Epitaph for a Peach Quotes

“I feel persecuted by the power of mother nature, who dwarfs my farm with her unpredictable character. Yet I cling to a spirit of survival. I observe others, my family and neighbors, as we brace for the storm with a humbling humility.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“Good neighbors are worth more than an extra sixteen trees.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“Opportunity is born with each new year.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“A type of humility marks a real farmer. Those of us who battle nature all year must ultimately accept the had we're dealt.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“I get superstitious in late summer.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“All good farmers become connoisseurs of dirt and dust.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“When I was a kid, many of us still had families intimately tied to the land. The migration to the cities had begun, but the majority of us still had family who farmed and memories of a place in the country. We could recall picking ripe apples and smelling freshly cut hay. We knew where the milk, eggs, and vegetables came from and understood the meaning of long hours of physical field work. We understood the rhythms of farming. Spring meant work, summer meant harvest, fall a time for gratitude, and winter a pause for reflection. We were exposed to nature and witnessed the birth of seeds and animals, their eventual death from time and age, and how the cycle repeated each year. We visualized the fruits of hard labor and the true flavors of the harvest.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“I enjoy autumn the most. The pressures of harvest are over. The expectations and realities are reaped and stored.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“We are taught a harsh lesson. Even though we can enlarge a grape berry by adding a growth hormone, kill a pest expeditiously with new chemicals, control a disease effectively with safer sprays, farming remains a sea of uncertainty. We have lost touch with more just the elements. Our farms function more and more as businesses with rigidly scheduled work calendars. We trap ourselves in our offices, in self-imposed exile from our fields. We model our operations on industries designed to produce a commodity. All the while we fool ourselves into believing we are somehow insulated from nature.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“I am amazed we make it to harvest. When I think of the many things that can go wrong, I'm grateful for any edible fruit. A type of humility marks a real farmer. Those of us who battle nature all year must ultimately accept the hand we are dealt. We're cautious even at harvest, privately smiling when we discover that the cards we hold may be OK, inwardly grateful that there hasn't been a disaster. We hear of someone else with bad luck: a farm caught under a hailstorm, a plum orchard that bore no crop, a vineyard with a mildew outbreak. Success is relative. We pick our fruit and whisper to ourselves, "It could have been worse.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“My children provide me with perspective. I do not farm solely to make money but rather with the hope of contributing something to them and to the world.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“I'm humbled to realize in a few hours or days, an entire crop can be lost.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“I'm just managing a piece of dirt and probably still foolishly believing I rule the earth.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“Farmers fool themselves when they talk about taking land from the wild. Some believe they can outwit nature and grow a lush vineyard in poor soil and on land where vines don't belong. But I sense that farming is only a temporary claim on a piece of earth, not a right; farmers borrow the land from nature to squeeze out a living. With each generation, we may be losing the sense of "claiming the land." Armed with our machinery and youthful confidence, we've never felt nature beat us. In the end, though, nature has a way of keeping us in our place by a thunderstorm on our table grapes, a heat wave that burns the peaches, or showers that fall on unprotected grapes trying to dry into raisins. We are humbled.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“It required hours of listening before I noticed that Dad's stories about his father, my jiichan, seemed to revolve around the pronoun "they" much more than "he." "They: meant Jiichan and Baachan or the entire family of four sons and two daughters. I had to adjust my thinking. My image of work was singular in nature: one man in one job, not a family and their combined effort to make a living. I learned the significance of work that is inseparable from home, when work is also the place you live and play and sleep.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“The greatest challenge of my summer remains: to keep my confidence I had when I turned back the bulldozer from my peach trees. If I lack vision of the coming harvest and lose my trust in nature, the year will be a constant struggle and perhaps futile. I'd best arm myself early in the season with righteous optimism.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“I remember a Japanese saying about the power of bamboo. Its strength is not found in a rigid structure that blocks the wind; instead, the stalks bend with the wind. Their power resides in their flexibility. I'm working on becoming like bamboo. I've abandoned my attempts to control and compete with nature, letting go has been a challenge.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“I've lost my raisin crops, peach harvests, whole trees and vines. I've lost money, time, and my labor. I've lost my temper, my patience, and at times, hope. Most of the time, it's due to things beyond my control, like the weather, market prices, or insects or disease. Even in situation where I believe I am in charge - cover-crop seeding, management of workers, the timing of harvest - I now know I can never really have complete control.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“We plant an annual vegetable garden, and this year Nikiko helps plant some of the seeds and seedlings. But after growing initially, they begin to die. Nikiko's garden is failing. A virus attacks the fragile squash, causing the leaves to yellow and the delicate growth to wither. Her eggplants glisten from a sticky juice secreted by a herd of aphids with a company of tending ants. A phantom creature even munches on the hardy marigolds, taking huge circular bites out of the dangling leaves. Daily, I monitor the slow death, assessing the new damage, wondering if I should do something drastic. I consider using a garden spray, but when I read the label from the typical hardware store garden dust or pest spray, I realize it would be deadlier than anything I use on the farm. It will kill the aphids along with everything else, not the lesson I would want the garden to convey to my child. I face the same dilemma as I try to find a home for my Sun Crest peaches. If something doesn't work right, I have to fight the tendency to find a quick solution. "It's OK, Dad," Niki explains. "We have other squash plants." Then she quickly gives the napping dog a hug and skips over to the sunning cat for afternoon tea together. Nikiko helps me realize the difference between disappointment and losing. Her garden, like farming, teaches me that at times failure is OK.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“Nothing replaces the personal and intimate sensibility of walking a farm, feeling the earth, seeing and smelling an orchard.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“The work frees my mind. Each shovel of the heavy, dank earth nurtures my soul with meaning about this place. My thoughts wander - to images of work to feed the soil, of harvest to feed the thousands.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“Perhaps there is no secret to farming and managing chaos - you blend tradition and science with some common sense and trust you will have a crop. In fact, most good farmers I know are like those two old men, tending to their trees and vines the best they can, comfortable with their work, and confident that the final product will be fine. Whether they know it or not, seasoned farmers are already experts at chaos.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“Perhaps their is no secret to farming and managing chaos - you blend tradition and science with some common sense and trust you will have a crop. In fact, most good farmers I know are like those two old men, tending to their trees and vines the best they can, comfortable with their work, and confident that the final product will be fine. Whether they know it or not, seasoned farmers are already experts at chaos.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“Squatting evens out physical differences. Tall people and short ones come closer in height when squatting. You share with others a common point of view. Once you squat, you have to think twice about getting up; you become conscious of choices and decisions. Squatting is a mark of country folk who have worked the land and whose legs are in excellent condition. You can't squat well if you are overweight, if your legs are used to sitting in chairs, or if you're lazy. I wonder if we've lost the art of squatting. In our fast-paced world today, we're too busy or think we're too good to squat.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“I struggle with all this in my thoughts - faceless laborers stooped over lush green fields, harvesting food for life. They move systematically, like lumbering machines. I sometimes think, Why don't we employ our high-technology know-how to replace these works and end this oppressive work? Then I realize that the crouched workers depend on this work and displacing them from the land will not rid the world of their hunger.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“In the last century, change in American agriculture was like a revolution, toppling old structures with new technologies, creating new products, new markets, new farms. These forces pulled farmers along, some of us kicking and screaming, but innovation became the buzzword for success and survival. My peaches are part of that cycle of change. They are part of the tradition of our farm, they hold meaning to my family. But the pressures for progress challenge that meaning. Am I overly sentimental about these peaches? How long do I cling to old definitions of quality? Does old also imply obsolete? I feel like an immigrant: the ways of the old country pull at me, while the opportunities of the new land beckon. My peaches are like the traditions of the homeland - you don't simply leave them behind, you carry them with you like historical baggage.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“Farmwork provides many opportunities for contemplation, escapes from the tedious physical pace. I do my best thinking while shoveling weeds or driving a tractor.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“Planting these cover-crop seeds is my first step to save my Sun Crests. I begin by planting hope - hope that the seeds will germinate, hope that they will add life to the farm and even help save the wonderful taste of my fruits. I had no training to be a father, I could only hope I'd learn quickly, on the job, As I grew my first cover crop, I had a similar feeling. I hoped an enriching harvest would follow. Babies and planting seeds: they demand that you believe in the magic and mystery of life.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“For pacing, I need to envision my target or risk the wrong rhythm. I may start too quickly and exhaust my back and arms, which will inevitably lead to a bad attitude. Or I may proceed too slowly, which, with the sun beating down upon me, will drain my energy and spirit.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm

“I try to rely less and less on controlling nature. Instead I am learning to live with it's chaos.”
― David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm