D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
May
2009
The Peaches of Wrath
Some are called to farming, but few are chosen.
I would have made a lousy farmer. You'd think that, growing up in South Dakota, some of that farmer stuff would have rubbed off on me. (I'm talking about a green thumb and such, not the "stuff" farmers get on the bottoms of their shoes.) Isn't everybody in South Dakota a farmer?
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When I was little, in fact, on a trip with my parents and stopping at Kennedy Airport in New York City, a fellow traveler chatting with my folks, upon learning that we were from South Dakota, innocently asked, "How big is your farm?" My mom had to explain that, actually, she and my father both were college English professors. The closest either of them got to agriculture was teaching George Orwell's Animal Farm.
Over-water, under-water, over-fertilize, under-fertilize — whatever I do when it comes to plants, the end result looks like the Joads' farm must have in The Grapes of Wrath before they hightailed it for California. Harvest time is more like funeral time at Fryxell Acres.
Which is probably why I've been so enamored of our little collection of fruit trees here in New Mexico. (I say "fruit" trees even though one is actually an almond tree. Regular readers will recall that we long thought it was some sort of defective apricot tree — almonds look a lot like apricot pits, people — so in my mind it remains a sort of honorary fruit tree.) We didn't plant them — they came with the house — so I had no opportunity to snuff them out as seedlings. We do hardly anything towards their care. Situated as they are on the outskirts of our septic tank, well, let's just say fertilizing and watering the trees seems to take care of itself most of the time.
Like clockwork, every spring they burst into flower — starting with the almond/apricot tree, which can flower in February if we get a warm spell. That early enthusiasm for spring tends to get the almond tree zapped in full bloom by a killer frost, so we've really had a significant almond "crop" only once. Buying almonds pre-shelled in little bags at Albertsons is way easier and more reliable — take my word for it. You may also be surprised to learn that almonds straight off the tree do not come in tasty varieties such as honey roasted or smoked. Not even lightly salted.
The little pear tree has been pretty disappointing from an agricultural standpoint, too. But it looked mighty scrawny when we first moved here — I blame its relative remoteness from the septic tank — and I seem to remember that my wife lobbied for chopping it down entirely. She denies this and now takes credit for nursing it back to health (a ruse I'm pretty sure Claus von Bulow also tried). In any case, the pear greeted this spring with an exuberant display of leaves — perhaps to ward off any lingering ax-murder notions — and, who knows?, might soon produce the sort of stuff I'm used to seeing only in the grocery store. (Pears come from trees?)
But, most years, the rest of our little backyard crew — three apple trees, a dwarf cherry and a peach tree — come through with enough fruit to make me feel like Farmer Dave. Just get me some overalls, a straw hat and a basket for harvesting. Maybe a straw or long strand of grass to stick between my teeth, too. As I've previously recounted, some years the peach tree has outdone itself, transporting us from "Peaches, how glorious!" to "More damn peaches!" in a matter of weeks. We recently threw away the peach jam we made several seasons ago — high-altitude jam making turns out to be tricky — and the freezer is still clogged with Ziploc bags of last fall's harvest.
This, I figure, is farming as it was meant to be: Near-zero effort, no annual planting, bumper crops. Why were the farmers back in South Dakota always complaining?
Then came the Big Freeze of 2009. The almond tree had already done its flowering thing during the balmy temperatures of what was not yet officially spring. The peach tree and pear tree were in full flower, with the apples and cherry starting to get the idea. But a series of windy weather systems took aim at our backyard, bringing a threat of sub-32-degree overnight temperatures.
I began taking an obsessive — even more obsessive than usual, that is — interest in the weather forecast. The low temperatures a couple of days out loomed like an advancing army. The cold was coming. I could almost hear the strangled cries of the peach blossoms as they froze.
Naturally, as any good farmer would, I sprang into action. This was a simple scientific problem: How to retain or add enough warmth to the immediate surroundings of the fruit trees to spare them the worst of the frost?
Being a barbecue buff, my first thoughts naturally ran to fire — and lots of it. Given wind speeds in excess of 30 miles an hour and acres of dry grass and weeds, however, this plan presented some obvious practical drawbacks. Simply setting the charcoal grill under the fruit trees and stoking it up might have unintended consequences. (Neighbors downwind of us, this might be a good time to send me a thank-you card — and to up your insurance coverage.)
A quick trip to Dunn's Nursery hatched a new, less conflagration-causing plan: We would cover the peach and pear trees with special cloths designed to hold in the heat and protect the tender buds.
Let's go back now a couple of paragraphs to the part about the 30-mile-an-hour winds. Have you ever tried draping a tree when the wind is gusting? Try this exercise to get a feel for the challenge: Take a bunch of asparagus and a Kleenex. Got 'em? OK, now place the asparagus in front of the biggest fan you've got and turn the dial to High. Using just your thumbs and pinkies, to approximate the awkwardness of the real thing, attempt to wrap the Kleenex over the asparagus and somehow make the tissue stay there.
Are we having fun yet?
Having failed to secure either cloth atop either tree, despite an innovative application of string, wooden poles and cursing, we moved on to plan C. Back to heat.
My wife found a small, flameless propane heater that we'd bought way back in the Y2K hysteria. (If a computer glitch had indeed brought the modern world to its knees, by golly we'd have heat for a few hours before we turned to cannibalism.) Inspired, she ran out and bought a second such gizmo and some little propane tanks. We (by which I mean she) figured out how to light the heaters. We set a remote thermometer — designed for indoor monitoring of barbecue grills — in the branches of the peach tree, so we could monitor conditions at Ground Zero. And we went to bed, setting an alarm for the middle of the night.
Bless her, my wife got up about 2:30 in the morning — we didn't know how long the propane would last, so hadn't dared start the heaters at bedtime — and trudged out in the dark and rapidly falling temperatures to light the heaters. It was 36 degrees in the tree branches. The farmer in me ached for this fall's endangered fruit harvest. I suddenly sympathized with citrus growers and vowed never to settle for Tang again.
Come morning, my high-tech weather station showed that the overnight low had indeed dipped below freezing. The remote in the branches read a hopeful 33. The propane heaters were still going. I decided maybe we'd dodged a bullet.
That was a Tuesday night. The next big cold wave, according to Weather.com, would hit Friday night, tugging temperatures even lower. I contemplated buying more propane heaters — a whole fleet of them, enough to push global warming past the tipping point! I pondered ways to enlist the barbecue grills (yes, I have more than one — doesn't everybody?) in the coming crisis without setting the neighborhood ablaze. We waited for the wind to die (ha!) to try again with wrapping the trees.
Come Friday night, we'd be ready.
Then, Thursday night, un-forecasted, the temperature plunged into the 20s.
I remembered why God did not make me a farmer. I remembered why God made supermarket produce sections.
Let nature take its course, I've decided. This fall, we'll take one of those slightly sticky Ziploc bags out of the freezer, whip up a peach margarita or three, and drink a toast to our plucky fruit trees.
Better luck next year, guys!
When not consulting for the US Department of Agriculture,
David A. Fryxell edits Desert Exposure — indoors.