PIÑONS TO PEACHES

Figs from thistles? No, but piñons to peaches and cactus to grapes describes the transition that has come in an arid land by the genius and care of one man. Doc Lay of the Red Rocks, friend of Luther Burbank, has performed the miracle. In 1939, at the age of sixty five, Doc began to develop his Sleeping Indian Fruit Ranch in the Big Park country of Northern Arizona. This place is 4150 feet above sea level with an average rainfall approximating ten inches annually. In this arid high altitude region of red sandy loam soil, with a short growing season, Doc Lay has produced, and without irrigation, peaches, grapes, plums, apricots, berries, and figs fit to put before any queen, and in quantity and variety marvelous to behold. It was one day in late August when I journeyed to Sleeping Indian Fruit Ranch. "This place is different," I had been told. My interest had been whetted and my expectations expanded but I was in nowise prepared for what I was to see and taste.

Only a few weeks before I had gone to a miracle ranch and had gazed upon the transformation of an old cattle ranch headquarters into a rich man's estate with large stone houses, patios, swimming pools, and landscaped hillsides. I had been told how many thousands of dollars had been spent to develop wells, pipe the water for miles for irrigation and household use. How many days it had taken for gardeners and landscape architects to carry out the plans I then saw. I longed for the old rustic headquarters that I had known, and there was a nostalgia for that which had fitted. Doc Lay's place was different. Here was creative pioneering that had cleared ground and turned it into luxurious production by the ceaseless endeavor, the hard work of one man's hands, the expenditure of a few hundred dollars, the power of an idea, and the skill of a natural horticulturist. Doc Lay had made the desert to blossom and barren land to become productive.

We walked over two acres of young bearing vineyard of some twenty varieties of grapes. Great clusters of purple, pink, white, and red grapes were on the vines. More acres of young peach trees, where though past the height of the season, pink tinted yellow orbs nestled among the rich green leaves. Berries! berries! berries! rows of berries of several varieties with lingering samples on the brambles. We walked on mulched ground powder dry and marvelled at the prodigious effort of trees to send out root systems to find food necessary to life. The small irrigation pipes that had been placed systematically over the acreage, though never used, were mute testimony to the extreme aridity of the region.

Doc had made adequate plans for his orchard and vineyard. As we had seen he had built a dam for impounding water. He had laid the pipe line from the dam to the orchard. In a very scientific manner he had completed a system of pipes and outlets to cover the experimental five acre tract. Only one thing had not been according to plan. The rains had not come. The gods had decreed a drought. The drought had persisted but the trees grew strong and fruitful. But Doc had started and he could not wait for impounded water. It had been twenty-two months since the last trickling runoff. What we were seeing was a sure enough dry land fruit ranch where water was a scarce commodity. Doc had changed his plans to meet the plans of the gods. If the rain would not come he would raise fruit trees that could produce with a very minimum of moisture. We witnessed the results. We were now near the plot where the recently budded trees were being grown. Some of them appeared to be dying and others were strong and green. The County Agricultural Agent said, "Doc, won't all of those die if they are not watered?" Our experimenting fruit grower simply smiled and answered, "The ones that live without water are the ones I want." He is not only raising fine fruit but in Burbank manner he is developing varieties with the hardihood to grow in an arid land, and capable of seeking out the strength of life from the deep sources of the ground. After picking grapes from the vines and peaches from the trees we went over to sit under the juniper tree that grew at the frontstep of Doc's small bachelor cabin. Our host sat and smiled a satisfied smile as we ate the fruit. As we ate he talked and told us about the past five years and then the other sixty that had preceded them. "I had a hankering for fruit since the days when I was a boy and planted trees on my uncle's ranch at Brown Springs. I had long thought of this place in Big Park for a fruit ranch. I bought this place and moved over here in 1938, and here I've been ever since." "What was here when you came," Doc?" asked my county agent friend.

"Nothing. Nothing but rocks and soil, and juniper, piñon, scrub oak, brush, cactus and palo-christo thorn. I grubbed this land from the brush, lived in a tent under this juniper tree. In 1939 I started work to plant my first trees."

He now had five acres fully planted and producing. About one half was grapes and berries including Boysen, New and Logan varieties. Most of his fruit trees are varieties of peaches, but he also has apricots, plums, cherries, quinces, figs, and apples. The rains had not come but Doc had proven his idea that this was a good place for a fruit ranch. We had consumed enough evidence to be convinced. We agreed heartily.

James R. Lay (Doc) is a pioneer, a lover of fruit trees, a skilled horticulturist, and experimenter, and above all else a hard worker. He was born in Indiana and at an early age was transplanted to Arizona when his family migrated to the Verde Valley. He grew up and became a cowboy on his uncle's ranch. In 1895 Doc was riding the mail from Camp Verde to Globe. The country was rugged and thinly populated, and a fellow who rode the mail must be not only a good rider but a good scout who knew his country and its ways. Doc says, "It was a two day trip each way with a one night stop over at either end. We always expected some fun since the Apaches and Mohaves still were roving the hills. Horses were changed at Pine Creek, Payson and Cline. Fresh horses were had at the start from either end."

Doc (a name he acquired from his uncle because of his interest in doctoring pets and calves) planted his first seeds that grew into great fig trees at the Brown Springs more than sixty years ago. He was a young Johnny Appleseed on the old Western frontier. But this might all have been a passing phase of life had his uncle not moved to Lake County, California where young Doc was a neighbor of Luther Burbank in the days when the experiments of that plant genius were just coming to be recognized. Doc worked with Burbank. From him he learned much about trees and shrubs including the process of budding. But with his inherent interest and the encour-agement of the work of Burbank Doc Lay lived for the time when he could have a fruit ranch.

Luscious grapes are among the fruit products of the Lay ranch. The ranch has recently been sold. It is a shining example of what patience and hard work can do to the soil.

The opportunity did not come fully, though he had earlier devel-oped a place in the Salt River Valley, until after his retirement from industry, where he spent twenty years in the engineering depart-ment of the Standard Oil of California. Possibly it was a union of the homing urge and the desire for a fruit ranch that brought Doc back to the land near the old Brown Springs. Anyway Doc found the place of his dreams and made of it a dream place of productivity.

He is no longer a young man. He is brown from the out-of-door life. He is healthy and carries no excess flesh, his is muscle well trained and flexible. His shoulders are slightly stooped. He sits and stands easily though he has discarded the cowboy practice of sitting on his heels. He is a worker and his work spoke eloquently for his ability and his diligence.

Before leaving the place we went again to see the dam, the rock work and the small formal gardens. In a canyon well above the orchard and house Doc had built for days and with only small hand tools a rock dam of square hewn rocks. It was excellent masonry and was artistic as well as utilitarian. Below the large dam he had built a smaller retaining or check dam, and the area between the two he has filled with sandy loam, and in this filtration area, where subirrigation has been obtained in holding the seepage from the storage dam is a formal garden of fruit trees and ornamental shrubs.

Here is an emerald set deep in a red, rugged, jagged mounting! You pause to rest. It invites you and a small rock bench awaits you. You look down the canyon toward the house and the orchard and this evidence of one man's accomplishments urges you to more prodigious effort. Again at the old juniper tree we paused to drink from the canteen hanging there. We moved with reluctance to our car. We shook hands, balancing some choice fruits in our other hands, and took our leave from Doc Lay as he said, "Come back again and bring baskets with you. Next year I'll have lots of fruit for you if you'll come a little earlier." And we knew he would because this man had given proof already.

Pleased am I to know James R. Lay and to have experienced the freshness that comes from a life that is pioneering and that by its own effort creates values, adds beauty, and proves to skeptics that willingness, skill and hard work can accomplish that which money alone can not attain. Here was the answer to my many queries. "I'd like to live in your country but it takes too much capital to buy or develop a place," had come to me from many people. I had almost come to believe it myself. But Doc Lay saved my own faith. He had taken land that was purchased for a song, with his own hands he had transformed an arid waste into a miniature garden of paradise. "I grubbed it out from the brush" and "I planted the trees" were the words that echoed in my ears. Yes, and I had eaten of the glorious, luscious results of his efforts.

High on a mountainside overlooking the Valley of the Verde is the famous town of Jerome, a mining town clinging precariously to the mountain from which the wealth has come that has sustained the town for so many years. Present operations are being curtailed but the town looks forward to a great tourist expansion in the surrounding region to give it impetus for long life. Because of its picturesqueness, Jerome interests the artist.