Episode 6 - Postcard from The Hill Country, “Picking Peaches in Fredericksburg”
While Texas summers are famously brutal, they are not without their pleasures. Towards that matter, few joys are as delicious as peach season. In this episode, we'll take a trip to The Hill Country at the peak of the harvest to sample the bounty and get to know the extraordinary families who have farmed these crops for generations.
TRANSCRIPT
(As this transcript was obtained via a computerized service, please forgive any typos, and spelling or grammatical errors)
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Evan Stern: (00:00)
Last winter. After the weekend I spent in Bandera hanging out at Arkey Blue's, I took a meandering route back to Austin, so I could check out a place I'd heard of called the Albert Ice House. Situated in a rickety wooden building off a quiet back road between Fredericksburg and Johnson City, it sounded like one of those only in Texas kind of places, and it didn't disappoint. Like any proper ice house, the bar was half open to the elements and a young ex serviceman sat on a small stage crooning country ballots for a sparse crowd. I sat down at the bar, ordered a beer and after a few sips ended up talking with the guy to my left. He told me he grew up about a mile from where we were. And when we spoke of the changes, he's a witness said, "the peach orchards have been going away." Well, this caused me to sit straight up on my stool. See, I grew up munching on hill country, peaches June through August and still regard them as one of life's simple pleasures. So a few months later at the peak of harvest season, I drove back out there to see if this was true. And of course, to get my fix. I'm Evan Stern. And this is Vanishing Postcards.
Evan Stern: (01:26)
Nelda Vogel: (02:50)
Well, when we got married in '51, uh, there was a drought going on and it was so dry and so, uh, all of the, there were no grass fields or anything. There was just sand. And when the wind would blow, it would just, I'd never seen cause I came from Blanco county, but it wasn't as sandy as it is here. And when that's, wind would blow that sand would just blow. It was just, I just didn't know how we could put up with it, but we did. And we got through it.
Evan Stern: (03:25)
Some people you meet just exude warmth. Nelda Vogel is one of them. Sporting a bouffant of white hair, clear blue eyes and smile that could win over the grumpiest of misers, she carries herself with a strength that belies her 86 years. I caught her after an afternoon of peeling peaches and we're standing in the parking lot of the Vogel Orchard's fruit stand, which she'll tell you, she and her late husband, George started on a shoestring nearly 70 years ago.
Nelda Vogel: (03:55)
At first we thought it'd just be for fun. I think, you know, we planted, I think 50 trees, those first ones. And then we planted another more and more. And uh, it's been a real good, real, real good crop for us. Good living. But we actually met when I was 15 years old on the Luckenbach dance floor and uh, all of our married life, that's what we did for fun was dancing.
Evan Stern: (04:27)
The stand sits about 13 miles outside Fredericksburg on highway 2-90 near the town of Stonewall. It's a pretty drive, but one I find hard to recognize. There's more traffic making it a challenge to take things at a leisurely pace and stands like these have become dwarfed by vineyards with imposing gates and tasting rooms built to look like castles. They've exploded around here in the last decade. I tried to count them on my way in from Austin, but lost track somewhere around 32. But talking with Nelda brings me back to my childhood when Fredericksburg was a peaceful town known for its architecture and German bakeries.
Nelda Vogel: (05:09)
My mother's side of the family was Irish, but the rest of them were all German. And they came here in 1845 and 46. And they, uh, came because everything was so bad in Europe and Germany or, you know, all, and, and it took a lot of doin for those folks to, uh, build. And, and then they didn't even get all the land they were promised when they would come, where to come and all of that. So they pulled, but I still say that George and I have lived in the best of times because we didn't have that hard work and all like digging up trees and making feed clearing fields and all like, and trying to build homes. And the weather was bad. And, uh, and we went through world war two, but still we lived in the best of times because we could work to make a living. Our children could all go to school and, uh, graduate from college and those kinds of things. So it was just, uh, a good living.
Evan Stern: (06:25)
The story she tells is a familiar one as most natives around here trace their roots to German settlers who fled war and oppression only to find different challenges in Texas. The land grants rarely proved as promised. Many were fraudulent altogether and the Hill Country soil and climate did not exactly prove to be the bread basket it was advertised as. Yet they worked hard, minded, their own business, voted against secession and cultivated a culture of independence and self-reliance that still sets this area apart today. This is something that Lindsey Jenschke, an attractive brunette who married a farmer and moved here from Waco appreciates.
Lindsey Jenschke: (07:05)
I think Fredericksburg in general is just, you know, every small town is special and has a heart. But Fredericksburg is unique. It's unique in the culture. It's unique in that the original families, if you will, that came over the history. The history of the town is neat,
Evan Stern: (07:27)
But as one who's just passing through on a quick visit, I worry this uniqueness is getting harder to find. The old stone buildings on Main Street are still there, but its streets are packed with tourists and candle shops and high-end pet supply stores elbowed out the barbers and hardware suppliers a long time ago.
Ricky Priess: (07:46)
I remember driving through town with my grandfather who grew up here when I was a kid and he was complaining about the way everything had changed. And that was 50 years ago. And if he would see it now, he would really, he's probably turned over in his grave several times today.
Evan Stern: (08:05)
Fredericksburg has taken to marketing itself as "the new Napa," but given the influx of well-heeled new residents and visitors, Texas monthly recently cautioned it's on its way to becoming the new Aspen. Yet, despite these changes, there's at least one thing I know you can still count on. Summertime is harvest season for peaches.
Jamey Vogel: (08:31)
And we have something here, the, the, the tastes and the quality of peaches grown in this area. You know, I've had peaches from all over the United States, from, you know, from Alabama, from Georgia, from South Carolina, California, Colorado, a lot of it places straight off the trees. And I've never really found anything that has quite the same fullness of tastes that these do here
Lawrence Gold: (08:53)
What made this community so famous because the peaches just taste so much better than what seemed like any other county. It's a great experience especially when the juice runs down your chest and you know, God, nothing better than the tree ripe peaches from Gillespie County.
Lindsey Jenschke: (09:13)
Um, and you know, the best way if you ever can do it, the best way to eat a peach is by picking it off the tree on the hottest day of the summer and biting into it. And the juice just running down your face and hand, nothing better. It's like nothing you've ever had. Georgia peaches are good, but I would do a blind test any day. Now
Evan Stern: (09:43)
I'm not one for getting involved in any games of one upmanship and am loathe to overhype anything, but I've got to agree. There's nothing quite like a Fredericksburg or Stonewall peach. If you're not from central Texas, you've probably never had the pleasure because they really don't grow enough to sell wholesale to supermarkets. On average, they're probably smaller than most peaches you've come to know, but they're also sweeter and juicier and sitting in his office under the cool of a window unit, Nelda's son, Jamey, who took over running the Vogel orchard in 1998, tells me why that is.
Jamey Vogel: (10:18)
We've got good temperature variation here, because we are a somewhat arid climate here. We're on the edge of the desert. You know, you don't have to go too far out to the west to find desert. We get about 30 inches of rain or so here a year. Whereas, you know, you might go to east Texas somewhere in there be, 50, 60, or more inches rain on average. And so we have higher sugar content in our peaches. Peaches don't like a lot of water. The more you water them, the more, uh, bland tasting they become because they lose the sugar concentration. And the soil here, the pH in the soil is right. Uh, you know, there's just a combination of a few things that seem to give us a really a unique flavor.
Evan Stern: (11:01)
As I've read, farmers around here started discovering this and planting trees in Stonewall and Fredericksburg back in the mid twenties, but things didn't really start to take off until the fifties when crippling drought pushed farmers to switch from peanuts to peaches- something Lawrence gold remembers well,
Lawrence Gold: (11:17)
Well, like I said, we raised peanuts. That was our livelihood, but then it got so dry. We just couldn't keep going. So we found out that the peach trees did pretty good. And we went to those. My dad used to holler up when we were sleeping upstairs (German), "It's time to get up." We got to go to work. Yeah, what's amazing about the price of the peaches back when it used to be a little store right next to us here. And we, my dad brought, brought some half bushels down there and the guy said, I'm going to sell those for $5 a half. My dad came home and said, "My God, those people are going to get a heart attack. He's asking $5 a half with these peaches." And now, now it's 60.
Evan Stern: (12:16)
But any hopes of making easy money in the peach business should be strictly dashed because this work is all consuming.
Lindsey Jenschke: (12:24)
Well, it is a job that lasts year round. My father-in-law tells everybody, as soon as the last peach is picked, we start on the next year's crop. Um, whether it's pruning, planting, um, you know, plowing, weeding, you know, whatever it may be. It's a constant thing. We're on a schedule. We go with the weather. Um, it's, it can be, uh, very rewarding, but it also is. It's very time consuming and labor, you know, it's very demanding.
Evan Stern: (13:00)
What's more, you need all the elements to go just right. Most crucially, these fruits need cold weather, which Lawrence Gold's daughter, Luana Priess says has been getting harder to come by.
Luana Priess: (13:12)
You, do you need a certain amount of cold hours, depending on the varieties of peaches you have. And we have about 24 different varieties. They require different chill hours, usually 600 to 800 hours. Doesn't have to be freezing. Usually anywhere between 34 and 45 degrees, those kind of gray cloudy days that nobody likes. That's perfect for the peaches from those times. And it basically, it's kind of like this. You have to get a good night's sleep so you can be productive the next day. Well, during that winter time, you just need to, to sleep and rest. So that spring time comes, they can, uh, they can produce their blooms. And then hopefully a crop in the, in the summer. This season, we have a very light crop because they didn't get that number of hours that they needed. And so, as a result, we have a very light crop of peaches this year.
Evan Stern: (14:10)
Texas weather is famously unpredictable. And even when the heavens collaborate to give these peaches, their precious hours of chill, a late freeze can ruin a bumper crop and season of hard labor in a matter of minutes, something that Jamey Vogel knows all too well-
Jamey Vogel: (14:28)
2001, we had a really good crop. So I think it was 2002. And it was right at the end of March, I believe was March 30th. Um, there were some projections of cold weather coming in, but they were, you know, the forecast was showing that, you know, Austin was saying, oh, you know, there might be a, uh, might be a light freeze in the hill country in certain areas. They were talking like 38, 39 in Austin. Cause we watched the Austin weather here primarily. Um, so we went to College Station that weekend to take in some baseball games actually to visit some friends. And, uh, Sunday morning, you know, I got up and it was cold over there, but nothing really worrisome. Cold clear morning. And, uh, I went and got a coffee and a paper and I came back, we were staying at some friends.
Speaker 6: (15:15)
I called my dad and I said, "So dad, how cold was it over there?" And he said, "Too cold." And I said, "Oh." And, and when he said it, I knew it because, you know, I could tell from his voice that he, he knew what had happened. And, uh, we lost every single peach that particular Sunday morning in just a few hours, really. And he, and we had had a good cold, wet winter, which is what we want. We had the great, uh, great setting of peaches. Uh, you know, we had little peaches out there. I mean, I'd remember walking through the orchard that week before thinking "this is going to be a great crop". And actually it's funny because about a week before I said something to my dad, like "This looks like this is going to be a really good crop." And he said, "Well, it's not over, Winter is not over yet." A little bit of that German pessimism that we all naturally have here. Now, I will tell you though that, uh, for instance, I've been at some orchards in Georgia and, uh, the growers there will talk about that year, back in 1980 something, when they lost the crop in 1960 something, when they lost the crop. Well, I can talk about that every few years here.
Evan Stern: (16:20)
Ask and any farmer will tell you a story about the lengths they've taken to save a crop.
Lawrence Gold: (16:26)
And then some people put out round bales of hay and they lit them. My cows on the other side, they had tears in their eyes because I was burning up their hay.
Luana Priess: (16:40)
Then my two uncles who were bachelors, the story he hung up a pair of, wet a pair of his underwear and hung it on the line, and they'd keep checking it. And when it froze, they'd say, "Well, it's too late. Anyway now, let's just go to bed.
Lindsey Jenschke: (16:57)
The roughest nigh we ever had was a couple of years ago, and we were experiencing the threat of a freeze. Blooms everywhere. And it was like, that was it. And we burned several hay bales, which, you know, you, you burn them so when the wind blows that pushes the heat and the smoke to form a barrier, it's all scientific stuff. And, um, my husband said, okay, I'm going to try something. And he stayed up all night in the freezing cold with a tractor that didn't have a cab. And he sprayed water on all the trees, every one of them. And he said, I think that'll act like an insulator. It'll freeze those blooms. So they won't get below freezing, which they can tolerate. And he saved probably half of our crop that way.
Jamey Vogel: (17:53)
Uh, one of my neighbors, uh, Jimmy Dicker, who has Burg's corner down in Stonewall, he tells the story about, I think it was about 1985 and I wasn't here. It was well, anyway, maybe it was a little later than that, but he tells a story about one year that he brought in helicopters when they were, there was going to be a real cold front in the morning and flew them over the, there's about 30 acres in front of his house, had them flying over that all night long, basically saved the crop. It did exactly what he wanted it to do, saved him from the frost. And he said that year in April, May, somewhere in there, they had the damnedest hail storm you could ever imagine. And it just wiped out, you know, all this stuff that he'd worked so hard, that, that one particular night to save and spend a lot of money on. And he said, you know, that just told me right then that, uh, you know, you mess with mother nature and, and, uh, you may not want to be so, yeah,
Evan Stern: (18:52)
But when thinking of this, Lindsey just gives a casual shrug and tells me that life with her husband at Jenschke Orchard has taught her to expect the unexpected.
Lindsey Jenschke: (19:01)
Uh, let me put it to you like this. I try to have a plan. I try to know what's going on the next day or someone calls and says, I want to know if this is available. And this is my husband's answer. "I don't know. I have to see what the trees tell me. The land tells me what I'm going to do. I'm on that schedule. I'm not on a day to day." You know, so living by the crop, if you will, whatever the crop, may be, I'm learning that this is our livelihood. This is, this is what we chose to do. This is what this is, is
Evan Stern: (19:45)
Back at the Gold Orchard owners, Luanna, Ricky, Lawrence and I are seated at a table in their stand's gift shop. Prize ribbons they've earned at fairs hang above shelves offering peach butter and preserves, while daughter Michaella is out back in the kitchen baking cobblers. They opened this building in '99, and the love they've poured into this space is apparent to any who enter. Luana tells me that much of this is due to her mother who died in 2017, but whose spirit continues to guide most everything that goes on here-
Luana Priess: (20:18)
She's just here in everything, from the wallpaper that she and I chose looked over endless books here to the preserves that I'm now having to make, that she was doing up until her passing. I'm teaching my daughter and son, how to make the pies, the stories we still tell with the ladies that are peeling-
Evan Stern: (20:44)
In speaking with Luanna, it's clear that here She feels not only the presence of her mother, but all those who came before.
Luana Priess: (20:52)
Yeah. We're, we're trying to keep it in the family. We're trying to keep things going. Um, I feel a great sense of pride and obligation that I, I I'm pleased with what we're doing here. And hopefully hopefully enough to make my mom and dad proud and uncles and grandparents who passed away before I was born. Um, you know, we've talked because the state of our orchards are getting to where we're really needing to decide are we going to replant or what we're going to do? And, um, and like I said, our kids are going off and it would be much easier to turn everything into just ranch land and, and increase our cattle herd. But labor is a big issue. Labor is a big issue.
Evan Stern: (21:40)
This is a tough reality. People aren't coming in to plant new orchards and considering the risks and toll involved, I get why. The reason we can still enjoy these peaches at all is because of these families who've kept this going. And when I ask if these crops are endangered, Luana and Ricky don't need to think long.
Ricky: (22:04)
I'd say yeah. To some degree. It's just not as profitable as it was. Weather's changing. So it's harder to grow crops, trying to deal with mother nature.
Evan Stern: (22:16)
Lindsey Jenschke tells me her young son seems to have inherited his father's green thumb and says, he's never leaving. Jamey Vogel's kids Josh and Bailey have expressed interest in taking up the reins. But he has stated plainly that if they choose this path, it has to be their decision and no one else's. But the children of Luana and Ricky Priess at Gold Orchard for now at least appear to be heading in different directions.
Luana Priess: (22:41)
Uh, I have two children and my husband, I do, and my daughter just graduated from UT. And my son is a musical theater major at Oklahoma City University. And, uh, they, they grew up here. There's their pictures right there when they were, they, they, they grew up in this business. But the likelihood of them, you know, to return at least early on is very unlikely. And I think that's just a lot of families around here. Their, their children they've chosen different paths.
Evan Stern: (23:13)
I can't blame them. And their parents and grandfather clearly don't either. But what happens to an orchard when a family moves on? After our chat, despite having worked a long day, Ricky graciously invites me to hop in his truck to show me theirs. It's a short drive off the highway, on the other side of the Perdenales River. This countryside is pastoral, undeveloped, and heart-stoppingly beautiful. But along the way, he gestures towards some neighbors' open land and tells me the fields I'm looking at used to be orchards. And when I ask, if he's ever heard of any vineyards taking over where peach trees once stood, he says, sure, right over there, waving towards some grapevines on our left. This pains me to see because of an open secret I discussed with a trio of kids at one of the stands-
Evan Stern: (24:08)
Is this land around here actually good for wine grapes?
Stand worker 1: (24:13)
I don't know anything about growing grapes, but the word on the street is not really.
Stand worker 2: (24:17)
I know there's maybe like one or two that actually grow all of their wines. I think the others may have, like, a couple.
Stand worker 1: (24:24)
A lot of wineries, and this is just hearsay. So no truth to it really. But, uh, um, I don't know many wineries that sell a lot of their own wine in bulk compared to stuff that they bring in from other places. So I don't know.
Evan Stern: (24:39)
Look, I love wine. I love wine tastings. Given the scenery, I get why people want to come here to spend an afternoon drinking. And let's be clear. The farmers I've spoken with unanimously agree that this increase in traffic has been a boon for business. In fact, because of these wineries demand is probably higher than it's ever been. So that's great. And I want to make it clear that I'm the one spouting off here, not them. But I worry this wine craze is a fad that's more about an experience than a crop and question its sustainability. On my way to visit the Gold Orchard, I passed a vineyard with a huge sign that advertised itself as "Tuscany in Texas." And when I see something like that, I have to ask, why can't we just be Texas? I mean, peaches might not have the allure of Cabernet, but they're what this land produces best. And the families that grow them are the custodians of the hill country that people fell for in the first place. The thought of all this disappearing as generations pass should concern us. Towards that matter, obviously we should all do our part to better the environment, but I've heard of initiatives, both public and private funded all over the world dedicated to preserving crops like these. I wouldn't mind seeing something like that happen here. Near the end of our conversation, I asked Lindsey what she'd like people who casually toss peaches in their shopping carts to know
Lindsey Jenschke: (26:14)
There's a story behind everything at the supermarket. Somebody had to plant, somebody had to take care of it. Someone had to harvest it. Someone had to pack it. Someone had to line up the selling of it. I mean, it's a whole history behind whatever that they're they're buying. Um, and just maybe look at things a little more differently. Maybe when you're buying a fruit or vegetable or something, it's not something that you can manufacture that you have to be appreciative of the fact that it actually grows from the earth and that you have to put in effort to actually receive something from it.
Evan Stern: (27:01)
These peaches do tell stories. They're the stories of the Jenschke family, Lawrence Gold, Luana and Ricky Priess. Jamey, Teri, George and Nelda Vogel, and generations past.
Evan Stern: (27:18)
Have you maintained any German traditions in your life?
Nelda Vogel: (27:23)
Absolutely. Sure. Some of the, like German potato salad, it's a must. Jamey says if you make any other kind potato salad, you may as well throw it over the back fence. But uh, yes, we have, uh, German traditions, uh, uh, like we're all kind of, uh, tight with our money. And we spill, uh, still speak German. (German) That translated says I am little. My heart is clean. Where nobody shall live, but Jesus alone.
