There are so many ways to enjoy ripe, juicy peaches: sliced over morning cereal, blended in a smoothie, baked in cobblers or pies, simply sliced over vanilla ice cream, added for a bit of sweetness to fresh green salads, or as a salsa for a grilled pork chop or chicken.
One of my personal favorites is to stand at the kitchen sink, grab the peach whole, lean in, and, eyes closed, take one juice-running-down-the-chin bite after another. Such a sweet summer indulgence.
In Epitaph for a Peach (1995), freelance writer, farm activist, and second generation Japanese-American peach farmer, Mas Masumoto, describes the taste of the Sun Crest peaches he grows on his Fresno, California farm: “The nectar explodes in your mouth and the fragrance enchants your nose, a natural perfume that can never be captured.” In the mid-1980s, this taste experience came close to being lost, or at least no longer being produced on the Masumoto farm.
Mr. Masumoto came to understand that the Sun Crest trees, planted by his father after acquiring the land in 1946, had become obsolete and had too many strikes against them to remain profitable. Quality standards had become stricter, peach demand had softened, and his peaches didn’t have the right look: “When ripe, they turn an amber gold rather than the lipstick red that seduces the public.”
Fruit brokers offered some advice: Get rid of those outmoded Sun Crests and replace the trees with better varieties—peaches with fuller color that could last weeks (not mere days) in storage technology under development.
Masumoto’s wasn’t the only farm to confront slumping peach demand. According to information compiled by Cornell Cooperative Extension, “annual per person consumption of peaches in the United States peaked at 13 pounds in the early 1970s. By 2008 annual consumption had dropped to 8.8 pounds per person.”
Save the trees. Save the flavor.
Eventually, Masumoto came to what he believed was an inevitable decision: tear the trees out of the ground and burn them. He knew the farm would survive without them, but losing the stand of Sun Crests meant a slice of his life would be ripped out along with the trees, “flavor lost along with meaning.”
Luckily, days before the bulldozers were to roll into the orchard, he detailed his dilemma—having peaches with extraordinary taste that no one wanted—in a story that was published in the LA Times and syndicated nationally. His plight caught the eye of urbanites, people living in small towns, and rural residents. Yearning for a connection with farming, readers responded, sending letters by the dozens urging Masumoto to keep his Sun Crests. He directed the bulldozers to turn around, believing those letters signaled the existence of a market that prized flavor over shelf life. He set out to build it.
That was in 1987, and to this day Sun Crests are among a handful of peach varieties available from the Masumoto Family Farm. Since that time, interest in agriculture, farming and the tastes of local foods has exploded. “Farm-to-fill in the blank”—table, school, day care, hospital, etc.—initiatives have sprung up across the country. To better meet this increased local food demand, the number of farmers markets, which provide direct connections between food consumers and producers, rose from 1,755 in 1994 (when the USDA started counting them), to 8,771 twenty-five years later in 2019. This amounts to an average yearly growth rate—albeit with important geographic disparities—of nearly 7%, ranging between 1% and 18% in any given year.
The story of the Sun Crest’s near demise serves as both a cautionary tale and one of hope and possibilities. On the one hand, heeding the demands of a market that prioritized longer shelf life, durability, and transportability can lead to a loss of crops that are delicious and particular to an area. On the other, the story shows that food qualities, such as great flavor, juicy tender flesh, and non-traditional color, really do matter to people.
Another coast, another peach story
Mas Masumoto’s story of how he saved his Sun Crests, the conversion of his orchard to organic production, and how he diversified his market to attract new buyers who prioritized taste and quality over shelf-life made me wonder about peaches closer to home. My first thought was, “I’d sure like to find some Sun Crests!”
I asked Lucy Garrison-Clauson, co-owner/manager of nearby Stick and Stone Farm if Sun Crest peaches could do well here. In a word, no. The peach varieties she grows include Contender and Reliant. Upstate New York and the northeast region, is humid, a condition that’s just right for fungal diseases, such as brown rot to flourish. In addition, the risk of late frost, to which Sun Crest would be vulnerable, is high. “Overall, growing peaches on the East Coast is a risky endeavor,” she said. However, the abundant rainfall, relative to California’s Central Valley gives northeast growers an advantage. Rainfall means decreased need to irrigate.
Fungal disease is a major challenge peach growers have to contend with. Pests are another. If growing peaches successfully in the northeast at all is difficult, farmers committed to satisfying growing public interest in organic fruit deserve our utmost appreciation. But, while the arsenal of synthetic chemicals used in conventional production is not available to organic farmers, some sprays and biological strategies are allowed under USDA Organic Certification Regulations that help combat fungal diseases and protect fruit trees against pest damage. Wildflowers, for example, when allowed to grow under the trees and in the alleyways have been shown to attract both pollinators, which boost fruit production, and “beneficial insects” that prey on ones that munch on the fruit. Further, while seeds for wildflowers that provide ground cover and attract beneficial insects and need to be spread in arid areas like California, in the Northeast these plants grow readily—truly wild.
According to Daniel Donahue, a Regional Tree Fruit Specialist at the Cornell Cooperative Extension Hudson Valley Research Laboratory, a classic commercial variety in New York is Red Haven. “California varieties are susceptible to bacterial diseases. But Northeast varieties are bred to be resistant. Also, growers must always take into account our relative low [amount of] sun, cooler temperatures, and a lot of moisture.”
On top of that, “unless you have a huge harvest crew”, Donahue said, “you’ll need to grow different varieties” to achieve a succession of ripening. (Peaches that are clingstone—as opposed to freestone—for example, ripen early.) A perennial question for commercial peach growers, Donohue claims, is, “How do I manage my labor crew?”
The more I learned about the challenges of growing peaches successfully in the Northeast, the more I appreciated every ripe juicy bite and the more I wondered why anyone would choose to take on such an uncertain endeavor. One local grower, who sells direct to consumers, told me he lost two-thirds of his harvest this year thanks to a late cold snap. Another reported he and his wife expected their crop to be halved thanks to the same killing frost.
A third said she and her husband didn’t expect a harvest this year beyond what their family would eat and put up for the winter and that they are contracting with local orchards to fulfill promises made to their fruit CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) shareholders. Her advice? “If you see a local peach, you should buy it, eat it, and enjoy it because it may not be there next year.” Whoa.
And yet, despite being diminished by a late spring frost, the local peach harvest seems nothing short of bountiful. With regional producers supplementing our local supplies in supermarkets, peach demand is satisfied with impressive abundance.
That Peak Peach Experience
Peaches, unlike apples, which store well, are best enjoyed fresh in season, at the stage of full ripeness and from a local or regional orchard. Peach season is glorious, but fleeting, and often feels too short. As anyone who’s taken a bite of an off-season peach anticipating a juicy explosion of sweetness but instead confronts mealy, flavorless flesh can attest, it’s a singularly disappointing experience. Really, why bother?
While we’re in it, I can’t imagine getting too much of this staple of the summer harvest. Peaches can serve as a reminder of the fleeting nature of many of life’s true joys. Not to be missed but savored. Not to be taken for granted but treasured. As if a metaphor for life itself, a ripe juicy peach is an ephemeral gift, making it all the more precious.
If you’ve ever purchased local peaches picked within a day or two of being fully ripe, you know that the final development of flavor and juiciness can be achieved inside a brown paper bag. You might wait impatiently for them to ripen. Then, wham! They ripening altogether, and fast. The fact that peaches can ripen after harvest is pretty cool. They belong to a group of fruits (like bananas) that are climacteric*, meaning they produce a sharp spike in ethylene as they ripen; this gas promotes softening and ripening in other fruits nearby. Peaches huddled together in a closed paper bag start producing ethylene, thus helping each other ripen even though completely detached from the parent plant.
In Daniel Donohue’s view, “peaches are the classic, best-when-local crop.” As the fruit ripens, it softens, and its sugar content increases. The eating experience improves the longer it stays on the tree. Ideally peaches are plucked from the tree at or near their full ripeness and sold locally, or regionally. Peach growers selling their fruit in distant markets need to pick them several days before they would reach this stage. Ripe or near ripe peaches don’t store well and this limited shelf life necessitates picking when they’re unripe.
Visiting summer in the middle of winter
No, I am not talking about flying to the Bahamas in February. I’m talking about how preserving fresh fruit at its peak flavor can invoke summer in the depths of a northeast winter. By freezing or canning fully ripe fruit, a peach-lover can enjoy that unmistakable taste of summer after peach season is over. What’s more, buying in bulk at the peak harvest time can often mean getting a break on the price. While peaches are rich in their own natural sugars, and some recommend preserving (canning or freezing) with no added sugar—something most of us could benefit from—using some sugar syrup when home canning will yield a better final product. Sugar is not needed for food safety reasons but rather for the quality of the peach flesh. A Penn State Cooperative Extension resource advises that sugar in the canning liquid helps preserve the integrity of the fruit and its color. Further, “if you want to reduce the amount of sugar, experiment to find the least amount of sugar that gives you a product you like”. That’s a great idea.
If you are interested in trying your hand at preserving food that you’ve grown or was harvested locally, you’re not alone. Food preservation–canning freezing, or drying—was considered an essential household skill a century ago. While that’s no longer the case, recent years have seen an increase in the number of people investing in canning equipment and learning about food preservation. Consumer interest in canning started to spike in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Once slated to be discontinued, food preservation programs offered by county cooperative extension offices are now attracting both the canning curious and the canning committed.
Poetic Inspiration
When I mentioned to my friend, Margaret, that I was writing about Peaches, she sent me a link to a poem she’d seen recently. I think it captures the beauty and joy of this time, this peach season, we are in right now.
“From Blossoms”, by Li-Young Lee
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
Before peach season comes to an end, I hope you will have many more peak peach experiences; from joy to joy to joy!
Notes:
More stone fruits: peaches, plums, cherries, nectarines, apricots, mangoes, lychees, and hybrids of plums and apricots (pluots, plumcots, apriums). Note: Berries vs. drupes.
*There are several climacteric fruits, including: apples, bananas, melons, apricots, tomatoes, as well as most stone fruits, such as plums, cherries, nectarines, mangoes, lychees.
More books by Mas Masumoto.
I loved this story. I'm so glad those trees were saved. I wish I could have some of those peaches! Our peach tree died due to fungus a few years ago--I was glad to hear from Lucy that this wasn't all my fault. No. Time to get some peaches. Thanks for an excellent post!
Informative and so moving; "as if death were nowhere in the background" The "as if" is very thought-provoking. Thanks for a great post!