Epitaph for a Peach Page 5
I shielded my eyes from the ground and concentrated on the Spring Lady thinners and their spacing of the fruit on a branch. I opted not to gamble and to leave only a single peach per hanger, or stem, about two hundred peaches per tree.
Every year the beauty of spring is interrupted by the work demands of vineyards and orchards. Spring work envelops the farmer. We run from one job to another, desperately trying to keep up with the pace of change. As the weather warms, the weeds surge, mildew spores multiply, insects munch, and roots need water. Small weeds rapidly mutate into thickets that challenge my largest disk and tractor. Fungi spread throughout my fields, spores hope to avoid detection, and, if unchecked, they multiply geometrically. Weak soils refuse to help struggling trees, and their tiny peaches are stunted without the intervention of some type of fertilizer. The race quickly turns into a sprint.
By the middle of April, with only a little over a month away from harvest, my first Spring Lady peaches were still the size of dried prunes. Dad is right, I thought, I can’t fool nature. But the old Mexican worker was correct too. The trees were planted, I had a crop hanging, and so, “What can I do?”
My options were limited. A fertility program of compost would take months, if not years, to have an effect. I craved a quick fix, a steroid for peaches. They have one for grapes called gibberellic acid, a growth hormone modeled after a natural enzyme in grapes. But there isn’t one for peaches.
I could experiment with a foliar feed, which pumps up the peaches, sort of like quick-acting vitamins. Some farmers have success with micronutrients, applying magnesium, sulfates, zinc, and calcium directly onto leaves. Others promote elixirs ranging from soup mixes of assorted natural elements like dried blood, fruit wax, bat guano (the catalog said “soak in water and use as guano tea”), and—the standby of organic gardeners—fish emulsion.
Perhaps because I am Japanese I seem to have an affinity for the seaweed-kelp foliar feeds. Kelp contains high levels of minerals, vitamins, enzymes, and natural-growth hormones and is world famous, at least that’s how the brochure describes it. An advertisement from a different company promotes the “natural additives” of another concoction that includes Icelandic kelp (as opposed to Norwegian), molasses, coconut oil, garlic, onion, yeast, and more.
I began mixing the kelp and it smelled terrible. I hesitated before pouring it into my sprayer, envisioning five acres of beautiful fruit, each peach tasting slightly of seaweed. Could I market my fruit as an “oriental” variety, a rediscovery of the Asian roots of the original peach? But as it blended with the five hundred gallons of water in the tank, only a light green tinge stained the water.
I hoped to cover the entire tree—leaves, bark, and tiny fruit—with a gentle mist that coated the surface like a fog embracing the tree. While I was spraying, the breeze shifted and the mixture wet my face. I felt a tingling, probably more from the cold water and the cool spring temperatures than the seaweed. But as I felt the air brushing my cheeks and the chill of the moisture on my back, I knew I was sprinting.
With the short growing season, a slight mistake and a stumble and I’m out of the race. A contradiction as I try to work with nature? But isn’t farming a compromise with nature? The day the first farmer stopped hunting and gathering and planted a seed, the contest was begun.
The best farmers know how to coax nature, massage and nudge her along. With seaweed sprays I could neutralize the negative effects of light soils and hope to make amends for selecting the wrong peach variety. The ultimate answer might be to bulldoze my Spring Lady trees and plant something that better matches my farm. But an interim solution might be to keep building my soils, hoping that eventually good earth would compensate for human errors and I could stop micromanaging with Band-Aid foliar sprays.
In May we harvested good Spring Lady peaches. They grew to a nice full size, and the market prices justified all the extra work. I felt a sense of accomplishment, proving to the world that I could grow decent early peaches despite my light ground.
I still believe that Sun Crest peaches are the perfect crop for my soils and climate, and their flavor and sweet juices just confirm that belief. Yet when I stare at my Spring Lady orchard, I see a world full of farmers sprinting with their fruits. We think nudging nature along can’t hurt, and, after all, what’s so bad about making a little money early in the season?
Zen and the Peach Twig Borer
It hatches with the first warmth of spring and immediately seeks virgin green leaves. It begins feeding, munching on tender foliage and fattening its dirty-white body. Within days it will bore into a delicate green shoot, mining the fiber, carving a home out of the tissue, hiding from predators, gnawing and growing.
I’ve never seen the hatching of a peach twig borer. They’re as tiny as a sliver and emerge in the tops of the peach trees. But I see signs of their work: tips of shoots dry out from their dining, tendrils turn brown and wither, hanging lifeless, dangling in the spring breeze. If I’m lucky, the worm is still inside, but most often the dead shoot is seen only after the creature has left to pupate elsewhere. In a few weeks it will emerge as an adult moth, laying eggs for the next invasion.
The aroma of a ripening peach lures caterpillars to its juicy nectar. They creep to the hanging fruit and gorge themselves, their bodies grow fat and change color, their bulbous flesh transmutes into brown and white rings. They feed on the surface, nibbling on the skin before gouging hunks out of the meat. They leave a crater where rot and mold find shelter. Some fruit will begin to bleed, juice oozing from the surface and dripping on leaves and other maturing fruit below. A stream of decay spreads from the wound.
The assault begins when a first generation of peach twig borers appears in early spring. By June a second generation is born, followed by another generation and then another. With the summer heat and long days, they multiply in shorter intervals, discovering a wonderful abundance of green shoots for homes, boring into the twigs and munching on fresh peaches during their summer picnics.
A few summers ago I discovered a peach twig borer invasion at harvesttime. My first bags of fruit were picked and dumped into large wooden harvest bins three feet deep. I reached in to taste my first juicy peach of the early morning and the fruit gushed in my hand. It can’t be overripe yet, I thought. Then I turned it over and shuddered. The back side had been gouged, the peach violated; rot festered in the wounds. I picked up another and another, only to discover pockmarks strewn across the pink and red flesh.
I immediately inspected another bin, praying the infestation was isolated to one tree. The second bin was better, only about 10 percent of the fruit was damaged. Frantically I began tossing out the fruit, leaning into the bin, shoveling out dregs, purging the diseased. I panicked, wanting to destroy the evidence, to cleanse my fields.
I was in denial, and with justification. Should marketers learn of my affliction, they would scrutinize all my fruit, searching for more damage. I imagined my name blacklisted on brokers’ desks, a thick red WORMS stamped across invoices.
But it was hopeless. I had a cancer. The fruit packers would cull heavily and produce brokers would be wary. I would help no one by trying to sneak a few extra fruits past inspection, only to learn that in a distant city someone bit into my peach and discovered the proverbial worm poking its head out of the fruit. The only worse nightmare would be if they found half a worm, and I’d have to claim that the peach twig borer is a surface feeder, so it couldn’t be my worm. But that would not alter the hysteria. I still had worms.
Most worms usually are taken care of by spraying. Many farmers use a chemical in the winter that provides control for months, a worm toxin that destroys eggs and caterpillars during the cold temperatures. The spray also kills most everything else in the field. By early spring those orchards are sterile of life; lady beetles and lacewings avoid the area, repulsed by a natural quarantine of residues and the fact that there is no food for their hungry appetites.
Some of these chemicals are now prohibited.
One university study revealed that, in damp moist conditions, droplets from a winter spray can travel great distances. Chemical particles become suspended in the air and ride the air currents. Our valley is susceptible to this kind of acid fog that drifts from field to field. I conjure overblown images of radioactive clouds rolling across the countryside, hovering above children in school playgrounds, marching toward suburban tracts. The study proved our sprays don’t stop at property lines. Suddenly what a neighbor might do affects you more than you imagined. Having good neighbors is more important than ever.
Damage from peach twig borer occurs inconsistently. I’ve seen years when spray programs didn’t work and my neighbors scratched their heads wondering why. I’ve also heard pest control advisers who sell farmers their chemicals explain the damage with the claim, “It was a wormy year.” No one has proven that borers have developed a resistance to chemicals, but I’ve learned never to underestimate the ability of pests to adapt.
Bill, a friend and University of California researcher, is developing a new method to attack peach twig borers. He is a veteran of many years of battles, having seen the industry change with the deluge of new chemicals and sprays that have been developed since World War II. In the late forties and fifties, the nation shifted a wartime industrial complex from the European and Pacific fronts to my farm. I can imagine the nation’s consciousness: “We beat the Germans and Japanese, why not go after insects next?”
Bill is exploring a novel idea: Why not use a less toxic treatment on the peach twig borer? Not fewer sprays but different ones. He advocates using a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis, or BT for short. Worms eat the BT and die, but the poison is very selective, leaving natural enemies and people unharmed. The major problem with these bacteria is their short life—they last only a few days in the field. Timing is therefore crucial. The spray must be applied precisely when the caterpillars are emerging.
I picture the peach twig borer making a mad dash for a green shoot, and in that window of opportunity I must apply my BT spray. It would be like those hundreds of little turtles that hatch and make a mad dash for the ocean, only to be snatched up by gulls and other critters. Must I be a gull, hovering above the beach front, patiently waiting for the hatch? Timing like that doesn’t seem possible.
But Bill has a plan: spray early in the life of a peach twig borer while they’re still young and much more vulnerable to a minute amount of poison. The idea is to use BT before the peach shoots are very long, when the worms are feeding on small leaves. Also BT will last a little longer in the cooler spring weather, when there are fewer leaves to coat with the bacteria and the worms are more exposed. Bill’s plan is to lengthen the beach, so to speak, to shift the odds in favor of the farmer. But I will still have to time the spray with the hatch.
A realization: I don’t understand the life cycle of the peach twig borer. For years I have killed it without thinking. But if I hope to raise my peaches organically and battle pests differently, I need to learn more about the life in my field, including the pests. I have never seen a peach twig borer infant worm. I hear they hatch in the tops of trees and somehow crawl to their first meal. But no farmer I know has ever seen a newborn borer.
Pat, a graduate student from the University of California at Berkeley, was completing his doctorate in entomology. We became friends and talked for hours about politics and farming. Walking through my orchards I often joked about our height differences; he was almost a foot taller. I claim that, at six feet four inches, Pat can see into the trees much more easily than I can, literally providing a different perspective on my peaches. His dissertation subject: “Peach Twig Borer.”
We slip into hour-long conversations about this worm. I ask questions only a true scientist would get excited about, and he gently educates me with terminology a nonresearcher would understand. I demand he not use Latin on my farm. He explains to me the life cycle of the peach twig borer, its habits and characteristics. I ask questions about the borer’s lifestyle: “What does it like to eat, when, and where?” He ponders for a moment, digesting my use of the term lifestyle. At times we digress into philosophical conversations: “Which came first, the peach or the peach twig borer?” Sometimes the questions develop into constructive dialogue about adaptation of a species and life biology.
My favorite question is: “When does the peach twig borer know when it’s time to hatch?” Pat pauses, wondering if I’m asking some type of trick Zen question. I try again: “What triggers the hatching mechanism in the peach twig borer? If it hatches in the middle of winter, it will freeze. If it hatches with the first leaves, it will have a food source. If it hatches when there’s lots of leaves, I don’t have a prayer of nailing it with BT.”
For once Pat doesn’t have an immediate answer. The farmer stumps the scientist—and I grin. First he mumbles something about temperature and collects himself, then he corrects me. “Peach twig borers don’t hatch, they overwinter in trees as very small caterpillars in hibernaculum and—” He stops when my face contorts with his Latin. “They hibernate in tiny cells that look like miniature chimneys,” Pat continues, back on pace. He rambles about monitoring “temperature degree days” or the number of warm spring days until the first borer hatches, all of which sounds like a scientific method that takes all the fun out of the miracle of life and birth. Finally he counters, “Well, how do peaches know when to bloom?”
I answer with silence.
Still, I could not visualize the peach twig borer and sense that my run-for-life-to-the-ocean metaphor doesn’t apply. But Pat has monitored some hatches and noticed that the new green shoots were too short for the worm to drill into. The hatch seems to be timed with the blooms and first leaves, before the first shoots grow beyond an inch or two. Perhaps a beachhead battle plan is appropriate.
Bill first mentions the term in a passing conversation. I corner him at a University of California agricultural field day, where researchers parade their projects to farmers. Actually the farmers are paraded around the 160-acre research station on vineyard wagons (pulled by tractors) from field to field, where a different scientist waits with bullhorn and a few charts and his research project tucked in the orchard behind him. I think of the old Soviet Union’s October parades, with the generals standing as an arsenal of military hardware passes in review, only I’m not sure if the farmers are the generals or if we are the tanks and missiles.
I ask Bill about the spring arrival of the peach twig borer. He repeats what Pat taught me: peach twig borers overwinter in the tops of the trees and emerge in early spring, with the first leaves and shoots.
“They immediately bore into the shoots?” I ask.
“Well, no. There’s not enough leaf growth for them,” Bill answers.
My run-for-the-ocean image collapses.
Then Bill casually adds, “For those first days they wander. If there aren’t many leaves they’ll even eat blossoms, nibbling at them. They just graze until the shoots are long enough to bore into.”
Graze. Peach twig borer grazing. I picture the worms slowly crawling out of their winter chimney homes, stretching, then making their way to their first good meal in months. They smell the pink blossoms, sense the fresh green leaves, and start their spring picnicking. After spending a winter cooped up in tiny sawdust mounds, they enjoy a few days out in the fresh air. So they graze, munching on some leaves, taking in some sun, listening to the spring birds, doing lunch with a dessert of peach blossoms.
I explain my vision to Pat and he smiles. Now I can see the peach twig borer and understand how a simple treatment of BT can work. Later I spray the bacteria onto the leaves, the tiny but hungry caterpillars gorge themselves, and the stomach poison does its job. Even if BT lasts only for a few days, the borers keep grazing, slowly feasting on a suicidal diet.
“They kill themselves,” I claim. I grin at Pat and raise my eyebrows. He blinks, surprised at the look in my eyes. “It’s the perfect crime,” I conclude.
chapter five
/>
learning to fail
Shovel of Earth
The blade slices into the soil. My muscles tense and push the shovel into the moist ground. Dark and damp, the sweet warm smell of wet earth. The tool eases through a mat of weeds, the ground flush with activity. The metal face slides partially in, the soil is heavy and gently resists. Roots extend deep into an underground tangled mass beyond my sight.
I can’t count the thousands of shovelfuls of earth I have moved in my life. But I like to think of the thousands that lie in my future, if I am fortunate.
Spring irrigation brings life to the orchards and vineyards. Peaches ripen and the scent of bloom lingers in the air. The vine buds push and the pale green of fresh growth emerges pure and delicate. My shovel blade pierces the earth again and again. I guide the water into my fields in an act of renewal, a confirmation of one more season.
The work frees my mind. Each shovel of the heavy, dank earth nurtures my soul with meaning about this place. My thoughts wander—to images of work to feed the soil, of harvests to feed the thousands. My labor renews the spirit as fields become invigorated with life.
Another spring unfolds.
Changing Shades of Green
Pat and I walk my farm. We are an odd couple: he’s trained as a scientist and an entomologist, I’m a farmer with a degree in sociology and rural studies. We compare what we see on the farm, but what’s more important is what we don’t see.
I’ve walked these fields thousands of times, he’s entered hundreds of orchards. Oddly, those facts interfere with our perspectives, for we sometimes overlook the obvious. We both agree that walking may be the best management tool for farmers and researchers. Nothing replaces the personal and intimate sensibility of walking a farm, feeling the earth, seeing and smelling an orchard. But it’s getting harder and harder to walk. Walking takes precious time, we can’t cover a lot of ground, and first we have to break old habits and relearn the very act of walking.