The Last Summer of Pullen Peaches

If you grew up in Oklahoma, you probably know the Summer rite of passage: You go to Rush Springs to get watermelons, and Stratford for peaches.

Halle Pullen grew up right in the middle of it in the same town in the same house for her whole life. But her family actually never set out to be peach farmers.

The Pullens had leased some farm land around their house to their next-door neighbor, and he planted peach trees on it. About five years later, he was diagnosed with cancer and passed away, the very summer his trees came into production. That left the Pullen family with 1,400 peach trees.

“We kind of just dove in headfirst,” Halle said.

She was 10 years old when she landed her first job in the orchard running water to the pickers in the hot Oklahoma heat. By 12 she got a promotion to sorting peaches. She’d separate the peaches from the number ones, the number twos and the overripes. Then came the biggest promotion to picker, which meant 5 a.m. mornings to get the fruit off the trees before the heat set in.

“My parents kept telling me it was building character,” she said. “At some point I was like, I think I have plenty.”

Older now, she understands what her parents were doing.

“It was hot and itchy. But looking back, it instilled a lot of grit in me and it instilled a lot of gratitude for the people out there with blue-collar jobs, working in the heat every day.”

She remembers fondly working the farmers markets on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings. She learned to converse with strangers and count change back to customers, at one point selling at six different markets across the state.

“A lot of who I am now stems from farmers markets and early mornings in the orchard,” she says.

But if you bought Pullen peaches over the years, the person you probably remember is her grandmother. Nobody in the farmers market crowds knew her as Linda Pullen. They knew her as the Peach Lady.

“She was the glue,” Halle remembers.. “She was the reason customers kept coming back. Our peaches were great, but she was better.”

Halle says the orchard was the one thing that brought the whole Pullen family together. When it was time to pick, her aunt from Oklahoma City came down, and everybody worked together.

“I didn't realize when I was 12 that those would be some of my favorite childhood memories,” Halle said. “Going to farmers markets with my parents. I mean, how cool is that?”

Peach trees don't last forever. They take about five years to start producing and give their best fruit for roughly a decade after that. Linda passed away in 2018, and the trees have been winding down ever since.

This summer is the last one for Pullen Peaches. Stratford's peach story isn't over, though.

Halle can rattle off the neighbors still growing peaches: Sugar Sand Farms, Tiffany's Peaches, the Hinkle family, Peach Tree Farms. She’ll also tell you the orchards look out for one another. That means when a late spring freeze threatens the peaches, they all burn hay bales in the orchards to keep the peaches warm and make sure everybody has what they need. Some of the orchards don't do social media, so the Pullens market their neighbors' peaches on the Pullen Peaches Facebook page.

“People come to us and we're like, we're out, but our friends over here, the Hinkles, they can hook you up,” she said with a smile.

Halle's own next chapter is taking shape. She's a senior at Oklahoma State University studying agricultural communications with a minor in marketing, interning at the Oklahoma Pork Council, and building a photography business she started after a college internship handed her a camera for the first time. Wherever she lands, she says, agriculture is coming with her.

“In a perfect world, I would love to continue to serve the ag community.”

Ask her one last question — who grows the better peach, Stratford or Porter? She doesn't hesitate.

“I don't think that's controversial at all. There's one answer.”

Nearly half of Oklahomans don't know whether the food they buy is grown here. The Pullen family's story is a reminder of what's behind it is early mornings, family hands, neighbors who look out for each other, and a Peach Lady whose customers kept coming back for more than the fruit.