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Book of the
Month > February 2005
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February 2005
Epitaph
for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm
by David Mas Masumoto
"Sun Crest is one of the last remaining truly juicy peaches.
When you wash that treasure under a stream of cooling water, your
fingertips instinctively search for the gushy side of the fruit.
Your mouth waters in anticipation. You lean over the sink to make
sure you don’t drip on yourself. Then you sink your teeth
into the flesh, and the juice trickles down your cheeks and dangles
on your chin. This is a real bite, a primal act, a magical sensory
celebration announcing that summer has arrived."
Spring Bloom. Summer Harvest. Autumn Chill. Winter Hope. This
season David Mas Masumoto, a California farmer, is going to manage
his peaches and grapes differently. He is going to work with nature
not against. No pesticides. No fertilizer. The once clean and
weed-free soil around his trees now burst with a crop cover: wildflowers,
clover, indigenous growth (no longer weeds), buzzing and flying
insects, lizards, and all of nature.
Will it work despite his neighbors’ doubts and shaking heads?
Will nature, the rain, the wind, and the sun cooperate with the
farmer? Will there be a market for organic peaches that last only
a week or two after picking?
Through the seasons, we are introduced to David Mas Masumoto,
a third generation Japanese-American farmer, his family, neighbors,
farmhands, his Japanese-American heritage, and incredible peaches
and grapes. In the end you will never look at a peach or grape
the same way again.
This synopsis was written by a San José Public Library
librarian
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Silicon Valley Reads 2005
Celebrate Silicon
Valley Reads 2005 during February. Read Epitaph
for a Peach and attend one of the programs
located throughout the county. Meet the author, David Mas Masumoto,
and join in a discussion of our valley's agrarian heritage and
future at one of San
José Public Library's Silicon Valley Reads events.
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King Library California Room
Learn more about this place we call home in the California
Room on the fifth floor of the King
Library. It is a treasure trove of reference books, maps,
sheet music, photographs, realia, newspaper clippings and more.
Feast on other books from our farming past that can be viewed
in the California Room:
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This page last updated June 11, 2008 by the Web Team
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