After the bountiful harvest of peaches from one of our trees in early August, I had been waiting for the other trees to be ready to harvest. Two of the remaining four trees didn't produce much, but one of the trees was loaded.
I know I should have picked the fruit earlier than I did – evidenced by the number of windfall fruit on the ground – but we had a busy spell and I didn't get around to it. Finally I got my rear in gear and got the fruit picked.
I weighed the harvest.
Twenty-five pounds, minus the tare weight of the tub, so about 22 pounds altogether.
My plan was, as before, to spread a towel and some insect netting on the woodstove and ripen the peaches indoors. (The netting prevents fruit flies from swarming the fruit.)
But the moment I spilled the peaches onto the towel, I realized they were way, way beyond the need for ripening. In fact, if I was going to save this portion of the harvest, I'd best get crackin'. I pivoted and spent the rest of the afternoon processing them.
So I settled into peach processing mode: Scalding a batch, slipping the skins, gutting the fruit.
I held back the best peaches for fresh eating, and the rest I puréed. Why purée instead of sliced peaches? Quite honestly I use purée a lot, using it to flavor such things as ice cream and yogurt. Besides, it's easy to do.
After running the fruit through the blender, I poured the purée into gallon jugs. I stored these in the fridge for a couple of days until I had time to can the purée.
Then I canned it up. Filling jars...
Ready for lids...
Into the canners...
Rolling boil for 35 minutes...
...and cooling off.
Thirteen more pints of summery goodness to take us through winter.
DURNED SQUIRRELS GOT ALL OF MINE!!
ReplyDeleteShould have started camping out w/ the .22 when they took my white peaches. That tree is too small for the racoons, I knew it wasn't them.
Our whole garden didn't do as well as normal. I was reading an article about the local fires sending the ash around and it lands on the leaves and prevents the formation of fruit due to smothering. The way to prevent this is to hose off the leaves or we get rain. We had the ash and smoke from the Spokane fire and the fires in Hunters, WA this fire season that kept the strawberries from producing anything for over 6 weeks, then we had rain on August 12th at night and in less than a week everything had blossoms from tomatoes, to strawberries, the squash and the pepper plants. If the plant did not make fruit we had a great harvest from them, those that make fruit well, let us just say we did not have enough to share with others like we normally do but we still had plenty for our needs. But cabbage, carrots, beets, plenty to share and I have and will continue. So it is possible that the later peaches did not produce because of the same reason. During the time they would normally set, the tree was putting all into just surviving because of being smothered. I told hubby next fire season I will hose off the plants if they have ash on them and maybe just hose them off anyway because of the smoke in the air. It affected me this year and I had never thought of it affecting the plants also. God Bless!
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