A Farmer Tells His Story . . .
California farmers don’t receive much good press anymore. There are many reasons, but I suspect public relations started to sour for farmers about a generation ago, when they took to calling themselves “growers.” Farmers were Old McDonald, cornballs in overalls, Midwestern antiques. Ah, but growers. Growers were a new, improved breed, distinctly Californian. Growers were modern CEOs, engaged in “agribusiness.” Growers didn’t farm; they managed crop units, mastered nature, kept a hard eye on the bottom line.
That there was little room for romance in this hard-hearted self-image was not lost on the public. Californians whose association with farms began and ended at the supermarket dairy case--which is to say, by far, most Californians--lost sympathy for the rural set. It was one thing to pray for rain to help Farmer John. It was quite another thing to pay for federal water to lubricate Corporate Agriculture.
On issue after issue--farm labor, pesticides, crop subsidies, ground water contamination--agriculturists found themselves cast as scoundrels. They became whiny, defensive and, finally, sullen. They sulk. They plaster bumpers and cotton trailers--cotton trailers!--with defiant slogans: “No Farms, No Food.” They wonder why no one loves them anymore.
Well, now for some good news. There is a man who lives with his young family on a farm here, in the lush eastern flank of the San Joaquin Valley. His name is David (Mas) Masumoto. He is a grower--no farmer--of peaches and grapes. He also is a writer, a wonderful writer. And he has written a book: “Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm.” (Harper San Francisco.) It might stand as a last word on what’s good about farming.
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Ostensibly, Masumoto writes of a struggle to market his Sun Crest peaches. This once popular variety has been supplanted in supermarkets by newer creations--peaches with fiery red skins and long shelf lives, but also less flavor. While this agrarian drama is intriguing, the soul of Masumoto’s effort resides in his subtitle.
“Epitaph” is a composite diary of one year on a common farm--and far more charming, exciting, even, than I just made it sound. Masumoto uses his farm as Thoreau did his Walden pond. He records the pain of dragging away dead trees his father planted, searches the farm junkyard for rusted family history, observes uneasily the failed lottery tickets of farm workers that litter his orchard, describes the Zen of pruning: “Trees don’t let you forget your mistakes, especially pruning.”
Some examples:
On a rainstorm that swamped a raisin crop: “As the final clouds of this front move out, I talk to nature. I hope for strong winds and warm sunshine. The wind blows and I ask it to blow some more. I ask the sun to shine brighter. I feel much better, remembering that in myth and legend humans often talk to nature. We lack modern myths in farming, trapped instead with a reliance on science to explain everything. I ask the clouds if they’d help by staying away for a while. They will try but can’t promise anything.”
On manure piles: “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.”
On farm dust: “All good farmers become connoisseurs of dirt and dust. . . . My dust is a fine powder. The soil is a sandy loam that would be a chef’s delight. Add water to the earth and create a rich roux, thick but pliable. Stir and the air will be filled with a rich aroma of turned earth. . . . I lick my lips often when working in my dust.”
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It is interesting what’s not found in this farmer’s almanac. No politics. No dollar figures. No kaffeeklatsch whining about the guv-mint. And no presumptions of mastery: “Farmers fool themselves when they talk about taking land from the wild. Some believe they can outwit nature. . . . In the end, though, nature has a way of keeping us in our proper place, a thunderstorm on our table grapes, or a heat wave that burns peaches, or showers falling on unprotected grapes trying to dry into raisins.
“We are humbled.”
As for the story line--the plight of Sun Crest peaches--Masumoto’s ending will herein be protected. What can be said is what the farmer himself told me, standing amid his trees, fingering tiny green buds about to explode into pink blossoms: “If the ending is ambivalent, it’s because farming is ambivalent. There is no ending on a farm. There is always the next season.”
Incidentally, like his peaches, Masumoto’s book won’t reach stores until June. Publishers, too, must attend to seasons.
