I took plums to market

I took plums to market last week, along with the tomatillos de milpa
which spring up in profusion each year here, and I had customers
waiting for both. There was also a superabundance of squash, newly
ripe very sweet pink grapefruit, Anaheim chiles, green apples,
arugula, basil, garlic, onion. I had my biggest produce day ever,
and finally had enough variety so that people could actually shop
with me, buying some of several things I had to offer.

My old farmer friend Ric, who I met the first day I ever set up a
stand at the market and who has supported and helped me ever since,
returned two weeks ago to operate his booth after an absence of
nearly four years. Ric has rules, which he freely imparts and
reiterates. He used to tell me that we must charge seven times the
total cost of production of a given item in order to make selling
worthwhile. That was when he thought my prices were woefully low.
Now, returning from his absence, and after only two market days, he
has a new rule. He must make $100 an hour for each of the four hours
of market, and if doing so forces him to cut out the time to chat
with customers, then it is time to raise his prices. I mentioned the
rule to his wife, who had come over to deliver some salad greens in
exchange for the chiles Ric took from me, and she said, “Yeah, he’s
always got rules.” I go by a wholly different set of rules, or more
likely, no rules at all.

After my Saturday market, a nap, and a quick violin practice, we went
to an excellent Lebanese buffet restaurant with our friends Dan and
Leila. It was our first social event outside of the bimonthly music
get-togethers we have for more than two years, in which he plays
piano, Sandy plays recorder, and I my violin. They were dying to ask
how we had gotten involved with the Huichols, and we told the stories
of our first encounters with the Huichols more than forty years ago.
I mentioned an anthropologist, Tim Knab, who wrote a book about his
experiences with a Huichol man whom he referred to as Mad Jesus, in
which he noted in passing that when the Huichols get to know you,
they “colonize” you. That hit home, for the very first thing I did
on meeting the stunning and powerful looking Huichol couple, on the
bridge over the river at the entry to San Blas, Mexico, was to buy
from the woman the beaded medallion she was wearing around her neck,
depicting in blue and red the figure of Tau Werika Uimari, young Sun
Eagle mother. And the next thing we did, a couple of days later,
walking through the market in Tepic, was to buy several yarn
paintings, an art form which we had never seen before. And now,
forty one years later, I’m selling beaded eagle medallions and yarn
paintings out of a farmer’s market booth. I was colonized good.

I never tire (so far) of picking plums and other tree fruit, which to
others might be an onerous and tedious task. There’s something
supremely satisfying about it, as though I were snatching something
valuable for free, because it is so freely given by the tree on which
it grows. People often ask if I grow this or that, and generally I
say no, I don’t grow it, I just pick it. The earth and the sun and
water grow it, I’m only the lucky beneficiary. Aside from the
picking itself, there are the pleasures stemming from the rhythm of
harvesting, plucking what’s ripest just when it ripens, leaving the
rest to ripen further and enlarge from the now reduced competition
for resources, extending the harvest and refreshing the supply. Add
to that the satisfaction of moving the harvest out o its recipients:
ourselves, family, friends, neighbors, customers, food banks, even
our neighbor’s crocodiles, who love squash, which is abundant at the
moment.

Standing on a ladder within the plum tree canopy, a kind of bliss
fills me, and I feel grateful for and appreciative of the gifts of
life. In this final stage of ripening, bees come to the fruit, and
this year also fig beetles, which don’t have as much access to the
peach trees, their usual haunt, since I had Pedro cover them with
bird netting . Sometimes I’ll find a fig beetle and bees sucking
from the same fruit; when I surprise the beetle, it flies up making a
noise loud enough to startle me off the ladder. Here’s what I
thought. The bees are responsible for pollinating most everything
here, and look how moderate they are exacting a return for their
favor, sipping from so few fruit. Mostly they go for the ones fallen
to the ground, the skins slashed open from the sudden pressure of
hitting the earth and the pulp thus accessible to the bees. On the
tree, they have to wait for a bird to peck open a plum. As I move my
ladder around the tree, hundreds of bees are buzzing at my feet, but
they don’t bother me, involved as they are in their own business of
drinking plum juice. This year, I pay special attention when I move
the ladder, so as not to disturb them.

Then, too, up there among the brittle plum tree branches, I can’t
help but appreciate my in-laws, who planted those trees forty years
ago and who made my current pleasures possible. At the market, I
like saying that such and such a fruit comes from forty year old
trees, which to my mind at least adds a certain dignity to the product.

When I was in Mexico, in early June, the green plums were ripening in
the village where my Huichol friends live. Joaquín and Federica have
a tree in their compound. Here, the Santa Rosa plums are done for
the year, and the Satsumas are coloring in on the tree I planted two
years ago. I’m hoping the Santa Rosas I picked this week will hang
on till market day Friday. This morning, I plan to siphon the plum
wine I’m brewing into a glass carboy with an airlock on top, and I’ll
pick the few good plums remaining on the tree. I’ll gather more
almonds too, which I’ve been plucking daily; the ones I’ve gathered
so far are drying in net sacks hanging from the beams of the patio.
Each nut I get is one the squirrels did not get; after eight years, I
am finally winning the almond competition. I say to myself that,
after eight years of effort, I am finally as smart as a squirrel, or
perhaps more importantly, as persistent.

This morning, I picked the last Santa Rosas I’m going to harvest.
The bees and beetles were even more in evidence, their sound more
insistent, almost threatening, as if to say, “You’ve gotten enough
now, the rest is ours.” Maybe I was only saying that to myself, but
in either case it’s true. It’s all yours now.