Story Behind the Story: Stratford Peaches

Lucas Dunn, writer for Edible OKC and the Lost Ogle, makes his rounds throughout the growing districts of Oklahoma City on his bicycle. His shaggy hair with a two-day beard, sporting dirty shoes, ripped jean shorts with a white soccer jersey, is all it takes to give someone an idea about his character — very relaxed. In short, Dunn is a self-proclaimed ‘city-boy’ who drinks espresso between beers. We met before Edible OKC’s launch party for their latest edition: the beer issue.

We sat on the patio of Anchor Down, a restaurant specializing in corn dogs, in the Deep Deuce district in Oklahoma City. Dunn sipped his drink as he pensively searched for comments about his most recent feature story, ‘Stratford Peaches.’ The story takes place on a peach farm in Stratford, OK. The cover photo of Edible OKC’s fruit issue is a woman stylishly holding a basket of peaches with a confident smirk on her face — there is no doubt Dunn’s story is the highlight of the issue.

He started by saying it is his most proud story, and that it has been the most positive feedback he had been given as a writer — but it wasn’t the story he was expecting.

“That story in particular was a lot different than what I’m used to writing for the magazine, just because it’s rural,” Dunn said.

He said the story took him out of the city and out of his normal comfort zone. He and the photographer, Josh McCullock, got lost on the way to the farm, and were running late to the interview.

“We missed our exit and we were like 20 minutes out of the way, so we called him and were circling back,” Dunn said.

He called Craig, the peach farmer, to clear up their directions. Craig then asked Dunn if he could have a few minutes to talk with him about the angle of the story.

“He was like ‘you have a few minutes to talk?’ so I said, ‘yeah, sure.’”

Craig told Dunn about two teenaged boys working his farm working, and that he thinks the kids are the real story, not him.

“I’m just like, ‘whatever old man, the story is about the peaches,’” Dunn said he thought to himself.

Dunn said he never goes into an interview having the angle planned out, because it will probably change.

“I went in just thinking ‘I’m the writer here, all right? Just leave the angle to me, old man,’” he said while laughing. Dunn said he quickly realized Craig was right about the angle.

“That’s a super interesting angle that I wouldn’t have come in looking for — I just thought I was going to write a fluff piece about peaches, basically,” he said.

What Lucas wrote instead was a story about the dying lifestyle of peach farming, and what it meant for the future. Once he and McCullock arrived to the interview, Dunn absorbed as much of the farm’s essence as he could, and used it to paint a picture.

“It is late afternoon on a warm spring day in Byars, which is just northwest of Straftord. The sky is expansive in a way that only seems possible in rural Oklahoma,” Dunn wrote in the story’s second graf.

“A few cottony cumulus sail away in the horizon under a breeze that is slow and even-tempered. Each gentle gust brings the scent of sweet manure, an odor which would ordinarily be nauseating to this tenderfoot, but is somehow comforting in our locale.”

Dunn said McCullock was more experienced in rural farm life, and without him, Dunn wouldn’t have gotten half of the information he needed for the story to flourish.

“He was able to speak about the things that I wouldn’t have even thought to ask about,” he said.

Dunn said he tries to be a pretty descriptive writer when telling a story.

“If I was more accustomed to that or used to it, maybe I wouldn’t be paying attention to the details as much,” Dunn said.

The two boys in his story, Jacob and Colton, 17 and 15, weren’t just learning skills about farming, but how to run a business, Dunn wrote in his story. The job provided the two boys with spending money, and Jacob planned on using the money to save for his college tuition for a degree in agriculture.

Dunn said his only complication during the interview process was riding on the old clunky tractor, where he had to make use of shorthand note-taking instead of relying on recording audio.