Peachy Keen

I love canning peaches. Ok, so boiling multiple pots of water on the stove for hours during the hottest weeks of the year is no picnic; it does result in peaches with a provenance come winter. I like to know who grew the fruit I add to my yoghurt for breakfast. Tied with a festive bow I’ve got the perfect hostess gift. And nothing beats cracking open a quart for warm cobbler during a nor’easter dumping a foot or two of snow.

I’d like to think my love affair with peaches began with Sunday drives over the mountain with grandma to see her people in Adams County who lived in the orchards. Uncle Orrie and Aunt Jenny grew the best peaches, selling them out of a detached wooden two-car shed with double doors that opened to reveal bushel baskets of ripe fruit picked that morning. “This is how you eat a ripe peach,” I was instructed by the elderly man who was actually my father’s great-uncle. He rubbed the fuzz from the fruit with his shirt, spit it in half with his pocketknife handing me half, and pinched the skin of his half between his thumb and fingers propelling the juicy flesh directly into his mouth. “Now that’s a ripe peach,” he said. Grandma would get a few bushels for putting up. The walls of her basement were lined with colorful variety of canned fruits, vegetables, pickles, and meats.

Putting up for a pantry is not conducive to dorm, apartment, and beach living so family traditions fell by the wayside until I moved inland next to a family who went on vacation every year as their Babcock peach tree came into season. Being the good neighbor who brought in the mail, cared for the assortment of cats, dogs, horses and hamsters, I also took it upon myself to collect and can the bounty so they didn’t miss out. Granted, I kept some of the harvest for myself, but the arrangement worked out for as long as I lived next door.

My pantry-stocking skills went into overdrive when I moved into the middle of a commercial citrus and avocado orchard with a sadly overgrown family stone fruit orchard next to my home. I whacked back the unruly and unproductive trees to be gifted the following season with bumper crops that had me stacking cases of jarred fruits—peaches, apricots, plums—in my closet because I’d run out of room in the cupboards.

Throughout the years I’ve experimented with an assortment of peach preserves with everything from jam to chutney to bourbon spiced peach halves. For a while I tried freezing my peaches, but found they lost flavor and texture much faster than their jarred counterparts. If I can procure a good mix of super-ripe peaches and nectarines at the same time I’ll commit to a batch of barbeque sauce. {My personal favorite!}

Watching the weather forecast for the upcoming week I realized there would be little to no outside projects with the remnants of Fred offering the pastures a much-needed long drink of water so I got myself a crate of the most gorgeous Uncle Orrie ripe peaches and have been hard at work this week.

Yes, it takes time, however, our pandemic lives may have offered some of us the opportunity needed to perform such a task. It’s quite easy to process peaches while on marathon telephone calls with friends, during boring conference calls (canning is not that noisy), and even during Zoom meetings.

Don’t know how? There are oodles of books out there. My favorites are the Special Deluxe Edition of Stocking Up by the Editors of Organic Gardening and Farming (1977 Rodale Press) and Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Practical Pantry by Cathy Barrow (2014 W.W. Norton). Both will give you the lowdown on equipment, times, temperatures, preparation, measurements, and conversions plus plenty of recipes.

Peaches are the kick-off for my canning season. Still on the list this this year are pickled jalapeños, pickled okra, zucchini relish, spiced pears, San Marzano tomatoes, and homemade ketchup.

Why go to all the trouble? It’s no trouble if you consider all the time spent shopping for such items out of season. Sure, you know who your farmers are for fresh, seasonal produce, but don’t you want that same quality when winter arrives? This is the time of year when your farmers’ fields and orchards are popping with so much ripe food I see many advertising special rates for crates and cases just for the purpose of putting up.

In addition for doing it because I am blessed with access to such wonderful fresh foods grown by my friends, for me it’s also a matter of convenience. When I run out of something it’s at least a ten-mile trip to town where I’d only find national brands, another seven miles for something Certified Organic. I keep a very well-stocked pantry. If all that blanching, pitting, peeling, paring, jarring, and boiling isn’t for you, most of the orchards at markets today have a portion of their harvests professionally processed into an assortment of value-added products including jarred peaches.