The Year Begins
People often assume that the new farm year begins in the spring with the first warm spell and the stirring of life that breaks winter’s chill. But veterans of the land recognize that a farm year ends in late summer, with the final harvest. Closure of the year is arbitrary; I often set a mental date, only to have nature and lingering warm temperatures stretch the calendar and extend the season for weeks.
A problem arises when seasons overlap with no clearly defined start or finish. I often don’t realize when a new year commences until I discover myself well into the race. Much of the autumn is spent trying to finish one year while beginning the next.
So when does the old year end? In some years it’s when I finally receive payment for my peaches. The reality of the year sinks in with the prices and numbers, no more over-optimistic guessing and projecting but rather a time to sit with records to determine if there were any profits. One year I never received a check and had a peculiar feeling about the just-completed harvest. It wasn’t until December that I was finally contacted, the packing house hesitant about breaking the bad news that I owed them money.
Another sign of closure is when my raisins are safely under cover. Then I can focus on my jammed file marked FALL PROJECTS. The weather outside remains too good not to work. I hate to burn good sunlight.
For me, fall and a new year officially begin with the first cool spell that visits and breaks summer’s monopoly of heat. In some years, the heat will return but I’ll have tasted the start of a new season. With the first brisk northern winds and the turning colors of the leaves, a farmer’s perspective changes. If it was a bad year, he starts thinking about the next. I know one fatalistic farmer who has mastered this art of self-defense and beginning anew. With the first sign of bad news, even with a problem in spring or early summer, he hangs his head and sighs, “Just wait till next year.” (Perhaps he’s also a devoted Chicago Cubs baseball fan.)
Once my new year began on Labor Day weekend. I had made only a few acres of raisins that season because grape juice prices were high, and we had harvested and crushed most of my grapes before September. The weather then oddly dropped into the mid-80s for weeks. I had just returned from a summer trip, yet during the entire vacation I was restless, as if my internal clock were set for peak performance. I felt I was supposed to be worrying about something instead of relaxing. I wanted to get started on new projects: equipment repair, new storage systems, painting the house, writing, playing with family. I started my new year because I had had enough vacation.
Cruel Bulldozers
The new season starts when I call in the bulldozer to topple an orchard. It rumbles and advances across my fields. Veteran soldiers of trench warfare know this vibration, the shaking of the earth and the clatter of the metal treads as the creature marches over the terrain. Refugees from Southeast Asia who have settled in the valley to farm tell me it’s the same with helicopters. The whooping and piercing wailing of the blades cause some to instinctively drop their hoes and grab their children to flee the fields for cover. Only with time and self-control do they stop running, but their thoughts and imaginations continue to race and create uncontrollable shivers.
I plan to terminate a peach orchard, not the Sun Crest block but a towering orchard of old Red Top peaches. These trees have aged and stand tired and worn. I tried to coax more years out of them and they responded wonderfully: this past year we had our largest crop in a decade. But I also saw something that was very disturbing. For the first time ever, my Red Tops were displaced in the marketplace by newer varieties, my peaches stood behind those with better color. Red Top ripens with a streaky red blush, while the new varieties are a solid red. A warning flag waves in my mind.
My problem began with slow demand, pallets of peaches unsold and sitting in cold storage, my fruit passed over for other varieties. I was forced to accept a lower price, a concession to the buyer, a compromised exchange.
My Red Tops were succumbing to forces beyond my control. I know this feeling from my Sun Crests. Yes, this year I learned how to find a niche in the marketplace for the Sun Crest. Could I repeat the performance next year for both varieties?
Obsolete. The word carries feelings of failure, rejection, loss. I can’t help but take it personally, since my peaches embody my labor and commitment. Yet how can a food become obsolete? My businessman’s muse answers, “Simple, when fewer and fewer buyers will pay for it.”
I explain my dilemma to a friend and she does not understand. After an animated conversation I realize she is unable to think of the value of food beyond qualitative parameters. “Food is sacred and valued,” she says. “You cannot put a price on your work. You need to keep those peaches for us all.”
For a moment I bask in her flattery. I envision working my orchards to feed the world, my social responsibility, my contribution to the public. Quickly my muse responds, “There are easier ways to support causes.”
I have other reasons for calling in the bulldozer that do not make me feel compromised. More than half my Red Top trees are over twenty-five years old, and every year I lose dozens of thick branches. They break under a heavy crop and crash to the earth in a jumbled heap of leaves, branches, and fruit. I’ve stood in the orchard and heard their shatter echoing through the field. When I turn to see the fallen giant, leaves are still shaking and staggering from the jolt, a cloud of dust enveloping the fallen warrior. I survey the loss but may not be able to pull the carcass away until after the harvest. The heavy wood is thick, lodged in the soft earth.
Unlike the Sun Crest trees, very few new young shoots grow in the lower parts of these Red Tops. The bark is hard and coarse, and new growth is confined to high sections of the tree where it cannot be trained. Also, most of the old trees have lost a major branch and stand lopsided like an inverted tripod with a missing leg.
Yet my decision to call in a bulldozer is complicated by the other half of the Red Top orchard. There, the trees are younger and by my standards still in their prime, less than twenty years old. (Twenty years doesn’t sound like a lot for a tree, but most farmers consider orchards over twenty years old as unproductive. Considering competition and the proliferation of new varieties, growing fruit is now like horse racing: we compete for a frantic few years, then put an orchard out to pasture.)
I could keep half the orchard, which would complicate my work. I’d have to manage each half separately—irrigating, fertilizing, monitoring for pests—thus doubling my work for the same acreage. Dad’s generation would have split the field, maximizing production and use of the land. He winces at the thought of pushing out such young trees. My generation wants to simplify operations. I think of the field as a single unit, with rising costs for the older trees. Am I lazy or am I rationalizing my decision as a type of euthanasia for old peaches?
The warning resounds through my fields like a disturbing whisper of a muse: obsolete. Battling to find a home for the Sun Crests requires energy and has taken its toll: I lack the will to fight on two fronts. Besides, I had a good year, with good production and adequate prices for the Red Tops, so I opt to end on a good note.
The bulldozer marches in to begin its task, and the new farm year begins in the 90-degree heat of early autumn. The massive machine rips and tears out trees. Branches crunch and crack against the roar of the engine. From a distance the machine works with a low growl, I can tell when it strikes a deep-rooted tree because the engine races and lets out a piercing moan. Over and over, tree after tree falls and is pushed into small stacks to be burned. A pillar of dust rises in the air like residue from a bomb. I can see it a mile away. The hot, still air traps the dust on the surface before it can gradually rise to the inversion layer, then the cooler temperature of the earth pushes the particles upward as the surrounding air heats and rises.
The stacks of trees resemble piles of dead, mangled bodies. In one day the work is done. The machine lumbers off, crawls onto the trailer with a heave, and comes to a stop as it nestles into pos
ition. I half expect a live sacrifice to be offered and consumed before the machine dozes, with a full belly, waiting for the next job.
The earth is left mangled: deep tracks etch the dirt, shattered bark and limbs are strewn across the field. Piles of peach trees dot the landscape, dust lingers in the air like fog hanging heavily over the killing fields. I’ll let the piled trees dry, the green leaves wilt. Moisture will be sucked out by the sun, the wood curing in preparation for a cleansing fire. Before I burn the stacks, I’ll pull a few thick branches and cut them for firewood, knowing they will warm my family in the cold of winter. They’ll burn long and hot, the hardwood dense and heavy from decades of growth.
Paul, my good friend who’s both farmer and artist, likes to paint these piles. He thinks of them like Monet’s paintings of haystacks in a farmer’s field. The piles embody more than dead limbs, they symbolize life and future harvests. When I stare at the peach piles, I remember certain good harvests along with the wealth the Red Top field brought. Once we hung a crop so heavy that every branch needed to be propped with wooden sticks. The sticks bent under the limbs’ weight and looked like bows ready to be strung. Dad bought a forklift with that year’s profits and often, when I use it, I think of that Red Top year. I can also recall seasons of disaster, the memory of leaving half a crop hanging on the trees because it would cost more to pick than the fruit would bring at market. The peaches grew soft and dropped to the ground, the nectar filled the air with peach perfume. I’d walk by and smell the peaches, hearing the plop of another peach dropping and smashing on the ground.
As the stacks burn, neighbors stop and comment: “See you’ve pushed them over.” Then they ask, “What you gonna plant?” Even in early autumn they are thinking ahead, of replanting and new varieties. In a pile of mangled dead trees, farmers still see new life.
Indian Summers
We don’t have a real fall in California, Indian summer takes care of that. Fields don’t change into brilliant fall colors. Those who have experienced autumn in other places expect vivid colors. They may grow irritable about our ugly brown and the dry, withering leaves dropping from vines and trees one by one.
The air has grown dirtier and dustier from the months of field work and tractoring, as well as from all those summer barbecues and the exhaust of thousands of cars and RVs that come through the valley carrying vacationers seeking to bond with nature in the Sierras. The mountains disappear behind what locals call “smaze,” a blend of smog and haze. It’s hard to imagine that we live in a great valley. Everyone begins to lament how bad the air has become and recall how in their youth the view of the mountains was so much clearer. Each year the Sierras become more vivid in our memories.
Nature continually plays tricks on farmers with Indian summer. Once a team of noted long-range forecasters predicted an early fall rain on the raisin harvest. Farmers panicked as the coffee shop rumors spread. Many of us picked our grapes early that year—in August instead of September—in order to beat the rains. Then an unheard-of series of arctic storms blew in on Labor Day and stayed for two weekends, while 80 percent of the nation’s raisin crop lay exposed on the ground.
A few farmers had missed the meteorologists’ warning and picked their grapes extremely late, after the Labor Day storms. We laughed at their folly—no one picks grapes in late September for raisins. Then Indian summer arrived and the grapes dried a golden brown, fat with sugar and dark from the sunshine.
But Indian summers aren’t predictable, and with any luck scattered rains will cleanse the air, settle the dust, and knock off leaves. It will feel like autumn for a few days, with crisp fresh mornings and the clear outline of a great mountain chain watching over us. Energy fills the air. A neighbor calls it true football weather. I think of it as the excitement of change.
Indian summer quickly returns to fool us. It tricks a farmer into a false rhythm, even though the calendar reads October or November. With such good weather there’s no excuse not to work.
I start to fix equipment or begin an overdue repair job on the farmhouse. Other farmers will start pruning with leaves still on trees. My neighbor revs up the tractor for one more disking of his fields. It could be his final gesture to dress the land for winter, but I think it’s the false attack of a spring rush to get back into the fields. We’re all thinking the same thing: how to get a jump on next year’s work.
Every year I begin a special project that will improve the farm, such as adding a new irrigation line, scraping a high spot in the field, or restaking an old vineyard section. I set an annual goal to better the land in some way, like the campers’ oath to leave a site cleaner than they found it. Indian summers disrupt the scheme. Instead of contemplating the task and designing a thorough plan of work, I feel guilty about not being outside doing something physical. My work program suddenly acquires a design-as-you-go rhythm, a race to finish the job before winter arrives. But winter doesn’t arrive with a snowfall that blankets the landscape and silences work. The lines between one season and another are blurred. I may miss the subtle differences, especially if I’m working faster than I need to.
The years of continual drought have almost killed me. These months are filled with monotonous days of clear skies. Each morning begins with a work list and the expectation that most of it can be accomplished. I don’t have the weather as an excuse to slow down.
A good Indian summer can overwhelm you with guilt. Even the rewards from the Sun Crest peaches don’t translate into confidence. I could feel cocky about the season but I think of myself as lucky more than anything else, for I have only won the first round.
chapter twelve
autumn work
Seeds of Change
My internal clock is set to changes in weather. Shorter days and cooler nights whisper a change in season. And seeds need to be planted.
I now realize that fall, not spring, is the best time to plant cover crops. The seeds can sprout in the still-warm earth of autumn, establish roots before winter’s chill, and flourish in the first days of spring. This year I’ll use a complex blend of seeds: common vetches, crimson clovers, and New Zealand clovers, combined with some medics and wildflowers. My formulations are not from prescribed recipes but are, rather, a random mixture that I create according to how I feel when I’m scooping the seeds from their individual bags and mixing them in the planter hopper. I feel like an oil painter mixing different combinations of colors to stroke on my farmland canvas. I will have to wait for months before I can see the results. I begin with only a mental image and a vision.
Some farmers question the value of cover crops. How much nitrogen do they produce? Do they consume huge volumes of water? What plants attract which beneficial insects? All valid questions that need research, these issues will take years to determine and may never be clear.
But the benefits of my fall planting go beyond making interesting plant mixtures and achieving proper nitrogen levels. Every fall I plant seeds of change for the next year. I am an explorer and adventurer, a wild man in the woods. No one can know the exact benefits of my cover crops; they are a blend of artistry and the wisdom of experience, a creation and reaffirmation of tradition.
And it is fun admitting that you don’t know exactly what you’re doing. This is the freedom of naïveté.
Compost on Trial
Autumn is a season not only for reflection but also for judgment. Finally I have time to evaluate some of my farm experiments and plan for the coming year. One annual fall rite includes a review of my compost trials. (I apply my fertilizers in the fall because I have a break in my hectic work pace and the tree and vine roots can begin to store nutrients for next season.)
No good natural farm is complete without compost. Actually, only within the last few generations have farmers abandoned natural fertilizers for the ease and exactness of commercial ones. Before the sixties, most farmers in the valley relied on basic inputs to feed their soils, usually manure. In the autumn, farms regularly had piles of manure scattered ar
ound. The neighborhood filled with its odor. A common practice was to buy manure in the good years in order to build up the soil. I could identify which neighbor had a good year by the direction of the wind and the smell of profits being returned to the earth.
But commercial fertilizers became popular and farmers were won over with promises and initial results. Dad enjoyed the game of farming by numbers, believing in the magical power of 15-15-15 (a guaranteed ratio of N-P-K, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium), trusting the new sophistication of fertilizer formulations, and reducing soil to something that simply holds up plants. For a few years, these chemical fertilizers did increase production—the plants devoured their stimulants and their trunks and limbs bulged from their new ultra-diet. But gradually the soil faded, literally, from a dark, lush hue to a hoary light powder. The trees and vines seemed addicted to the fertilizer and grew rank and peculiar, as if the shoots raced to be the tallest and the plants ignored their fruits. Then I heard the gospel of compost and listened to the moral choices laid before me.
“Compost redeems the soil. Give back to the earth what was taken,” I read in an alternative farming book. “Compost is nature’s fertilizer, full of microorganisms that help build your soils. Compost renews the earth.”
My dilemma is this: How do I weigh the spiritual virtues of nature’s compost against the predictability of man-made fertilizer?
FARMERS CONSTANTLY EXPERIMENT. We try new products, new methods, new management styles, all within the domain of an ever-changing mother nature. Some call our attempts at research “farmer science,” meaning it lacks the rigid procedure, methodology, and analysis of the scientific method. I resent the implied patronage, although it has merit. I have little scientific training and I know just enough to get me in trouble.
I devise my own experiment, using compost on one half of a peach orchard and commercial fertilizer on the other. My current longest-running test is with my Spring Lady peaches, those young, strapping trees planted eight years ago. I regard them as adolescents. For the first few years of their life there was no crop, then the next two years only a partial crop. I am anxious to boost production and settle my great soil fertility debate.
Epitaph for a Peach Page 15