest earth. I try to keep my vine and orchard berms clear, a lesson gleaned from an earlier confrontation with a weed named mare's tail. This tall and slender creature can grow straight up into a vine leaf canopy and out the top. Mare's tail doesn't hurt vines, but at harvest the workers must battle the pollen and fight through a wall of stalks and leaves to reach the precious grapes. So I try and keep my new natural grasses away from the vine berms and tree trunks.

As nature takes over my farm, everything grows voraciously. New insect life swarms in my fields. Aphids coat sow thistle like pulsating black paint. Normally aphids aren't a problem for grapevines and peach trees, they would rather suck on sow thistle. But they are denied that meal because of the thousands of lady beetles that invade my fields for spring feasting. I wonder what other invisible life thrives in the natural grasses, what pathogens and parasites join my farm. I can't measure their presence but I feel secure, and the grapes and peaches still look fine.

I walk my fields and feel life and energy. In the evening a chorus of voices calls out, legions of insects venturing out to feed. On family bike rides we have to keep our mouths closed or bugs will fly in.

I often think, There's something going on out here, and smile to myself.

I was a fool to try to control weeds. I fooled myself by keeping fields sterile without knowing the long-term prices I was paying. Allowing nature to take over proved easier than I imagined. Most grasses will naturally die back without my intervention, and I've learned to recognize those few that I should not ignore. Most natural grasses are not as bad as farmers fear.

In the eyes of some farmers, my farm looks like a disaster, with weeds gone wild. Even my father grows uncomfortable. He farmed most of his life during an era of control, and to him the farm certainly now appears completely chaotic. He keeps a few rows next to his house weed-free as if to maintain a buffer between him and a lifetime of nightmares from fighting weeds.

I still have bad dreams about some obnoxious grasses like Bermuda, but my nightmares ended once I stopped thinking of them as weeds.

Lizard Dance

While weeding, I feel something tickle my calf. Without stopping my shovel, I brush the back of my leg. It happens again and I assume the clumps of johnsongrass I dug out are rolling off their pile, the thick stalks and stems attacking their killer in a vain attempt at revenge. Finally, I shake my right leg, and the thing bolts upward.

Immediately I throw down my shovel and stamp my feet. The adrenaline shoots into my system and my heart races. I initiate my lizard dance, shaking my leg, pounding my feet, patting my pants as the poor creature runs wild up my leg. The faster I spin and whirl, the more confused the lizard becomes and the more frantically he scrambles up and down the dark caverns of my pant leg.

In the middle of my dance, I begin laughing, recalling the familiar feel of a lizard running up my pants, through my shirt, and down my sleeves. My body dances uncontrollably to the feel of its tiny feet and little claws grabbing my skin. I try to slow down, knowing the lizard will too if we both relax.

But as the creature scampers up higher and higher my imagination runs wild. Vulnerable body parts flash in my mind.

If other workers were around, they would laugh, watching me tug at my belt, frantically trying to drop my pants. With luck, I won't open a crevice in my shorts, inviting the lizard into another dark hiding place. Instead he'll be attracted to daylight, leap out of my crotch, and tumble to the ground, dazed for a moment before scampering into the safety of weeds and undergrowth.

I enjoy the return of lizards to my farm. They were plentiful in my youth, soaking up the rays of the sun, eating bugs and insects, living happily in the patches of grasses and weeds. Then we disked and plowed their homes and sprayed to kill most of their food. The lizards left.

I didn't plan on raising lizards, but they're part of a natural farm landscape. Besides, their presence reminds me of my childhood. I can't return to those days but I can try and foster new life on the farm, along with laughter and the lizard dance.

Farming with Chaos

Chaos defines my farm. I allow natural grasses to go wild. I see new six-legged creatures migrating into my fields, which now look like green pastures. I watch with paranoid panic, wanting to believe all will be fine while terrified I may lose the crop and even the farm. I need a lesson on managing chaos.

The small town of Del Rey is two and a half miles from my farm. When Japanese immigrants first settled there in the early 1900s, one of the first structures erected was a community hall, a place for meetings, gatherings, dinners, and festivals, a refuge from the tough life in the fields. The grounds around the hall were never truly landscaped. The sparse collection of trees and shrubs was lost in droughts and freezes, taken out for a basketball court, or neglected during World War II, when all Japanese were forced to evacuate the West Coast, leaving the trees without a caretaker. But there are still a few trees and bushes at the old hall, sporadically cared for during community gatherings. At one of these meetings I was taught my first lesson on chaos.

Two old-timers were pruning one of the Japanese black pines. They were retired farmers and gardeners, a common dual profession for struggling farmers who found that they could supplement their income by tending other people's gardens. The two old men worked in silence as they clipped away, pulling off needles and shaping the tree. The pine was not an eighty-year-old bonsai masterpiece. It was probably something left over from one of their gardening jobs, an extra pine donated to the hall perhaps fifteen years ago and gradually shaped and pruned.

I asked if I could help. They both nodded without looking up and kept working. I waited for some direction but they kept probing the bottom of each limb, stopping at a small outgrowth and quickly snapping it off. Their fingers gently raked the branches, tugging and separating unwanted growth. Their glassy old eyes wandered across the needles, stopping and guiding clippers, then moving on, scanning and studying the tree.

“How do you know what to cut?” I asked. One glanced up and smiled softly. His entire face seemed to mold around the grin as if all the wrinkles worked in unison to accommodate the gesture. A smile was familiar to that face.

I repeated my question and he whispered something in Japanese I could not hear or understand. They both returned to their clipping and snipping. The next time, just as he cut a small branch, I pointed and asked, “Why did you cut that one?”

He looked up as if wakened from a trance and blinked. “
Saa
…I don't know.” He returned to his work.

I was relegated to watching their movements, trying to guess why they cut or passed on a branch, why some needles were pulled and thinned and others weren't. Their hands massaged the pine, their eyes wandering up and down a scaffold as fingers stroked and probed the interior of the tree. I tried with my hands but was quickly entangled in decisions. When do you leave a new branch and for how long? What was the rule when pruning? What are the criteria for cutting? I was overlooking something very basic, something I couldn't see in front of me.

The pine was only maintained once or twice a year. It had a wild quality about it, unlike the meticulously tended backyard Japanese garden variety. It was a living chaos, a reflection of the natural ebbs and flows of erratic irrigations, unprotected frosts and heat waves, and inconsistent care from an aging ethnic farm community. Yet out of this uncontrolled growth, these two old-timers were sculpting a beautiful tree, simple and innocent.