Peaches farm

Last week, friends sug­gest­ed that on Sat­ur­day, May 13, we join them for a trip to a pri­vate farm to pick peach­es. The farm was not too far away, just about an hour’s dri­ve. We glad­ly agreed. I imag­ined us being giv­en a plot of land (like in the Sovi­et times at a col­lec­tive farm), where we would all work togeth­er to meet the quo­ta, then pick full bags for our­selves, and I would make jam. But I was a “naïve Chukchi grand­moth­er”. I was told it was more of a recre­ation­al event. The farm would be host­ing a peach-pick­ing fes­ti­val, and we would need to pay for the peach­es we picked.

The pri­vate Schnepf Farms is locat­ed in the south, not far from the small town of Queen Creek. Fifty years ago, the Schnepf fam­i­ly plant­ed the first peach trees in the desert; ini­tial­ly, they sold the pro­duce at a road­side stand, and after five years, peo­ple start­ed com­ing to pick peach­es them­selves. Now it is a very pop­u­lar place, offer­ing peach-pick­ing through­out May, with a week-long peach fes­ti­val in the mid­dle of the month. In addi­tion to grow­ing peach­es and veg­eta­bles, the farm engages in agro­tourism. They host wed­dings and orga­nize var­i­ous events through­out the year, includ­ing pump­kin pick­ing for Hal­loween, farm­ers’ mar­kets, and East­er activities.

We real­ized the far­m’s pop­u­lar­i­ty as soon as we approached it. We drove on the high­way at 70 miles per hour for about 40 min­utes. As we neared the farm, we hit a mas­sive traf­fic jam. Cars from two roads merged into one lane at the farm entrance, and then this stream of traf­fic moved slow­ly to the park­ing area. We spent anoth­er forty min­utes mov­ing in a line. The park­ing area was a whole field already filled with a sea of cars.

Final­ly, we parked and head­ed to the farm. The entrance tick­et cost five dol­lars per per­son, chil­dren under 12 were free. Besides par­ents with chil­dren, there were also a lot of elder­ly Amer­i­can grand­moth­ers. Many grand­moth­ers were in shorts, with walk­ing sticks, bare­ly mov­ing, but they all came to enjoy (as they say here, “for the fun”).

There were cafes on the farm sell­ing ice cream, peach pan­cakes, pies, and buns also with peach­es. They also sold antique items: bicy­cles, chairs, bench­es, lock­ers, frames, etc. This was for col­lec­tors of vin­tage junk. A rur­al attrac­tion fea­tured an old carousel with iron hors­es run­ning in a cir­cle and an ancient chil­dren’s train. It all remind­ed me of a dis­tant childhood.

There were stands where you could buy veg­eta­bles grown in near­by beds and already picked peach­es at $3.60 per pound. But we came to pick peach­es our­selves, so we joined the line where a wheeled trac­tor with a trail­er was approach­ing. The trail­er had bales of straw along the walls instead of bench­es. After three min­utes, we arrived at the place where peach-pick­ing was open. There were card­board box­es and small paper bags with han­dles. Peo­ple took con­tain­ers, went around the orchard, and picked their desired peaches.

The farm prides itself on grow­ing organ­ic peach­es with­out pes­ti­cides, and it is believed that they are the best in the coun­try. The peach­es were indeed tasty, fra­grant, and very ten­der. We ate them straight from the tree. Peach­es sold in stores are not the same; they often seem to be processed and some­times look like plas­tic. After fill­ing a box, we went to weigh and pay. The peach­es we picked our­selves cost $2.20 per pound. We paid 44 dol­lars for 20 pounds (about 10 kg).

Then, we sent Dad with the har­vest to the car and our com­pan­ions head­ed back home, while Vala, Marik, and I went back to the farm to walk around the beds and show the child how things grow. They recent­ly had a “radish seed ger­mi­na­tion project”. When the seeds sprout­ed, they were told to plant them in soil at home. We plant­ed them in a pot, and he asked, “Will it be a bush?”. The child only sees veg­eta­bles in the store.

So we wan­dered around the beds, looked at how zuc­chi­nis, cab­bage, and let­tuce grow. We hand-dug a cou­ple of car­rots, four beets, gath­ered some laven­der, and went to weigh and pay. My daugh­ter also bought some pota­toes. We didn’t take much because every­thing was still small, and it’s much cheap­er in stores.

When we were ready to leave, many peo­ple were also try­ing to leave, and we once again moved in a slow traf­fic jam. We man­aged to see the sur­round­ing fields; on one of them, we saw rem­nants of cot­ton bush­es. It turns out that cot­ton is grown in Ari­zona. We passed by a pri­vate olive farm where they grow olives, press and sell local olive oil, and also engage in agrotourism.

We drove through the small town of Queen Creek again. The town has a pop­u­la­tion of about 33,000, but while we were dri­ving through, I didn’t see a sin­gle per­son walk­ing (they say you only see pedes­tri­ans in big cities). Only cars were zip­ping around. We also passed by a huge school. Near the school was a park­ing lot for school bus­es. There were as many school bus­es as in our city’s bus depots.