Just peachy: Woman finds solace in fruit orchard

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The orchard is just as hot, but these days only beads of sweat -- not tears -- roll down the red cheeks of Cheryl Wall.

A year after selling the orchard that had made her the stuff of local folklore as the Peach Lady, Wall is back to picking fruit and filling baskets.

She's in a new orchard, but this time she's there by choice.

Six years ago, her husband, Marion Wall, died of a heart attack just as his 2,500 peach trees were ready to pick. Wall and her then-12-year-old son could have chucked it all and headed to town, but they took on the trees and the heat, the sweat and the horseflies and the climbing and lifting to harvest the fruit.

She did it for her husband. The Cass County orchard was his dream, and 2000 was the summer the first crop of peaches came in. Curtis, their son, wanted to make the orchard work -- for his dad.

After selling the orchard last year, Wall returned to nursing. She talked about going back to school.

But she found the doctor's office cramped. She longed for fresh air and a breeze. She had spent the last few years learning all about growing fruit and tending trees. She pruned, thinned and picked. She had figured out how to work on tractors, mowers and other orchard equipment.

So this year, to the surprise of those who remembered that first summer -- a time of grief and glory -- Wall, 51, bought another orchard.

"I had to get my hands back in the dirt," Wall said while sitting on the little porch of the store at Baxter's Orchard, the business she bought seven miles east of U.S. 71 on Missouri 7 southeast of Harrisonville. "I loved being a nurse, but I've moved on from that. I need to grow things."

Wall ran her foot over the back of Booker, the 13-year-old Australian shepherd at her feet. Apple trees swayed within arm's reach.

"The other place was my husband's dream," she said. "This place is my reality. Whatever happens here is my doing, not anyone else's.

"This is where I belong."

As it turns out, she really does want to be the Peach Lady.

Shandra Roberts, Wall's daughter, said she was skeptical at first and worried about her mother's health. Now she sees her mother's joy even as she picks sweet corn under a brutal July sun.

"In the beginning, this was all about my dad," Roberts said. "But now this is her thing and how much she loves this life."

The new orchard is smaller than the first -- about 700 trees compared with 3,200.

"Now I can look down the row and see the end," Wall said.

Wall couldn't in 2000. She could not see the orchard for the trees ... and grief. For a while after her husband died and the peaches came like floodwater, she couldn't eat or drink. Not by choice -- she said she couldn't swallow.

All she did was work and sweat as she frantically tried to bring in her husband's harvest.

But the passing of time, her children, grandchildren, the changing seasons and new blossoms have healed her.

Curtis Wall said his mother still works too much, often starting the day at 7 a.m. and staying until dark. But he knows she will never slow down as long as there are onions in the dirt and tomatoes on vines.

And, of course, the peaches. This summer, like six years ago, has produced a great crop.

And this time the peaches don't make her cry.