End of Summer

School will be starting next week, but it seems that I still haven't finished with the canning thing for the year.

Last weekend I stopped by a farm market for some tomatoes to can. While I was there, I also picked up some new potatoes, early apples, a cantaloupe, zucchini, corn, and a box of over-ripe peaches.

Let me tell you something about peaches. They are best if you go out to the trees, cup your hand underneath it, and it falls off in your hand. That is how you know if it is ripe. The next best thing is to find a farm market that sells peaches and buy a box of their over-ripes. You can get them for almost nothing, and with the exception of a few bruises, they will be the best thing you have ever put in your mouth. They are the "bite-into-it-and-juice-drips-off-of-your-elbow" ones that those in the know will fight over. These peaches are the proof that the fruit you get at the grocery store is a joke.

I picked up a "lug" (about 1/2 a bushel) of these over-ripe peaches for $10. We ate several of them fresh and I put the rest in the freezer. There were only 3 out of the whole box that I had to throw out because they were too damaged. I still had 9 quart-ish sized bags for the freezer. My husband had never really had a "good" peach before and was simply amazed. Now I need to get some more.

I told my dad about them. He wants to do a swap of canned peaches for canned pears. He has a buddy with pear trees that gives him 5 or 6 5 gallon buckets of pears every year. So Dad is going to can up some pears for me and I will can some peaches for him. We are already swapping plum jam and preserves for purple hull peas, so the fruit swap is just a bonus.

But it will keep me busy for a few days. Not that I have a problem with that.