Thirty-six years ago a farm boy from Ohio married a ranch girl from Mexico even though they didn't speak the same language.

A few years later, they sold their house and hauled a trailer to the Southern California mountain town of Ramona, to 10 acres of chaparral and rocks. They lived like pioneers, washing clothes and bathing outdoors at a spring.

Gradually they cleared the land, built a house and planted trees, But not just any trees. Pummelo. Asian Pear. Persimmon. Cherimoya. Sapote. Jujube. Pineapple guava. Blood orange. Quince. And on and on.

As hobbies go, Rancho San Miguel wasn't easy, but it was different. "And if it's different," Daniel Lammers said, "that's for me."

He and Enedina weren't in it for the money. The ranch was his psychotherapy, he said, a respite from his regular job in a medical lab at the VA hospital in San Diego. (He has since retired.)

What money they made they got at local farmers markets. Sometimes the customers were chefs from local restaurants. Chefs have a thing for different, too — different flavors.

"His stone fruit is the best I've ever had," said Amy O'Hara, the pastry chef at Nine-Ten in the upscale San Diego community of La Jolla. She has used his plums, apples, apricots and the like in crisps, sorbets and salads.

But now Lammers is in the middle of a new kind of different. He's finding out whether the ranch and its exotic trees can recover from fire.

In October 2007, a wildfire that destroyed thousands off acres and hundreds of homes in the City of San Diego and surrounding San Diego County, razed the Lammers' house, a packing shed and a cooler with 2,500 pounds of fruit in it, a storage shed, a tool shed, a couple of trailers used as living quarters by farmworkers, dozens of trees, and about 80 percent of the irrigation system. Five dogs and a handful of chickens perished, too.

"If someone had come here intending to destroy the place, they couldn't have done a better job," Lammers said. His losses were part of an estimated $100 million in damage caused by the firestorms to agricultural property countywide.

After the fire, the Lammers moved in with their daughter in San Diego and wondered what to do next. Their daughter had a baby on Dec. 21, and "it was like a light went on in our lives after so much gloom," Lammers said.

A month later, they were back on the ranch, living in a trailer, "scratching in the dirt again," Lammers said.

Pockets of the ranch escaped damage, and fruit grew there this year as if nothing had happened. The Lammers have been harvesting plums recently, and Pakistan mulberries, and selling again at farmers markets.

His old customers are delighted. "You can only do so much with mediocre produce, and when you find a farmer like Dan, it really gets your brain going," said O'Hara. "You want to make sure you do something with it so it doesn't lose what's special about it."

Last summer she made a crisp with his Mariposa plums and Anna apples. A customer who remembered it came into the restaurant recently and asked for it again, the ultimate compliment.

"I told Dan about that, and how glad I am that he's still farming," O'Hara said. "I can't do a good job if he's not doing a good job."

Lammers was into organic farming before it became fashionable, eschewing pesticides and growth chemicals and leaving the fruit on the tree until it's ripe.

He loses fruit that way. Squirrels got to the peaches and nectarines this year before he could.

"I don't mind sharing," Lammers grumbled as he walked the property on a recent weekday, "but being taken to the cleaners completely is not something I'd prefer to do."

The trade-off, though, is explosive flavor. "You bite into something like this," he said later, his mouth full of plum, "and it's all joy and happiness."

Even though he's 67, and he hurt his knee in a fall off a ladder not long ago, Lammers still moves around the hilly parcel like a young goat. "You own a ranch like this and you don't need 24-Hour Fitness," he said.

He pointed out trees that had to be trimmed back severely because of fire damage. It will be two or three years before they bear fruit again.

"At least we hope they'll have fruit," Lammers said. "We have no experience with this kind of thing."

There was never much doubt the Lammerses would come back and try again, though. Both grew up working the land, Dan in Ohio and Enedina in Baja California, Mexico. "It gets in your blood," he said.

When they moved to the ranch, the brush was so thick and high they didn't realize a 35-foot-wide ravine ran down the middle of the property. They bought a 1939 Caterpillar tractor for $2,500 and cleared the land.

Eventually, they got so tired of hiking across the ravine — down one side, up the other, over and over — that they built a suspension bridge. It, too, burned in the fire.

In the early days, education was a big part of selling exotic fruit. A lot of people had never seen a kiwi before, for example. "What do you do with a hairy potato?" one customer asked.

These days, the Lammerses often run into people at the farmers markets who are familiar with the fruit from back home in China, Brazil, France, Ecuador, wherever. And then education becomes a two-way street.

"I had a lady who bought a lot of sapotes (a pear-like fruit from southern Mexico), and she told me they helped her sleep," Lammers said. "I kind of rolled my eyes, but then I came home and looked it up, and she's right. They have something in them that has a tranquilizing effect."

A new house is going up where the old one used to be, on a flat spot with a nice view down the valley. The Lammerses hope to be in it by Christmas.

SPICED PLUM AND APPLE CRISP

Crisp Topping:

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup oats

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup golden brown sugar, lightly packed

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1/8 teaspoon ground allspice

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 sticks (6 ounces) cold unsalted butter

Plum And Apple Filling:

1 1/2 pounds Anna apples (4 to 5 medium) or other apples such as Granny Smith

1 pound Mariposa plums (6 to 7) or other red plums

1/4 cup sugar, plus more for baking

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/8 teaspoon finely ground black pepper

1/2 cup raw hazelnuts, almonds or pecans, roughly chopped

Yields 6 servings.

To make topping: Combine flour, oats, sugar, brown sugar, spices and salt in bowl of a standing mixer. Cut butter into 1/2-inch pieces. Add butter to dry ingredients. Mix on low speed with a paddle attachment until crumbling. Stop before it forms a ball.

Alternatively, add butter to dry ingredients and blend with hands until crumbly. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Peel, core and quarter apples. Slice each quarter into thirds. You should have approximately 4 cups of sliced apples.

Slice plums in half, twist and pit. Slice each 1/2 into quarters. You should have approximately 3 cups of sliced plums.

Combine sliced apples and plums in a bowl, sprinkle with 1/4 cup sugar, ground ginger and black pepper. Let fruit mixture sit for 15 minutes.

Fill each of 6 (8-ounce) ovenproof bowls with about 1 cup of fruit. Sprinkle each bowl with 1 teaspoon sugar. Cover with 1/2 cup of crisp topping and 1 tablespoon of chopped nuts. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until plum juices are thick and bubbly, and crisp topping is golden brown.

MARIPOSA PLUM TART WITH HONEY GLAZE

Cream Cheese Dough:

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup cold unsalted butter

1/2 cup cold cream cheese

Plum Filling:

1 3/4 pound organic Mariposa plums (10 to 12) or other red plums (do not use overripe fruit)

1/4 cup granulated sugar, plus more for sprinkling

1/2 cup finely crushed wafers (such as almond biscotti, amaretti or vanilla wafers)

1 large egg plus 1 yolk (for egg wash)

2 tablespoons wildflower honey

Sweetened creme fraiche or whipped cream, optional

Yields 6 servings.

To make cream cheese dough: Put flour in bowl of a standing mixer. Cut butter into 1/2-inch pieces. Add butter to flour and on low speed, using paddle attachment, combine until mixture is crumbling with a few nickel-size pieces of butter. Gradually add cream cheese in small pieces. Dough will form quickly. Continue adding cream cheese on low speed. Do not over-mix; dough should be streaked with butter and cream cheese. Turn dough out onto plastic wrap. Form into rectangle about 1-inch thick. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes or overnight.

Divide dough into 6 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a ball and flatten to form a disk. Roll out each disk on lightly floured surface into a 7-inch round. Line a baking sheet with parchment or waxed paper. Lay dough rounds, slightly overlapping, on baking sheet and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

To make plum filling: Halve and pit plums. Quarter each half. Combine sliced plums with 1/4 cup sugar. Let stand or 15 to 30 minutes.

Place refrigerated dough rounds onto 2 parchment — or wax paper — lined baking sheets; 3 rounds per baking sheet. Sprinkle 1 heaping tablespoon of crushed cookies or wafers onto each round, leaving a 1-inch border. Pile about 12 slices of plums in center of each round. Gather sides of dough around fruit, crimping gently so fruit is encased. Refrigerate for 10 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Whisk together egg and egg yolk, brush edges of dough with wash and sprinkle entire tart with sugar. Work quickly; the dough should be cold when baked.

Bake for about 30 minutes, or until crust is golden brown. Cool on wire rack. Brush each tart with honey. Serve warm with sweetened creme fraiche or whipped cream.

— Recipes by Amy O'Hara, pastry chef at Nine-Ten Restaurant in San Diego.

John Wilkens writes about food for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Contact him at [email protected].