Peach Funeral

This is an honest, nostalgic story of a Japanese American fruit farmer in California trying to go organic. Starting with the decision to save a stand of Sun Crest peaches--an older, good tasting but poor looking variety--for one more year, Epitaph describes the decisions, compromises, lessons, and impressions of four seasons of more natural farming. Masumoto provides a well-written overview of what growing peaches in California entails as well as meditations on the state of rural communities and the food system in our time.

As he reflects after the harvest, "I had begun the year hoping that most of us could still distinguish the difference between a green peach and a ripe one with real flavor, the kind that triggers memories of savory juices dripping down chins and nectar with the aroma of nature's bounty. I had faith in the power of family stories to convey the meaning of a summer peach." Then he appeals to the agrarian ideal: "For one final moment in our evolution as a nation we still have a community memory of the family farm. Many still carry the personal baggage from our rural past, a history of family members who sustained the land, and the legacy of a community that worked the earth for generations" (160).

"Sun Crest tastes like a peach is supposed to. As with many of the older varieties, the flesh is so juicy that it oozes down your chin. The nectar explodes in your mouth and the fragrance enchants your nose, a natural perfume that can never be captured. (ix) "Sun Crest is one of the last remaining truly juicy peaches. When you wash that treasure under a stream of cooling water, your fingertips instinctively search for the gushy side of the fruit. Your mouth waters in anticipation. You lean over the sink to make sure you don't drip on yourself. Then you sink your teeth into the flesh, and the juice trickles down your cheeks and dangles on your chin. This is a real bite, a primal act, a magical sensory celebration announcing that summer has arrived. . . .

"I'm told these peaches have a problem. When ripe, they turn an amber gold rather than the lipstick red that seduces the public. . . .

"I have a recurring nightmare of cold-storage rooms lined with peaches that stay rock-hard, the new science of fruit cryogenics keeping peaches in suspended animation. There is no room there for my Sun Crests, all of them rejected with the phrase NO SHELF LIFE stamped in red across each box." (x)

"I cannot farm without farmworkers," Masumoto confesses.

"My peaches and grapes demand an army of seasonal help. . . . Germans, Italians, Chinese and Japanese, Armenians, Filipinos, and Mexicans. . . . I picture them with hats pulled below their eyebrows casting a dark shadow on their faces. Over the decades their uniforms look alike. . . . Their skin is dark from the sun. Few are heavy or overweight, for field work is merciless on the unfit. They share a ghostly look, part of the hidden world of farm laborers who have brought nourishment to the nation's tables for generations." (21)

Masumoto describes how he would like to pay more (and tried briefly, losing $1000s), but cannot because consumers are not willing to pay more for their fruits and vegetables. Immigrant workers are not just a problem for farmers, but for everyone--think, he says, of all the workers in urban restaurants, to point to just one example.

"I struggle with all this in my thoughts--faceless laborers stooped over lush green fields, harvesting food for life. They move systematically, like lumbering machines. Why don't we employ our high-technology know-how, replace these workers, and end this oppressive work? Then I realize that the crouched workers depend on this work and displacing them from the land will not rid the world of their hunger." (22-23)

He finds that the more he hires, he thinks less about farming and more about "productivity and costs . . . expenses per acre", donning the "hat of a farm manager, not a farmer." (23) Masumoto visits the workers' quarters and squats with them ("Squatting is a mark of country folk who have worked the land and whose legs are in excellent condition," he notes [24]), refuses an offer of a cold beer (because "a six pack of beer equals an hour of work" [24]), and examines the apartment, converted from a tool-shed and rented out by the foreman. "Yet I'm certain the workers are satisfied with finding any housing at all," he says. "I am relieved to see that everything seems adequate and that my workers are being treated fairly" (25). In the end, Masumoto concludes, "providing jobs was the best contribution I could make to the world" (26). The chapter ends with a meditation on the lottery and hope, a playful conversation in which the workers joke about buying the farm if they win the lottery.

Masumoto finds a market for his Sun Crests by deciding to home pack, and his description of the process of getting his parents together, finding old machinery (including a defuzzer!) waxes deeply nostalgic. "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 dependant on the hard work of family and neighbors" (96).

Then there is the harvest. "With the aroma of ripening fruit at harvest, my senses detect a subtle fragrance lingering in the air, much like the delicate perfume of a passing woman, tantalizing the imagination long after she has departed." (116-117). He finds a market for the rest of his Sun Crests with an organic baby-food maker (121). Harvest is a delicate time. "At harvesttime I go public. My ego is peddled with my peaches." (126).

In the end, Masumoto does bulldoze some peaches, but it is an orchard of aging Red Tops, not his treasured Sun Crests. Then he replants, prompting a meditation on permanence: "A planted field exposes my opinions like an open ballot to the world. I reveal a commitment to my neighbors and those who pass: by planting a permanent crop I announce my plans to be here for a while" (224).

Epitaph for a Peach is like reading a memoir of one of David Vaught's horticulturalists, an updated version of the early twentieth-century prosperous agrarians who "settled" California. Masumoto has a more ecological approach to farming, and discusses labor issues with much more candor. But he is still one who believes in the family farm as a way of life (and, he hopes, as a business), and this remains the takeaway message of the book.