#peach picking

From the dusty road under acacia trees the house looks like a dream rising in the sharp

clean colors from the common green, passive sea of unremarkable land, no surprises. She lifts the tarp

and gathers gently the bruised peaches, their water so near the skin like a blister, the childishness

of their tender peel—how little it takes to scar them. She fills baskets, planting fruit in a nest

of fresh damp straw, while she counts out a song that turns into words; a song that feels

as old as the indigo sky and the stoic brick house teetering like an unsettled boat in the open field

I got two batches of peach cookery done yesterday, but that’s only about half the peaches I picked. The rest need another day or so to fully ripen. I made eight+ pints of jam

You’ll notice, especially in the second picture, that these are far from perfect peaches. In fact, they have bug spot, bad spots, and they’re fairly small! There are positives and negatives to spraying with chemicals, for sure. So these unsprayed peaches take a good bit of trimming, but they’re mostly fine. I scald them with a quick dip in boiling water to make the skins slip off easily. Then peel, trim, chop, and sometimes puree in a blender. All the jam recipes say “Do NOT puree!!” They are entitled to their opinion. However, I frequently puree some or all of the fruit for strawberry or peach jam, and it turns out just fine. It’s a bit more spreadable that way, if you’re making pbj sandwiches.

I use Pomona’s pectin for most of my jams and jellies; I highly recommend it. You can make low or no sugar jam with Pomona’s, and you have a lot of flexibility to make whatever size batch you want.The second batch became pie filling

You can see I wasn’t working fast enough, and there is some slight browning of the peaches in spots! It doesn’t affect the taste, though. Peaches + sugar + tapioca thickener + maybe some cinnamon. So, so yummy.