Peach processing

One of the things about living in such a fruit-centric community (and state!) is that you become really aware of the temporary nature of locally-grown, seasonal fresh fruit. We are all so used to being able to get ANY fruit or vegetables ANY time of the year at pretty much ANY grocery store.

It’s not only the import of fruit from other (warmer) locations. It’s also a commercial reality that apples that are being sold in July were probably harvested and stored since last fall. One trip through central Washington reminds you of the scale of the storage side of the fruit business.

So when it is fruit X season, you can’t always say, “Oh yeah, it would be fun to go pick some X. Let’s remember to do that in a few weeks…” Fruit seasons are short! Likewise, when you DO go to the local orchard and come home with a box of fresh X, you better have a plan for processing that X right away.

Sometimes we fall short on one or other of those counts. But we have learned that there is really no need for any elaborate day-long picking project or preserving operation around here. Keeping it simple is a lot more fun.

So this morning we needed to finish the use of our peach haul from last weekend. After one (delicious, thank you!) peach pie (ala mode, of course) and eating plenty of peaches fresh and in smoothies, we still had quite a few that were still at their juicy best. We decided to freeze dry four trays (freeze dried peach slices are the absolute BEST snack). We made up 3 refrigerated jars of sliced fruit in some of my cute Weck jars (not processed, so we need to eat those pretty soon, which is NOT going to be a hardship.) And I also made up a few mini bottles of peach simple syrup for my botanical syrup bar (for my ever-rotating buffet of iced tea and lemonade flavors).

Pretty productive peach morning!