Long article. Most of pg 2 is recipes.
Eat, Memory: Family Heirloom
By DAVID MAS MASUMOTO
Published: August 13, 2006
One afternoon nine years ago, I drove into the barnyard on a tractor, dragging a broken plow. I had been driving too fast, trying to keep pace with the warm spring days and the ensuing assault of weeds, when I hooked a vine. My dad was there, wandering around his tractor.
Our 80-acre organic farm in California was exploding with life. Peaches and nectarines were blooming, and the grapevines were pushing forth pale green buds with miniature bunches. In three months, if all went well, we’d gorge ourselves on peaches. In six months, the bulbous grapes could be dried into raisins.
But the weeds flourished, too. Innocent-looking for a day or two, they kept growing, spreading thick over the landscape. Soon a tangled mass of fibers would compete for water, nutrients and sunlight, stunting the development of my crops, robbing fruits of the essentials they need to grow fat.
The physical work was breaking me. Organic farming is not simple. It’s easy to want to be environmentally responsible, but it’s a damned hard thing to achieve. You cannot replace tedious labor with technology or equipment. If I miss a few worms, an outbreak could ensue. I can’t fix things with a magic spray. It’s like catching a bad flu with no medicine readily available.
We did most of the work ourselves. With our budget getting tighter and tighter every year, our farm demanded more hard labor. Exhausted, I’d often whisper to myself, “This farm is going to kill me.” So I had asked my 76-year-old father to do some extra harrowing for me — to help cultivate and plow under the weeds. For a moment, I thought I might catch up.
My father shuffled around his tractor as the engine roared. He looked perplexed. At first I thought he was trying to listen for something wrong with the engine.
Dad was great at repairs. He had to be, since our family was poor. My grandparents immigrated from Japan a hundred years ago with dreams of owning a farm. Instead, they found racist Alien Land Laws that prevented foreign-born “Orientals” from buying property. So they waited until their American-born children could establish a farm. Then came World War II and the relocation of all Japanese-Americans from the West Coast. Because they looked like the enemy, our family spent four years behind barbed wire in the Arizona desert. Then, with no other place to go, they wandered back to Fresno, Calif. In 1948, Dad bought our farm.
My grandmother scolded him. “You don’t buy land in America,” she said. “They will take it away. Big mistake.” Dad ignored her and helped plant family roots.
Like most farms in the area, we started with grapes to be dried into raisins, muscats for cheap wine, plums, peaches and nectarines. Eventually we gravitated toward peaches and grapes. They worked well in our soil, and we loved to eat them, especially the rejects that grew too soft.
Isolated and without capital, Dad quickly learned how to restore old equipment, tackle farm work creatively and make the most of situations. Accept, adapt, adopt. That’s how he and many Japanese-Americans survived. I believe that’s why he and I worked well together when I came back from college and started us at the bottom of the learning curve for organic farming. How could we grow crops without herbicides, fungicides or pesticides? We became partners, making mistakes together, learning how to farm differently as a team. It was Dad who taught me the power of fixing things.
He was a gentle, quiet father. I believe that he was happy when I took over the farm, but he rarely expressed it. I sensed that it pained him to see me work so hard. Organic farming challenged us: without chemicals, we had to weed by hand and adapt our equipment; constant monitoring was essential to get rid of worms and insects before they took over; plant diseases demanded experimenting with simple but unreliable treatments. It all took vast amounts of time, to anticipate weather, react quickly and respond to nature. The rewards, though, were wonderful: we worked to save heirloom peaches and nectarines with nectar that exploded on the palate, as well as grapes that made sweet, plump raisins.
But Dad knew the toll of all this physical exertion. It could suck life from your body. He rarely complained; I only heard from Mom about the long nights when he awoke with cramps in his legs or the restless hours of back pain as his body seemed to break down with age.
I walked up and stood next to him, and we leaned toward the thundering engine to listen. Then I looked at his face. He was having a stroke: the right side of his face drooped, his eyelid almost sealed shut, his eyes glazed with a lost look. He didn’t recognize me.
He began to limp around the tractor. I held on to him, trying to keep him from stumbling. I didn’t know what to do, but I thought I should first shut off the engine and get him inside. I felt responsible. In my quest to grow the perfect peach and the sweetest raisin, had I contributed to the possible death of my father? I inherited his passion for work, one that was being rewarded by the growing organic marketplace and the public demand for real taste. The only way I knew how to meet that expectation was to work harder. The flavors that I sought for my fruit could never be manufactured. Such authentic flavors come only from nature — and authentic work. But even if it kills you? I thought of the spirit of the artist who sacrifices everything for the sake of his work. Couldn’t farmers be artists, too?
The tractor rumbled to a stop, and I tried to maneuver Dad inside. He fought me, insisting on returning to his tractor. Still in shock, I gave in to his will. I would not be able to farm with such guilt. He reached for the tractor-seat cushion. At the end of the work day, we traditionally flipped over the pad so that the morning dew wouldn’t collect on it and bother the next driver. With a trembling left hand, he flipped it over, then let me guide him. Together we limped toward the farmhouse.
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