Dreams of a Juicy Jersey Peach
by Ron Weiss, M.D. — Founder of Ethos Health www.myethoshealth.com
Four years ago, right after we purchased Ethos Farm, someone ate a peach and tossed the pit on to the compost pile in our vegetable production field. What kind of peach was it…who knows? Did it have a sumptuous flavor or was it an insipid supermarket peach? Was the fruit mealy and dry or was it filled with juice that trickled down the chin on a warm summer’s day? Do not know…but what I do know is that the discarded peach pit sprouted into a seedling that first year. The seedling thrusted its roots from the compost into the soil and each year since, as our farm has grown, so has our little peach tree.
As the years passed, I have expectantly watched that little peach tree’s branches each winter, hoping to see flower buds, knowing that if the tree flowered, we would be one step closer to tasting its fruit. And just maybe, it would be the queen of all summer fruits — that almost mythical, sumptuous and juicy Jersey peach. So you can imagine how delighted I was to see our peach tree’s branches loaded with flower buds this past winter. And as spring came to the land this past week, the buds swelled and opened, one of the surest signs that spring has arrived is the unfurling of the peach blossom.
To me, peach blossoms are very special — I find the constancy of their rich medium pink hue more beautiful than apple or cherry blossoms. They are also pioneers — brave enough to open before the other blossoms, especially when the weather is so unsettled. Thus the delicate peach blossoms may be struck by a capricious frost with little to no warning. However, the perfection of mother nature’s wise design has graced the tree with a plethora of blossoms which open in a staggered fashion to overcome these mercurial days of early spring. In fact there are so many flower buds on the branches of a peach tree that if they were all to survive and develop into fruits of a reasonable size, the tree’s boughs could break under the weight of the crop. So a strategically placed frost can actually be useful, thinning out the blossoms that have already opened while leaving the late bloomers to develop into fruitlets. Another important strategy to ensure that the peach tree is not overwhelmed by setting too many fruits is to regularly and extensively prune the tree. Peach trees are rather fragile things, the wood is weak, with a lifespan of about twenty or thirty years before succumbing to disease, unlike the apple tree that can potentially live for centuries.
So with this in mind, my good friend and Ethos orchardist Pankaj Gala and I set out to give our little peach tree it’s first “haircut” albeit a whee bit late…better late than never. We assessed, we discussed, we stepped back, we then pruned the tree to an open vase form, creating the crown of the tree which resembles a flower vase with a wide open mouth. The little peach tree pruned to this form allows the tree’s branches to grow strong enough to support its (finger’s crossed) crop of fruit while allowing enough breathing room between the branches to allow plenty of sunlight to penetrate the tree’s crown, thus helping the fruit to develop and ripen.
But here’s the best part of pruning our little peach tree… I brought the clipped boughs into the Ethos Primary Care medical office — which is in an old wooden farmhands’ house that overlooks the growing field. The beautifully colored blossoms now put on a show in our waiting room. The constancy and courage of that pink reminds us of Spring’s eternal promise of renewal and for our sickest patients, is a source of solace and hope.
Ethos Health is a new paradigm in healthcare. It is a farm based healthcare system that connects human health to the natural world and fosters the fundamental connections that exist between all living things.
At its core, Ethos Health applies this philosophy to the food we grow. In turn we use these foods as living medicines to prevent and reverse the spectrum of human illness.
