In the Orchard Draft 1

The exact time to pick peaches is determined by the cultivar, but generally they are harvested from late June through August. Color is a great indicator of maturity. Peaches are ripe when the ground color of the fruit changes from green to completely yellow. Some of the newer peach varieties have a red tinge to the skin, but this is not a reliable barometer of ripeness. There is a fine line when harvesting peaches. You want the fruit to hang on the tree long enough for the flavor and sugar content to peak, but not so long that it becomes overripe. Overripe fruit reduces storage time and increases the possibility of disease, insect and bird damage. Also, peaches will ripen in color, juiciness and texture off the tree, but will lack in flavor and sweetness.

From Gardening Knowhow.com


A hot summer day came. Some of the fruit harvesting was due. All hands headed out to the rows of peach trees.

Poor men and women had always done this work.  You could tell it in the clothing upon their raggedy frames.  You could tell it by the worn out soles of works boots and canvas tennis shoes upon their feet. They walked out into the orchard in light almost threadbare clothing wearing sweat stained straw hats.
Plaid shirts and blue jeans, cotton summer dresses with faded pastel floral patters.

Each and every man and woman, young and old, carried a cotton sack that draped around the neck. Some men carried ladders. These weren’t the safe tripod ladders the government wanted them to use. These were old ladders to be laid up against the trunks of the tallest of the trees.  These ladders had seen decades of use and were stained with oils and paint splatter. Others walking out to the day’s work carried stacks of bushel baskets.

He inhaled deeply, sweet peach smells mixed with the other harsher smells of a working farm. His nostrils were filled with the scents of diesel, sweat and dust. And when they reached the edge of the orchard they began their picking.

Row after row they worked. She would pick the low hanging fruit. Row after row, he would put the ladder up against the tree and climb up for the ripe red tinged flesh. He job was to make sure nothing was wasted, that nothing was left to rot higher in the tree. Almost biblically this harvest was bountiful but the hands working it were few.

The task was repetitive.  The task was hard.  You had to have a strong but gentle touch to picking the peach carefully so as not to bruise it he flesh. Twisted and free from the tree both he and she would place the fruit in their respective sacks.

When the sack was full the fruit was taken to the baskets that had been set in pretty equidistant spacing  between the rows of trees. He would repeat this task again and again. She would repeat this task again and again.  During season the hours were long.  Pickin’ required staining muscles and aches that linger long after you had left the orchard. Repeat until the humid heat soaked those cotton shirts and dresses with sweat. Repeat and smell the sweet odor of ripe and overripe peaches. Another ten days and the smells would include a strong sickly scent of rotting discharged peaches.

As noontime approached he and she found themselves at the far end of the longest row in the orchard. They stood alone. Anyone with ears, even the oldest deafest of the hands,  could hear the tractor pulling the wagon of full bushel baskets headed back to the barn.

Most of the pickers would be headed back to the yard between the farmhouse and the barn. On that patch of yard, if you would call it that were two old trees.  A maple reached up into the sky.  A catalpa with its broad leaves just generated so much cooling oxygen that it was 10 degrees cooler in the space between.  It was a comfort to sit beneath the shade trees and eat. To have a cigarette. To tell filthy jokes. To flirt.

The voices and noises of the others had faded now. The two of them stayed where they stopped, at the end of the row. They sat on a patch of drying grass and commenced to eat quietly and without saying a word. Sitting together they unwrapped their sandwiches from folded wax paper.He opened a steel thermos of cold water. She had not brought her drink today.  She had figured on drinking from the hose back at the house, where the water came from a deep well and the water was cold if you let it run a minute. They both took small sips of the icy clean liquid from his thermos.

When their sandwiches had been eaten she had a surprise for him.  In her sack she had kept the two best peaches of the morning. She handed one to him. Thanks he said and your welcome she said and they commenced to eat. The season was young enough that the mere smell of a peach would turn and churn the contents of their stomachs.  They day would come quickly, but this was not that day.

The peaches were ripe and full and peach juice dribbled down her face.She felt silly. Not thinking for a second he pulled out a still clean cloth handkerchief from his pocket. Leaning he set about to dab up the sticky rivulet on her check. When she didn’t back off even the slightest he changed his mind. On wild impulse he  leaned in to kiss that sweet peach juice away. She did not resist at all and soon the kiss was deep.  Their hands were grasping, touching, and finally their arms were wrapping around the other.

Their breathing grew fast and they held each other tightly, so very tightly
She shuddered. He laughed. His was a nervous kind of laugh like he had been caught stealing something insignificant by his grandmother.  And it was over.

The tractor could be heard chugging its way back into the field. Voices were growing louder.
They must so, so very soon be back to work. They quickly straightened themselves up.  They both hoped the flush would leave their faces before the others got back

All he could think of for the rest of the day was the kiss, the peach sweet kiss. All she could think of for the rest of the day was that there was never enough time for lunch. There is a fine line as to when the harvest is due.