Peaches

That season is here again. Time to put up peaches.

This year my cousin and I went picking pears. I asked before we left for the orchard if she was going to do peaches too. She said she'd called ahead to the orchard and this years Elberta's were small and hard to find.

Oh.

After all the children were loaded I ran into my sewing/canned food pantry/catch-all-room to check my supply of peaches. Maybe I could get away with doing none this year.

One jar stood looking at me, telling me that I needed to get peaches.

So after picking (my cousin picked while I held her precious baby) 150 pounds of pears to share. She had the "help" of her 2 year old, my 3 year old, 7 year old and our 2 10 year old girls. And did I mention it was 98 degrees? Not the greatest mixture but we made it work. Anyway, after the picking was done and we were wondering around the farm stand I decided to go ahead and pick up a box of peaches. I'm still not sure how it's sitting with me not to have pictures of peach picking this year...

They were small. And not all that ripe.

I sat them out like a good canner.

After a couple of days they made the garage smell good and looked ready...here we go!

#1 asked if she could help this year...really help.

We brought them in.

Canned them up.

And shared our "bounty".

The chickens really LOVE canning season.

We got 7 jars full when the peaches were nearly gone, and whatever was left was not ripe yet. So we loaded up the canner and immediately lost one jar to breaking in the water - dang it!

So after a pleasant day spent with my #1 girl I got 6 jars to add to the shelf in the catch-all-room. We've got one jar for Christmas morning and the others will be special treats reserved for just the right times.

And today we got a peach crisp from the rest of the peaches.

Here's to a better season next year, we'll need it!