Wisdom

David Mas Masumoto works hard both in and out of the fields.

The third-generation Japanese American, whose "Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm" is a perennial favorite, recently published "Wisdom of the Last Farmer: Harvesting Legacies from the Land."

Like earlier titles, this book touches upon themes of home and hope, prosperity and posterity.

Referring to Masumoto as "America's Peach Laureate," something with which I cannot argue, The Seattle Times offers a substantial review:

"His prose is contemplative, disciplined and repetitive in a pleasing way.

"He gives marvelously detailed particulars about farming, especially the hard work of weeding by hand, the continual vigilance for plant diseases and pests, and the precise timing of when to pick the fruit and rush it to market..."

It is worth the read.

On the edge

On a road trip through the Central Valley in California, William Emery and Scott Squire visit smaller farms and businesses. They concentrate on individuals connected to their land, "rooted in their philosophies, their practices, their maniac desire to feed their families and the planet something healthy, gorgeous, and delicious."

The result: "Edges of Bounty: Adventures in the Edible Valley."

They speak, for example, with Lucy and Ramon Cadena, who own just over an acre in Yolo County on which the couple grows herbs and vegetables without pesticides. They farm for themselves first, Emery says, and their customers at the weekly market in Davis second.

"(Their) belief seemed to be that everyone should farm so that no one should starve. It was a compelling and sobering understanding of agriculture, that the farmer should seek to feed himself and then the world, not the other way around."

Emery, himself raised on a farm in the Smoky Hills of Kansas, and Squire also meet Harold Dirks, a beekeeper in Sutter County drawn to his enterprise like, well, bees to honey.

A full-time inspector with the California Department of Agriculture, Dirks tends to his hives every day before and after work and all day on weekends, and sells jars of honey through a "network of roadside stands." He has been fascinated with bees for decades, Emery says, and continues to experiment with new ways to extract liquid gold from his combs.

And they visit Mike Madison, a writer and farmer in Winters, in the Sacramento Valley, whose books include "Walking the Flatlands" and "Blithe Tomato." The men taste a Spanish melon straight from Madison's abundant patch.

"Its flesh glistened like melting snow, weeping over its own perfection," Emery recalls. "The flavor was a cathedral and a liqueur." But the fruit does not meet Madison's own exacting standards; he tosses the rest of it aside for the chickens later. "There's nothing they like better than melon seeds," he says.

What further distinguish "Edges of Bounty: Adventures in the Edible Valley" from other similar titles, however, are the numerous evocative images from Seattle-based photographer Squire: A field hand picking and packing rosemary. Juicy slices of tomatoes on a cutting board. A cowboy eating an apple next to a pick-up truck.

They enhance the overall narrative, helping to make Emery's work both a literary and visual achievement.

(A version of this article appears in Gastronomica.)