It Never Rains but it Pours!

Perhaps that’s not the best metaphor for a farm…  Ok… I will call this post “Feast or Famine…”  No, that’s not a good title for a farm blog either.  =)

Whatever you want to call this post, I am finding that there is either nothing going on, or everything is happening at once!  Papa the Farmer wouldn’t say that.  There is always something going on for him to do…  But I’m not the farmer, I’m the farmer’s wife.  So really, I only spring in to action when there is food that needs to be prepared or preserved…

We had a reasonably good peach harvest this year, considering that it was the first year our peach trees bore fruit.  We moved to this house in 2006 and I remember that the two peach trees that were already here had a bumper crop that year.  I picked the peaches, chopped them and made peach sauce with them.  Then Papa the Farmer (in his pre-farmer life) came home from work and he and the only little Farmhand that had been born yet ate our entire winter’s supply of peaches in one weekend!  I scolded them for it but then decided, “If you can’t beat them, join them” and they were tasty!  But we haven’t gotten any peaches since.  We planted all the other fruit trees the following January and have been waiting and waiting for some peachy-goodness. 
And this year our patience was rewarded.  I wish I had taken a picture of the peaches, but I didn’t.  But I will let you in on my top secret peach-canning recipe: 

First, remove peach pits (very important step!  Trust me, I forgot once!) and place peaches in the blender:


Then, blend.  =)  (You can add a teaspoon or so of citric acid if you care about color retention.)


Doesn’t that look yummy-delicious?     Now honestly, I probably should have cooked the sauce at this point, but in my infinite wisdom I decided it would cook enough in the canner and it would be healthier (“more raw” somehow) if I didn’t cook it so I just poured it into canning jars and put them in the canner. 

Big mess.  I had some oozing and it just seemed like there was peach ooze everywhere.  It didn’t help that I had a baby farmhand helping in the kitchen!  (The official taste tester!)  But for every 7 jars that went into the canner, 6 of them sealed!  (Of course, some had to be run through the canner twice.  Hmmm… I will get better at this!)  We had just enough to enjoy some now and have a little bit all winter long!