Epitaph for a Peach Read Free

the seeds must have jammed in the planter, then poured out all at once when freed.
    I’ve thought of buying a better planter, something adapted to vineyards instead of vegetable beds. But I’ve become attached to my Planet Jrs. They remind me of a simple age, and I like the name. I also enjoy controlling each individual planter. Unlike an eight-foot-wide, single-hopper machine that uniformly plants an entire field with the same seed mix and in the same pattern, these individual units can be adjusted to create different patterns with a variety of seed combinations. I play artist in my fields, painting with a blend of clover and vetches with a splash of wildflowers. Next to a vine I can plant dense cahaba white vetch that would dominate in the early spring canvas with its white blooms but may begin to wither with the first heat of summer. Along another edge I might weave in some crimson clover with its deep red seed heads or scatter strawberry and red clovers for variety. I would add a combination bur clover and a blanket of yellow flowers with the green hues created by different medics, low-growing but sturdy plants that creep along the surface and replace the wilting vetches and crimson clovers in our valley heat.
    My fields have become a crazy quilt of cover crops, a wild blend of patterns, some intended, some a product of nature’s whims. The different plants grow to different heights and in different patterns, creating a living appliqué. The casual passerby might not notice my art. From the roadside, it often looks like irregular growth, bald spots, breaks in uniformity. But the farmer walking his fields can feel the changing landscape beneath his boots, he can sense the temperature changes with the different densities of growth and smell the pollen of blooming clover or vetch or wildflowers. He appreciates the precarious character of nature. As if running your fingers over a finely crafted quilt, you can feel pattern upon pattern. Just as a quilter may stitch together emotions with each piece of fabric, I weave the texture of life into my farm.
    Wildflowers
    I plant wildflowers because they look pretty and because my wife, Marcy, likes them. Marcy believes farms should be green the year round. She was raised on a goat dairy where they grew alfalfa most of the year. She met each spring and summer day with a view of lush green growth. Now she wants our farm to be green all the time. She wants to see things growing in the fields even in winter. She longs to look out her kitchen window and see life. During the winter most of the farms in our valley lie dormant. Even in spring while the grapes push new buds, the rest of the landscape lies barren, stripped of weeds and life. Not ours.
    In 1984 the market for peaches and grapes collapsed. Farms all over the San Joaquin Valley lost money, which often resulted in the birth of “the new farm wife,” not a worker in the fields but a main source of income from off the farm.
    Since Marcy and I married, the IRS has classified me as a farmer only half the time. For the other years, Marcy’s off-the-farm income has been higher than mine and the farm revenue has been relegated to “other income” status. One result: in order to keep farming I had to please my banker, in this case my wife. Hence the wildflowers.
    I visited other farms with lush green stands of cover crops, long slender stalks of rye or barley shimmering in the spring breeze, waves of grain growing dense and high. Farmers walk through the seas of green, plants often waist high, and hold up their arms as if fording a river. A biologist friend and I watched one farmer show us his fields and proudly speak of his newfound belief in the magic of cover crops. Later my friend whispered, “I guess it’s hard to change a lifetime of farming.”
    I asked what he meant.
    He answered, “That farmer has a fantastic stand of rye and barley. But he still thinks of simplistic monocropping.