Peaches

I love good flavorful sweet fresh peaches. A truly good peach is probably my favorite food. August is peach season at home. Around here it is ending. My brother-in-law told me about a farmer with an orchard of Sun Crest and Elberta peaches. The Sun Crest have a short shelf life and because of that are not particularly good for the typical grocery store food chain, however the flavor is spectacular. He wanted to save the farm and continue growing the Sun Crest peaches but thought his Sun Crests might be part of an era that had passed. (He wrote a book about a year on his farm. The book reminds me of Oranges by John McPhee.) In a move of marketing genious he now adopts his trees out each season. People apply for and pay for the opportunity to travel to his farm and harvest the peaches themselves. Part of the application is an essay. I think I could write a pretty good essay. I grew up in a smallish town that has an annual peach holiday, complete with parade, pre-parade road race that finishes with the runners running up the parade route to be cheered on by the parade goers, Peach Queen contest, dutch oven cobbler contest, and car show.

One summer I worked in one of the fruit stands along the highway south of town. I had been slow getting a summer job, so Dad talked to the neighbor who hired me to sell peaches. I learned a lot from Gene, the sister from California who came in to help during the harvest. I listened and then did what she did. One of the rules what that everyone that came in got a taste. I worked hard and had a lot of fun that summer. I loved the way Lola, probably about 80 years old, supervised and held court wearing big cluster earrings and leaning against the candy cases near the cash register as people came by to visit.

I had no idea there were so many different varieties. A new variety came on every few days and lasted a week or two. Tasting all of those peaches side by side I really got to taste the differences between the varieties. Some are definitely better than others, though all are really good. One of my least favorite was the Early Elberta, though this was a definite favorite of the older peach canning crowd. It isn't as good as others fresh, but it is great for canning because of its color and texture. You can always add sugar.

My brother in law and his friends adopted not one, but two, trees. He and his family and friends went to pick and came home with 50 boxes of peaches. His share was probably half a bushel or so, 6 boxes. They made all sorts of peach drinks and talked of peach chutney, peach jam, and canned peaches. They are seriuos foodies over there and are in awe of some of the things I just grew up doing and learned from my Mom and Grandmothers. The only problem was that they had never canned peaches before. So I suddenly became the peach canning expert even though I hadn't done it since leaving home. Mom is the expert with a lot of experience. One year she canned nearly 400 quarts of peaches so that there was enough for a quart a day for the whole year. We weren't that ambitious. I brought my canning kettle and bottle lifter and we did 12 quarts and felt fine about it. It was fun and rather nostalgic.