I Don't Really Eat Peaches
I don't eat tomatoes unless we grew them, generally, and so my season of eating fresh tomatoes is brief and glorious. And the peaches that I am excited about eating no long exist, so I don't really eat peaches. The peaches that I am remembering and honoring by abstaining were grown next door at the Moutoux Orchard.
A Moutoux peach was picked ripe, firm but soft, and so juicy that the juice ran down your face or arm and dripped off your elbow. They were the size of a small grapefruit, with a red skin, and each peach was a sacred object. The picker wore a harness with hooks on it to hold the wooden crate on the front of his chest and he placed each peach with care. The only other time the peach was handled was to get it out of the box and into a 2.5 quart container for display purposes. No one pinched or squeezed the fruit.
It was not a coincidence that we lived next door to the best peaches in the world.
In 1941, my grandmother Carolyn was standing in line, waiting to register her first grader for school when she met Catherine. They struck up a conversation and a friendship that lasted forty years. Their little boys became lifelong buddies. When the Moutoux family decided to buy some property in the country, seven miles down the highway from Falls Church, my grandparents bought eight acres from them. Those eight acres had a house and a barn and a lot of old outbuildings. This was the beginning of a friendly neighbor relationship between two families that has lasted 70 years so far.
While Mr. Moutoux and his three sons planted many acres of peaches and apples and plums and pears, my grandparents focused on fixing up the house and creating a country estate. My grandfather and my father dug a big hole and built a swimming pool that lasted for generations. Like the Moutoux men, the two of them were engineers with aptitudes, and they had plenty of projects to keep them busy. One summer my father started a boatbuilding company and hired his high school friends to work a few hours a day, cutting and measuring and piecing together small boats. They swam in the pool in the afternoons. Charles, my dad's lifelong friend, says no boats were ever sold but several were finished.
When my parents started farming, they sold sweet corn to Mr. Moutoux and he sold it at his peach stand. It was a stressful business, picking corn and getting it ready on time to sell that same day, every day. Mr. Moutoux was gruff. I remember his bushy black eyebrows under his straw hat and his wide twinkly smile whenever he saw a small child. His smile lives on in his son and his farmer grandson -- the Moutoux genes are strong and distinctive.
Catherine Moutoux was a baker, unlike my grandma. She made sugary, crumbly peach desserts and brought them to the lawn parties at my grandparents' house. When we had small children of our own, she insisted that we bring them to her door at Halloween so she could give them some homemade cookies. It was a long driveway and it was far off our path to go to her house, but we did it because she was such a sweet lady.
When Mrs. Moutoux died at age 91, she left the orchard to her three sons, as an undivided interest. This left it up to them to decide what to do with the 75 acres of farmland in the middle of the Northern Virginia suburbs. Just like in a fable, the three sons each had different priorities and the only way to resolve the issue of the taxes was to sell the orchard. When they sold it, at the peak of the real estate boom, they moved out of the county and never came back. It was too sad to see what happened to the orchard.
And then came the bulldozers and the construction crews, and the orchard only exists in our memories. I still know where the Moutoux Barn stood (they moved it to their next farm) -- that's where we got married, and so did Anna and Charles -- and the main road through the development follows the same path as the old driveway so it is not hard to stay oriented. We still drive right through that development on our tractors, many times a day, to get to the field that used to belong to my grandparents.
Out of loyalty to the Moutoux family, we never sold peaches at our stand. Only when they got out of the peach growing business did we buy peaches elsewhere and sell them. They are nearly flavorless compared to the peaches of my youth.
Mr. Moutoux was the big personality in that family, with his temper and his belly laugh, but it was the connection between my grandma and her friend that started this whole interwoven story. Now the Moutoux clan lives on a farm that is adjacent to our farm out in Loudoun, and we watch them herd the cows along the fence line and we wave to them many times a day as they zoom past on their tractors and four-wheelers. My sister's granddaughter is in farm day care with Mrs. Moutoux's great grandson. There is a sweet picture of the two of them walking together hand in hand.
The youngest Moutoux son, in my generation, has become a full time farmer, growing fruits and vegetables and milk and meats without using chemicals. Peaches are really hard in this climate, but he really likes cows and chickens and sheep and they have a full diet CSA, year round.
You never know what will happen. You never know which friendships will end up starting a long story. You never know what new ideas will come when you move away from the orchard that your grandparents established.
I don't know if I will ever taste a peach again that can compare to the peaches of the past but now we eat Asian pears grown by Stacey and Casey, and they are delicious. Nothing stays the same, but that's not necessarily all bad. May the memories of my grandparents and the Moutoux grandparents be a blessing to all of us who are still living and working on the ground that they bought 70 years ago as well as the farmland that the next generation of Moutouxs and Newcombs acquired together 30 years later.
A Moutoux peach was picked ripe, firm but soft, and so juicy that the juice ran down your face or arm and dripped off your elbow. They were the size of a small grapefruit, with a red skin, and each peach was a sacred object. The picker wore a harness with hooks on it to hold the wooden crate on the front of his chest and he placed each peach with care. The only other time the peach was handled was to get it out of the box and into a 2.5 quart container for display purposes. No one pinched or squeezed the fruit.
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| John T. Moutoux, left, with Marvin Poole in 1969. |
In 1941, my grandmother Carolyn was standing in line, waiting to register her first grader for school when she met Catherine. They struck up a conversation and a friendship that lasted forty years. Their little boys became lifelong buddies. When the Moutoux family decided to buy some property in the country, seven miles down the highway from Falls Church, my grandparents bought eight acres from them. Those eight acres had a house and a barn and a lot of old outbuildings. This was the beginning of a friendly neighbor relationship between two families that has lasted 70 years so far.
While Mr. Moutoux and his three sons planted many acres of peaches and apples and plums and pears, my grandparents focused on fixing up the house and creating a country estate. My grandfather and my father dug a big hole and built a swimming pool that lasted for generations. Like the Moutoux men, the two of them were engineers with aptitudes, and they had plenty of projects to keep them busy. One summer my father started a boatbuilding company and hired his high school friends to work a few hours a day, cutting and measuring and piecing together small boats. They swam in the pool in the afternoons. Charles, my dad's lifelong friend, says no boats were ever sold but several were finished.
When my parents started farming, they sold sweet corn to Mr. Moutoux and he sold it at his peach stand. It was a stressful business, picking corn and getting it ready on time to sell that same day, every day. Mr. Moutoux was gruff. I remember his bushy black eyebrows under his straw hat and his wide twinkly smile whenever he saw a small child. His smile lives on in his son and his farmer grandson -- the Moutoux genes are strong and distinctive.
Catherine Moutoux was a baker, unlike my grandma. She made sugary, crumbly peach desserts and brought them to the lawn parties at my grandparents' house. When we had small children of our own, she insisted that we bring them to her door at Halloween so she could give them some homemade cookies. It was a long driveway and it was far off our path to go to her house, but we did it because she was such a sweet lady.
When Mrs. Moutoux died at age 91, she left the orchard to her three sons, as an undivided interest. This left it up to them to decide what to do with the 75 acres of farmland in the middle of the Northern Virginia suburbs. Just like in a fable, the three sons each had different priorities and the only way to resolve the issue of the taxes was to sell the orchard. When they sold it, at the peak of the real estate boom, they moved out of the county and never came back. It was too sad to see what happened to the orchard.
And then came the bulldozers and the construction crews, and the orchard only exists in our memories. I still know where the Moutoux Barn stood (they moved it to their next farm) -- that's where we got married, and so did Anna and Charles -- and the main road through the development follows the same path as the old driveway so it is not hard to stay oriented. We still drive right through that development on our tractors, many times a day, to get to the field that used to belong to my grandparents.
Out of loyalty to the Moutoux family, we never sold peaches at our stand. Only when they got out of the peach growing business did we buy peaches elsewhere and sell them. They are nearly flavorless compared to the peaches of my youth.
Mr. Moutoux was the big personality in that family, with his temper and his belly laugh, but it was the connection between my grandma and her friend that started this whole interwoven story. Now the Moutoux clan lives on a farm that is adjacent to our farm out in Loudoun, and we watch them herd the cows along the fence line and we wave to them many times a day as they zoom past on their tractors and four-wheelers. My sister's granddaughter is in farm day care with Mrs. Moutoux's great grandson. There is a sweet picture of the two of them walking together hand in hand.
The youngest Moutoux son, in my generation, has become a full time farmer, growing fruits and vegetables and milk and meats without using chemicals. Peaches are really hard in this climate, but he really likes cows and chickens and sheep and they have a full diet CSA, year round.
You never know what will happen. You never know which friendships will end up starting a long story. You never know what new ideas will come when you move away from the orchard that your grandparents established.
I don't know if I will ever taste a peach again that can compare to the peaches of the past but now we eat Asian pears grown by Stacey and Casey, and they are delicious. Nothing stays the same, but that's not necessarily all bad. May the memories of my grandparents and the Moutoux grandparents be a blessing to all of us who are still living and working on the ground that they bought 70 years ago as well as the farmland that the next generation of Moutouxs and Newcombs acquired together 30 years later.
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