Two weeks ago, I felt compelled to contact the news media: I ate a juicy peach in Haines.
My experience was purely accidental, as I don’t buy peaches at local stores. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy peaches as much as anyone, probably more, and I shop at home. But buying a ripe peach in Haines – or in Alaska, for that matter – is like buying a ticket in the Mega Millions lottery. The odds of winning are infinitesimal, and your consolation prize is an insult to the genuine item, either hard, mealy or both.
I gave up buying peaches in my first months in Haines, back in 1986. Local produce has improved a lot since then. Thirty years ago, Granny Smith apples were the only ones that were reliably crisp. These days, most of the fruit available here is good. But peaches are a different and more difficult matter, with a tiny window for ripeness that doesn’t seem to work with shipping to distant Alaska, so I steer away.
Oh, I’ve been tempted. I’ll take a close look at the display. Maybe even give a little test squeeze in midsummer when the odds of winning the Peach Lottery would seem to be highest. Sometimes I’ll even take a chance on a nectarine.
My wife, who grew up in sunny nation dripping with ripe fruit, also learned the hard way. One day early in our marriage, she told me, “Tom, the stone fruit in this town are horrid.” After deciphering the definition of stone fruit, I laughed and explained to her the folly of her quest.
About a dozen years ago at the end of a trip home to Philadelphia, we stopped at a farm stand to buy peaches while driving to the airport. I bought six ripe ones and steered the car toward the local UPS Store. With my wife warning me of a shortness of time, I explained that we needed bubble wrap to pack the peaches back to Alaska. “Is this really necessary?” she asked. “Absolutely,” I replied.
On arrival here, we dropped the tailgate of our pickup and feasted on a lunch of ripe peaches and real tomatoes we’d bought at the stand and packaged in the same way. I think I could have sold tickets to that picnic and named my price.
Peach lovers in Alaska are aware of one other secret: The peach dessert stand at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer. They start with ripe peaches, reportedly flown in from Georgia or somewhere. Besides yummy desserts, they’ll sell you a single peach for about $5, a bargain compared to the cost of traveling to where you can get one. The peaches they sell are large, soft and juicy enough that you have to hold them at a distance when taking a bite or you’ll end up wearing them on your T-shirt.
Which is the very same experience I had in my office two weeks ago, when a friend walked in and handed me a peach from Howsers. I was amazed. The next day I went to the store to buy more, but no luck. The ones I found were like tennis balls.
Now I know that Howsers the past few years has been trucking produce up the Alaska Highway, advertising that their offerings are fresher, by several days, than what arrives on the barge with the rest of our town’s freight. And I appreciate that both Main Street grocery stores have been offering “farm stand” events, selling good-looking produce in bulk.
In terms of local produce, we’ve come a long way in the past 30 years. But juicy peaches are at the top of the fruit food chain, rare, succulent and unmatched for evoking the flavor of summertime. Getting good ones here reliably still requires some miracle of food science or transportation.
I’m considering my recent experience a fluke, but still I wonder, could we be turning a corner on horrid stone fruit?
When it comes to real, ripe peaches, hope never dies.