From Big Apple to Peach City

After living and working in New York City for six years, the last thing Kimberly Bock thought she would find herself doing is riding a tractor.

The District 10 native, who had grown up on her dad's peach farm, was teaching special education classes at an elementary school in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood, and living in a hipster enclave in lower Manhattan.

She and one of her three younger sisters, Kellie Bock, had been roommates. The two of them loved Gotham.

But Kellie had returned to Marysville a year earlier to help with their family's struggling farm business.

And when their father died suddenly in April, 2010, the Bock girls had a big decision to make: Give up the farm, or rally, and dig in.

On Thursday, Kimberly, now 30, her sisters Kellie, 26, Hillary, 22, and Morgen, 16, stood side by side and peeled peaches in the kitchen of St. John's Episcopal Church in Marysville.

Music from an MP3 player blared, and the sisters, along with two of their friends, shot the breeze while they worked.

"We're keeping the legacy going," said Kimberly, whose food preparation project for the Marysville Peach Festival this weekend involved peach salsa, peach pies and peach cheesecake.

"It's kind of ambitious," she said, laughing. Her sisters and friends nodded, rolled their eyes and exaggerated a look of weariness.

Boxes and boxes of peaches awaited the peelers.

"We hope we'll make some money," Kimberly said. "We need it."

Their mom, a school nurse in Yuba City, had had her fill of farming, the girls said.

"She did that for 30 years," said Kimberly. "She does her own thing now."

Morgen, who is entering her senior year at Yuba City High School, now splits her time between her mom's care, and her farm duties.

They rely on free labor from their friends to get through the planting season and harvest.

"We wouldn't be able to operate without this volunteer work," Kimberly said of Sarah Remund, who was hovering over a boiling pot, and Jillian Da Costa, who was chopping jalapeno peppers, and occasionally wiping her eyes.

The learning curve has been steep, said Hillary Bock.

"None of us had ever driven a tractor," she said.

"It was an adjustment," said Kellie Bock.

Kimberly, Kellie and Hillary all live together now in the family's farmhouse eight miles North of town. They take turns working Bock's Fruit Stand out on Highway 70, and tending to more physical chores in the field and orchard.

All have the gift of gab. They learned about customer service from working the stand as kids, according to Kimberly.

"We add a girlie touch," said Hillary, who took a round of teasing for the comment.

Constructing a new produce stand was among the first big projects that came with taking over the farm. They completed it early this year.

"It's small and kind of ghetto," said Kimberly, shrugging modestly.

She and Kellie miss New York sometimes, she said.

"I miss going to all different restaurants at all hours," she said.

"The city's always so, 'go!'" said Kellie. "You get swallowed up by the energy."

"And the transportation there is great. I love the subway. You get your own personal time there. You get to read," Kimberly said.

She reminisced about her father's annual visits to New York, and to her classroom, where he talked about farming to kids who had played only on pavement, or indoors.

And the "country girl" in her never left completely, she said.

She planted a vegetable garden on the rooftop of her last apartment building — all in big pots, she said.

"We hauled water in buckets from the bathtub," she said, laughing.

The women got a warm greeting Thursday morning from several St. John's congregants they have known for as long as they can remember; it was a bitter sweet reunion.

"We've gone back to our roots," said Kimberly. "And we have each other, so there aren't very many dull moments."