Today was peach-picking day at a near-by orchard. We've gone there three or four years in a row now, picking peaches when the trees are ready to give away their fruit. The peaches are delicious... even more so because every peach that you wash and cut has been picked by your own hands. Seriously, the peaches are so good and so impossibly fresh that I refuse to buy peaches from the supermarkets anymore, so we just enjoy these when they're in season.
This particular orchard has nearly 700 peach trees... plus nectarine trees, blackberry bushes, and we think we also saw some plum trees on one side of the property. The orchard owner hands you a bucket to put the peaches into, and the bucket goes into a little red wagon, and then he points you in the direction of the rows of trees that are ready for picking. Today was a good day for picking--- not many bees, and it was a bit on the cool side this morning so the bees weren't too active yet when we were there.
Wearing boots is a must... the ground is most-often wet (especially from the rains we've had)... and you don't want to be wearing your favorite white Capris when you're picking peaches. I tend to go there in clothes that I don't care much about... with instructions to my husband that we are not going out for breakfast afterwards because I wouldn't be caught in town with these clothes on.
"So let me get this straight... those are your peach-picking clothes, not your going-out-for-breakfast clothes?" Yes. (He's a very fast learner.)
We came home with a box of peaches.... I've already cut up two of them, which I put into the big salads that we had for lunch. From now on, peaches will be popping up in anything and everything I make, until they're gone. The best way to enjoy those peaches are just washing them off, slicing them up, and eating them. Much too good and too fresh to be freezing them, and of course I have a cookbook filled with baked recipes using fresh peaches.... all of which would add hundreds of calories to a ripe peach.
Usually, I just take that peach cookbook from the shelf and page through it at this time of the year... and look at all the pies and cobblers and turn-overs.... and then just take a fresh peach and wash it and slice it....
The orchard will have peaches for picking for the next couple of weeks. No doubt, we will go back once more to get a second picking. We should also pick some nectarines... the ones being sold in the supermarket lately haven't been good at all.
The owner of this orchard, along with his full-time helper, makes peach farming look very easy. Everything is planted in neat long rows... hay is spread out underneath all the trees to cushion the peaches that fall from the branches... his set-up of peach boxes and little red wagons.... the entire property is like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting.
However, unlike a Rockwell painting, when you're picking the peaches, you have to keep an eye out for snakes that may be coiled around the branches, and bees that may be nesting right behind the peach that you've chosen to pick.... not to mention the raccoon and fox poop that's dotted around the hay underneath those trees.
All of that being said, I still enjoy picking the peaches, and this is one time during the country-year that we look forward to. (I must be advancing a bit in my country-ness..... I didn't cringe once when I typed the word 'snake.'
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