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Just Peachy
The tomato, of course, would be a contender for the title. (Granted, the tomato most often is used as a vegetable, but botanically, it’s a fruit, so it qualifies for this imaginary contest.) Each of the various berries, as well as cherries, would make a strong showing. But when all the votes were tallied, no one would be surprised if the top honors were to go to the peach. "Peaches have to stay local in order for them to be brilliant," said Jeffrey Buben, chef and co-owner of the restaurants Vidalia and Bistro Bis in Washington, DC. "They should be eaten as soon as possible after being picked from the orchard. The ripeness, the right time to pick, these things are everything in a peach." Buben and other chefs who seek out local, seasonal ingredients harbor a special affinity for the peach. "When it’s peach season, I believe in eating as many peaches as you possibly can, all the time, in everything," said Carole Greenwood, chef and co-owner of Buck’s Fishing and Camping restaurant in D.C. "Because that’s it. For that brief window every year, you can eat fresh peaches every single day. And for the rest of the year, you can’t." She pauses. "I mean you can, but you shouldn’t. You could buy a peach in the supermarket, but it would never taste like a local peach in the moment when it’s fresh and ripe." For her peach fix every summer, Greenwood turns to Toigo Orchards of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, about 100 miles northwest of Washington. It’s a 450-acre farm that has been in continuous operation since the 1700s and in the Toigo family since the late 1960s. About 380 acres are used to grow fruit, and of those, sixty acres are dedicated to peaches. As of this season, Toigo Orchards grows some 22 varieties of peaches, with two or three test types in the works. "It’s insanity for anyone to have all the different varieties we have," Mark Toigo said, laughing. "It’s quite common for a peach grower to have two or three varieties. But this many? Walking through our peach orchards is like walking into a maze." Mark Toigo, 43, in recent years has spearheaded Toigo Orchards’ efforts to grow and sell peaches primarily for freshmarket consumption, through farmers markets and directly to restaurants, rather than for the traditional wholesale industry. "We know what these direct customers want: different varieties, less chemicals, better, fresher, riper fruit that is grown closer to where they are," said Toigo. For many customers at farmers markets in metropolitan D.C. and for a number of local chefs, Mark Toigo is the guru of peaches. "Mark is very hands-on and he brings the best to the market every week," said Buben, who has bought peaches from Toigo Orchards for the past 13 years. "He’s willing to experiment with different varieties and seeds, so he keeps things interesting." At Buck’s, Greenwood uses Toigo peaches to make peach ice cream, peach cake and a much-requestedcustomer favorite: a salad of roasted white peaches, fresh mozzarella, white balsamic vinegar, olive oil and basil. "Mark’s peaches are exceptional," she said. "I can buy peaches from anyone, but I just find Mark really knowledgeable. I’ve been to his farm, I know what he does and I like his approach." To grow these sought-after peaches, Toigo uses sustainable farming practices, including integrated pest management, a complex, labor-intensive approach aimed at using minimal amounts of selected pesticides to protect the fruit from pests that are ubiquitous in the Chesapeake region’s humid climate. "We can’t grow organic peaches here, it just doesn’t work in our environment," said Toigo. "But we are a low-impact grower, which is damn close to organic." Indeed, a 2003 report by the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service concluded that "commercial-scale organic production of peaches in the East would be very difficult" because of the pests that thrive in the wet, muggy conditions. Customers at farmers markets at times express concern the peaches are not organic. In response, Toigo could detail how he contracts with an entomologist who uses pheromone traps to monitor the trees throughout the year and how he introduces beneficial insects to help fight troublesome pests and how these and other techniques enable Toigo Orchards to use low-spray methods, limiting pesticide use to the lowest possible levels. But he finds sometimes it’s most effective to just take a bite of a peach. "You do not have to worry about picking up one of our peaches and eating it," he said. "People will say they’re concerned about what’s on the peach. Being that our house and our farm and our lives are surrounded by the fields where the fruit grows, we care more than anyone else whether it’s safe. We literally live thisfruit on a daily basis, so we are not going to do anything that is harmful to ourselves or our customers." Over the years, Toigo has staggered plantings so the peach varieties will ripen at different times, stretching out the peach season as long as possible. Most summers, at least two varieties will ripen each week, from July through mid-September. "On those hot, humid days we get here, I swear to you, you can go out in the orchard and hear the peaches growing," said Toigo. "The tree is just sucking moisture as fast as it can. It’s going through that breathing process, breathing in moisture and exhausting it through the leaves and through the fruit." The combination of Pennsylvania’s limestone soil and the orchards’ higher elevation make for ideal peach ripening conditions, he explained. "The rich, fertile soil we have here holds the moisture well," he said. "And in the dead of summer, you’re getting all the qualities of the hot days, but because we’re in the mountains, it cools off at night, so it slows down the ripening just a little bit, which gives the peach more time for the sugars to develop. Even that brief delay helps produce a more complex fruit." That fruit inspires devotion from longtime Washington chef Brian McBride, who has bought fresh Toigo peaches every summer for more than 15 years. This fall at his new restaurant, Blue Duck Tavern, McBride may try to hold onto peach season a bit longer by serving Toigo’s homemade preserved bourbon peaches with pork loin roast. "The flavors work together unbelievably," he said. "And it’s a good way to preserve the local summer bounty through the colder months." Still, for chefs and customers alike, there is nothing quite like those peach days of summer, when farmers markets overflow with fresh, local peaches so ripe that when you bite into one, the juice spills down your hands and arms and you don’t care because it tastes so good. "There’s something about peaches that gets people excited," said Toigo. "By May, customers are asking us ‘So when will the peaches start?’ They’ll plan meals around when the peaches will be here. One person will ask how to make peach cobbler and you’ll have eight people stop, pulling pens out of pockets so they can write down their recipes." "It’s part of the rite and ritual of the season," he said. "When you think of summer, you cannot skip the peach."
Over the years, Toigo has staggered plantings so the peach varieties will ripen at different times, stretching out the peach season as long as possible. Most summers, at least two varieties will ripen each week, from July through mid-September. "On those hot, humid days we get here, I swear to you, you can go out in the orchard and hear the peaches growing," says Toigo. "The tree is just sucking moisture as fast as it can. It's going through that breathing process, breathing in moisture and exhausting it through the leaves and through the fruit." The combination of Pennsylvania's limestone soil and the orchards' higher elevation make for ideal peach ripening conditions, he explains. "The rich, fertile soil we have here holds the moisture well," he says. "And in the dead of summer, you're getting all the qualities of the hot days, but because we're in the mountains, it cools off at night, so it slows down the ripening just a little bit, which gives the peach more time for the sugars to develop. Even that brief delay helps produce a more complex fruit." The fruit inspires devotion from longtime Washington chef Brian McBride, who has bought fresh Toigo peaches every summer for more than 15 years. This fall at his new restaurant, Blue Duck Tavern, McBride may try to hold onto peach season a bit longer by serving Toigo's homemade preserved bourbon peaches with pork loin roast. "The flavors work together unbelievably," he says. "And it's a good way to preserve the local summer bounty throughout the colder months." Still, for chefs and customers alike, there is nothing quite like those peach days of summer, when farmers markets overflow with fresh, local peaches so ripe that when you bite into one, the juice spills down your hands and arms and you don't care because it tastes so good. "There's something about peaches that gets people excited," says Toigo. "By May, customers are asking us 'So when will the peaches start?' They'll plan meals around when the peaches will be here. One person will ask how to make peach cobbler and you'll have eight people stop, pulling pens out of pockets so they can write down their recipes. It's part of the rite and ritual of the season," he says. "When you think of summer, you cannot skip the peach." Toigo Orchards sells peaches and other fruit at Arlington Farmers Markets, FreshFarm Markets in Washington, DC and at several other farmers markets in metropolitan Washington. An Orchard-Tending Family That Found a Calling
The Toigo family used to just scrape by on their 350-acre farm in Shippensburg, Pa. "It was a real 'Green Acres' experience: run-down and tired with no cash flow," said Mark Toigo, who runs Toigo Orchards now with his parents and his brother.
After Mr. Toigo graduated from college in the mid-1980's he started driving berries down to a farm market in Alexandria, Va. It didn't take long to see how hungry people were for these kinds of things, he said. The family has since leased 250 more acres. "These farmers' markets were, without question, our salvation," Mr. Toigo said. The Toigos are known for their dozens of varieties of stone fruit, including 17 different kinds of peaches - white, yellow, cling and freestone; seven each of nectarines, cherries and plums; and five of apricots. AVAILABLE Peaches, nectarines and plums from early July to the end of September; cherries and apricots in July. SELECTING Look for peaches and nectarines that have a fragrance and yield lightly to pressure when you put your finger on top of the fruit. Apricots should be velvety soft and slightly yielding, and have a light fragrance and aroma, as should plums. When cherries color they are fairly ripe; the ripest Bing cherries are the darker ones; white Royal Ann cherries should have a red blush. If there is any greenery in the box, the leaves should be fresh. STORING Don't refrigerate the fruit unless extremely ripe. Don't wash it until ready to eat. KITCHEN TIP Halve and pit peaches, then grill for a few minutes; pour some brandy or rum over them. FIND THEM Sundays at Tompkins Square; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 57th Street and Ninth Avenue; Saturdays in Fort Greene and Sunset Park, Brooklyn; Thursdays in Borough Park, Brooklyn. MARIAN BURROS Buy Fruit, Save a Farm
The produce he took to the farmers markets was "probably 1 percent of everything that came off the farm," he says. But it accounted for "as much or more money than all the rest of the crops put together." A quarter-century later, as Toigo sends trucks full of fruit to the Arlington Farmers Market, elsewhere in Virginia and Baltimore, it's still true. "When we sell apples, I'm lucky to get eight to 10 cents a pound for premium fruit" from processors, he says. "But I'll make a dollar and a half a pound selling at farmers markets." All over America, farmers markets are saving family farms. "It's fairly clear there's no future for our family in traditional agriculture," says Toigo, a south-central Pennsylvania fruit and vegetable farmer. "If it weren't for farmers markets, there never would have been a chance for me and thousands of other people like me to farm." Like Toigo, a growing number of American farmers are staying in business by selling directly to consumers. In 2000, the last year for which figures are available, 19,000 farmers were selling their produce only at farmers markets, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Marketing Service. Why? Farmers make more money selling retail. They can set their own prices. They can sell a much higher percentage of their crop -- including the bruised or less than perfectly shaped peaches and tomatoes and potatoes that supermarkets reject. They can have more control over their finances. And with more money, farmers can maintain and even upgrade their farms. They can send their children to college. They can hold onto their land and livelihood, paying their bills and resisting pressure from developers who covet their land. Chip Planck, a Loudoun County farmer who has sold exclusively at farmers markets for more than two decades, says the markets make it possible to maintain his property as farmland. "It's not so much that developers would have forced us to sell out," he says. "Developers don't force anyone to do anything. It's that we would have had to earn income otherwise to pay the mortgage." He finds selling at farmers markets "greatly satisfying." "You hear [customers'] appreciation, their cooking ideas, the things you do right or wrong," says the vegetable and small-fruit grower who farms with his wife, Susan. "It's valuable for our workers, too, that the things they have actually planted, weeded and picked are theirs to present and get compliments on." It wasn't always that way. The post-World War II rush to convenience foods wasn't fertile ground for the leisurely, neighborly shopping style of farmers markets. New refrigerated trucks ferried oranges from Florida or tomatoes from California across the country, making local produce less necessary. Then, in the 1960s and early 1970s, an increasing number of women entered the workforce and had little time to shop more than once a week. If farmers markets were to thrive, there had to be a revolution. Consumers had to value and seek out fresh, local seasonal produce. That began to happen in the 1970s, with restaurants such as Alice Waters's Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., and Nora Pouillon's Restaurant Nora in Washington leading the way. In 1976, two developments gave farmers markets a big boost. Congress passed the Farmer to Consumer Direct Marketing Act to encourage and support farmers who wanted to sell directly to consumers. And in New York, a new Green Market instantly attracted customers and national attention, inspiring many small farmers to look for similar outlets. "We wished something like that existed here," says Jim Frazee, who with three friends had bought a 75-acre fruit farm in the same part of Pennsylvania as Toigo. An article in The Washington Post alerted them to the Arlington Farmers Market, which started that same year. Over time, the number of U.S. farmers markets has grown from 499 in 1946 to 2,863 in 2000. Last year, the USDA counted more than 3,700. About 170 markets are in Maryland, Virginia and the District. Some of the crops farmers raise for these markets are different from the traditional grains. At farmers markets they sell fruits, vegetables and herbs, which are more labor intensive but more lucrative. "At any market, you can see vendors who have been conventional farmers raising soybeans and corn," says Neil Hamilton, director of the agricultural law center and a law professor at Drake University in Des Moines. "But they find they can make the same money from a half-acre of strawberries." Hamilton finds that true at his own 10-acre farm, where he is raising about 1,500 leeks in a 5-by-70-foot bed. "I'll make more money off that one bed of leeks than my dad would have made off an acre of field corn," he says.
Which raises the question, are the fruits and vegetables at farmers markets more expensive than those at supermarkets? Usually they are. In part, that's because it's what the market will bear -- customers are willing to pay for quality. But primarily, the produce at farmers markets is fresher. It was usually picked within 24 hours -- and few supermarkets can match that.
"I think the product is completely different," says Frazee, whose Twin Springs Fruit Farm sells at 14 area markets. "That's why we see the same customers week in and week out. They want the quality and the consistency."
Errol Bragg is the USDA official who watches over farmers markets. "We know from recent studies that farmers market consumers are interested in the freshness and quality of the products, and the convenience," he says. "The markets also provide an opportunity to meet, talk and interact with farmers to find out more about the product -- where and how they are grown, and even share some menu discussion."
In recent years, shopping at farmers markets has become a popular pastime.
On a sunny Saturday morning at the Arlington Farmers Market across from the county courthouse, shoppers -- some of whom lined up before the 8 a.m. opening -- are searching for their favorite heirloom tomatoes, the finest-looking cherries and the best early basil.
Like many others, this farmers market offers more than produce -- fresh pastas, artisanal cheeses, organic eggs, meat from grass-fed cattle. The effect is somewhere between a giant roadside stand and a fancy food store.
"This is how we decide what to cook for dinner," says Karen Welch of Arlington, who has shopped at the market for 10 years. "We love it," says her friend Dan De Simone. "It's like having the farm come to you."
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte (R-Va.) notes that "the vast majority of food is still purchased in traditional ways, but shopping at farmers markets is growing rapidly." The markets "help the farmer's bottom line and connect people directly with the person who produced their food."
Such as Toigo, who doles out shopping guidance along with his fruits and vegetables, advising a customer, "If you want a ripe nectarine, go for a dull color."
By the time he finishes up at the market, heads back to Pennsylvania and readies a fresh supply of fruit for the next day's market, he will have worked close to an 18-hour day. But the money he's brought in ("Outstanding for one day," he says, "but like all businesses you must average it out throughout the year") and the contact with his customers will have been worth the effort.
"There will always be a place for the large agribusiness," he says. "But this is the only way traditional family farms will survive."
You can ask Judith Weinraub questions about this article during the Food section's online chat today at 1 p.m. at http://washingtonpost.com/liveonline |
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If ever there were an official competition to name the fruit-least-suited-to-being-shipped-to-faraway-supermarkets, prolonged arguments no doubt would arise among food lovers across the land.
"You do not have to worry about picking up one our peaches and eating it," he says. "People will say they're concerned about what's on the peach. Being that our house and our farm and our lives are surrounded by the fields where the fruit grows, we care more than anyone else whether it's safe. We literally live with this fruit on a daily basis, so we are not going to do anything that is harmful to ourselves or our customers."
In the early 1980s, Mark Toigo began making weekly trips from his family's farm to farmers markets with a pickup truck full of peaches, cherries, apricots and, as the summer faded, apples and pears. On a good day, he'd come home with $1,000.
