Free Epitaph for a Peach by David M. Masumoto Page B

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.
    â€œIt’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 cats for their 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.
    I’ve lost 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 situations 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.
    Ironically, the moment I step off my farm I enter a world where it seems that everything, life and nature, is regulated and managed. Homes are built to insulate families from the outside weather. People work in climate-controlled environments designed to reduce the impact of the weather. The government develops bureaucracies and statutes to safeguard against failure and protect us from risk. In America, a lack of control implies failure.
    As a kid I was taught that sports is a great training field for life, where you learn about the difference between winning and losing. But you also learn to make excuses to avoid looking like a failure. It’s far easier to blame someone or something—a teammate who couldn’t catch a fly ball, a lousy referee—than it is to learn to live with losses.
    On the farm, the foul lines aren’t marked and nature doesn’t play by a rule book. There are no winners and losers and the game is never finished. There’s always next year and the next harvest, more dark clouds on the horizon or aphids in your child’s garden.
    I also learned something about failure from my father. One year it began to rain on our raisin crop. A year’s worth of work lay on the ground, exposed and vulnerable to the elements. The rain would soon begin to rot the harvest. I remember running outside to tell the clouds to go away. I came back inside and watched my father grow angry too. Restless, we walked back and forth to the window to check the march of dark clouds and listened to the tap-tap-tap of rain on the roof.
    â€œWhat can we do?” I blurted out in frustration.
    â€œWhat can you do?” he answered. “Make it stop raining?”
    We lost most of the crop that year. We failed. But the grapes grew the next year and it didn’t rain.
    When I farm or garden, I learn to fail without winners or losers.
    The Furin
    A small furin hangs on our farmhouse porch. Its miniature bell delicately jingles with the slightest breeze. A long strip of paper captures the air currents and translates the movement into sound. I can peer out over the fields, watching the advancing spring season with its green blankets of foliage, and hear the wind.
    Nikiko likes the fragile sounds. The metal chime rings like a whisper, the voice tiny like a child’s. Occasional spring winds in the valley blow strong enough to snap the outstretched vine canes. Most of the time soft breezes brush our cheeks with such subtleties that we ignore their presence. A furin reminds grown-ups what children already sense. Niki says she hears the wind singing.
    I spend the spring battling nature, trying to farm differently, hoping somehow I am