Customer Reviews

Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

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"Epitaph" is a gem and a masterpiece. Masumoto is a good farmer, a truly dedicated family man and a gifted writer. The story is in part about his love affair with a wonderful variety of peach.

City people will know why supermarket peaches disappoint and country people will recognize the sad story of a farmer who, the harder he tries the more frustration he finds. The peaches you find in the supermarket are there because the consumer/supermarket/broker/ value "shelf life" more than flavor.

Peaches don't travel well and they don't last long. The farmer must choose the right variety, prune it exactly the right way at exactly the right time, fertilize and water at the right time, pray fervently for the right weather conditions.

Only then, if the peach absorbs enough sun to fully mature, will it have the full bursting ambrosial flavor a peach should have. Only the sun can make a peach sweet and flavorful. Most really delicious peaches won't last more than three or four days after they are picked.

A good peach should be eaten as it is right out of hand. Not put in a pie or jam or cake. Only a good farmer can grow a perfect peach and no supermarket want them. Where is the answer?

You'll fall in love with farming and weep a bit as you read the Masumoto family story. Perhaps you won't fully appreciate what today's farmers are up against, but this book will give you more insight than you ever had before.

If you are from a farming family you will fully appreciate every word of this beautiful story of a San Joaquin Valley farm.

This book moves me in ways I find hard to describe. I'm from a farming family in the San Joaquin Valley in California. My father still grows grapes not terribly far from Mr. Masumoto's farm. When you grow up near the earth and smell, hear, see and touch its produce nearly every day, especially when the fruit is ripe, you can't help but be awed by nature's (and God's) miracles. Living now in a city I long for my children and my friends to understand how deeply tied we really are to the earth and what it produces for us, and how vital it is for us all to take care of our fragile earth. Organic farming requires all of us, farmers and consumers, to think a bit differently about how to grow and shop for our food. Mr. Masumoto brilliantly captured the ordinary, everyday life of a farmer. This book will be going to everyone I know for Christmas this year.

When David Mas Masumoto describes how his "old-fashioned" Sun Crest peaches look and taste, the reader's mouth waters and the grocery store peaches of today become flavorless by comparison. When Masumoto is unable to find buyers for his peaches he describes them as "homeless" and the reader's heart grieves. This book strongly conveys the small family farmer's ties to the land and his crops, his lack of control before the forces of nature and the whims of market dynamics. It also taught me a few things about the hard work involved in farming. However, when I look back for a "soundbite" impression of this book, I get a series of poetic pictures: Masumoto's obaachan (grandmother) walking through the farm at sunset, cruel bulldozers ripping out an orchard, graceful egrets fishing in the irrigation canals. A great read for a taste of connection to the land!

It is rare to read a book where the author works miracles with his hands and his words. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys non-fiction but finds it dry, without humanity. David Mas Masumoto is anything but dry. His land may be at times, but his poetic prose is anything but. His relationship with his family, his family's farm and nature is a rare combination. I highly recommend this read.

I live somewhat north of the area Mr. Masumoto writes about - where the San Francisco Bay Area Suburbs collide with the San Joaquin Farmlands. The Peach and Cherry Orchards and the Sweet Corn, Tomatoes and Strawberries are currently holding their own - but like Mr. Masumoto's Peaches and Grapes, only tenuously, and with great courage. If you would like to understand not only how these people live, but who and why they are, you should read this book. It is both beautifully written and thought provoking.

Death is destined to come to all of creation. In this case it came to a peach but not just any peach. Sun Crest peaches died not because of their bitter taste or ugly appearance. They were a victim of a market that values a long shelf-life more than taste. They were casualties of the public's need for the red skinned variety of the fruit rather than its golden hue. Sorry, Sun Crest, you are no longer profitable or valued for your sweet and juicy taste. It is time for your demise.

With moving eloquence and lyrical prose David Musumoto shares with us the story of his attempts to save a peach whose cultivation was a defining part of his life. David's story is the story of all family farmers struggling to stay alive and afloat in the vast world of the agribusiness. As one who is a resident of the "peach" state and has seen the destruction of its groves and dispersion of family farmers, I can readily identify with the various themes of which David shares.

Walk with him through the four seasons where we learn about the preparation of the soil, pruning, watering, caring, harvesting and marketing of the peaches. You find out that farming is hard work that requires faith, patience, experimentation and a tough hide when you experience failure. David interweaves his own personal history of farming through three generations to give us an appreciation of a lifestyle that is deeply embeded in one's soul.

As citizens in the 21st century we have some numerous decisions to make. Do we want agribusiness to control our food supply thus limiting our choices or we will support farmers such as David who offer us a product more satisfying? Too often we will go with cheap and quick availability without looking at the whole picture to make room for both agribusiness and small farmers. Which side will we chose? Is an epitaph for a peach in reality an epitaph for the family farm? Think about it as you read this enriching, thoughtful and engaging work.

I have lived in the San Joaquin Valley for a little less then 2 years, and currently drive by Del Rey on my daily commute from Reedley to Fresno and back. For the time being, I'm still looking at grapes and peaches rather than subdivisions and scrub. Masumoto's book has helped this refugee from the lands of corn and soybeans and those of wheat and milo start to figure out what's going on in those vineyards and orchards. There are two things I like about this book. The first is the great sense of balance between the ideal and the practical, and abstract versus work-a-day concerns. For instance, the questions such as "do I 'exploit' this worker or leave him unemployed?", and "which is worse, using pesticide, or burning more fossil fuel and smogging up the Valley more with extra tillage?". You know; the kinds of questions that seem straightforward and clear-cut to those whose experience with organic agriculture is buying food at the co-op. The seconds is that Mr. Masumoto's prose doesn't strike me as being nearly as frilly as that of most of his blurb writers. I am reminded of Aldo Leopold or Norman MacLean; guys who can express great vistas and grand ideas with relatively sparse language.

Author David Masumoto has written an excellent vignette into the year in a life of a small-scale, family farmer. His passion for his life's work, his connection to the land, and his strong family values are so clearly evident in his writing. I think a lot of readers will be envious of the life he describes. I share many of his views on the value of small family farms and the need to focus on how food should taste. Masumoto's book will reonsate deeply with those of us who know what it means to be curious about how something grows, who look forward to the first ripe peach or melon of the year, who prefer to make things from scratch and sit down with all our kids at dinner.

I feel a connection with David Masumoto. Not that I've met him or anything - in fact, there's a good chance I never will (although I keep hoping that one summer day I can make it over to his farm to pick peaches). No, this feeling is based on an impression that we have both fought the same fight over different things, for the same reasons. It is also because he writes so poignantly about a landscape I grew up in. Mr. Masumoto is an organic farmer in the valley of California, and his story is becoming more and more familiar to me as I see this way of life disappearing across the country.

A third generation Japanese American peach and grape farmer, David Masumoto inherited the family orchard from his father. He also had the heritage of his childhood memories of how that particular peach variety, Sun Crest, tasted and ran with juice unlike the pretty red baseballs that have passed for today's supermarket peach varieties. Mr. M wanted to show the world how delightful an old-fashioned peach could be.

When he took over his father's farm, he resolved to not only continue growing his Sun Crests, but to do it organically. This would prove challenging in our day and age of cheap, quick fixes; moreover, it would test his strongly felt ideals. The land needed to heal and replenish itself after years of chemical fertilizers and toxic pest control methods. Masumoto had to take his example from research on other organic farming practices, planting wildflowers to encourage beneficial insect life and sowing "green manure" crops to act as natural mulch and compost. All this took time, patience, and faith that his hard work would eventually pay off.

Epitaph for a Peach is rich in sensory descriptions, philosophy, and nostalgic flashbacks. It is a picture of the way a farmer's life is connected to the seasons, capricious weather patterns, and changing market conditions. Not incidentally, Masumoto also teaches about the obscure history of Japanese farmers in the Valley - something that even I, native to Fresno, had little idea of. Reading this book was a slow, thoughtful experience much in the same manner that one slows down to savor a rich fruit. Recommended to anybody interested in history, growing food, or the vanishing California landscape.
-Andrea, aka Merribelle

Lush, fragrant peaches dangling from the branches in David Mas Masumoto's orchard long to be picked and enjoyed for the burst of nector that surrounds your tastebuds. The prose is as delicious as the organic fruit that this farm struggles to produce as we read of the everyday joys and hardships of saving a farm and a way of life. And yes, I even ran out and bought Sun Crest peaches at the Farmer's Market after reading this book!