Anticipation

One of the pleasures of eating locally grown food – whether from the front yard or a nearby farmers market – is the anticipation as one awaits the ripening of each favorite. For me, that anticipation is heightened by daily visits with the apricot and peach trees growing just outside my kitchen and front doors, respectively. There are the prolific flowers, some of the earliest color confirming the arrival of spring and more than enough to rival the more typical landscape ornamentals. But the best is yet to come.

As the flower buds open, the bumblebees arrive, buzzing busily all day from flower to flower, promising pollination.But it is after the flowers fade that the real anticipation begins.  

First the small swellings that hint at which flowers will actually yield fruit, then the dime-sized “knobs,” and soon, small readily identifiable fruit. The apricot tree is still young enough that I count – about 40 apricots this year, only the second that the tree is fruiting. Some of the runts have dropped off, but most of the rest look strong enough to stay on the tree and ripen. The small fruits have withstood the recent thunderstorms, which is more than the tree was able to do last year.

On the way to the peach, I stop at the second apricot tree to check its health and encourage it along. All its leaves blackened last spring and dropped off (we still don’t know why), but a new stem emerged from the base. We’re hoping it will flower and fruit next year. Sometimes you just have to wait.

The peach, now in its third year fruiting, has too many swellings to count, but I’m guessing 75 peaches or so. It remains to be seen how many the still-young tree will support. With each visit, I remember my first taste, two years ago, of a sun-warmed peach eaten seconds after being picked late one summer afternoon. I was skeptical of those who insist that if you haven’t tasted a peach right off the tree, you haven't tasted a peach. But they are right. The peaches from the farmers market come close. Those in the supermarket – picked unripe, then shipped hundreds or, more often, thousands of miles – bear little resemblance beyond how they look. It is doing so well, we will soon plant a second peach tree nearby.

As I make my rounds, I stop at several plum and pear trees. It will be another year or two before these fruit. We put these trees in very young – one-year-old and bare-rooted. At that size, they are only a fraction of the cost of the older trees that many nurseries sell, and they transplant better. Growing fruit trees this way is a lesson in patience, a lesson I am grudgingly learning.  And yet, the fruit is all the more appreciated when it comes. 

People sometimes wonder whether it is limiting to eat peaches, or apricots, or anything else only at certain times of year. My response is that it is exactly the opposite. Rather, it makes everyday eating like a special holiday with its favorite foods – latkes (potato pancakes) at Chanukah, matza brei at Passover, or the equivalents that exist in every culture. You eagerly anticipate that first taste, eat as much as you possibly can in a short period, remember it fondly from year to year, and, as the season approaches, eagerly anticipate it once again. Then you move on to the next favorite food, and then the next, in a predictable, anticipated cycle of the seasons.

Of course, as the trees grow and the harvest increases, some of the apricots and peaches will be frozen, canned, or dried, as we do now with the berries. That will mean more than enough to spark winter memories of long summer days, but not so much as to take them for granted.

Top Photo: Peach tree in bloom. Middle and bottom photos (Dan Hittleman/ drhPHOTO): Apricot tree by kitchen door, four apricots