Canning Peaches

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Peaches and peaches and peaches!!

We've been a bit behind on processing and putting up fruits and veggies for the year. But, peaches are looking great.
We got three big crates and spent all of Tuesday peeling, cutting, jarring, and eating so many peaches!
We ended up with about two dozen jars of peaches, which will hopefully last us until next season.





It's all worth it. Charlie goes crazy for peaches, and who doesn't love a good fruit pie in the middle of winter? Warm and gooey, with a big scoop of ice cream.. now it's so simple. We really love local and fresh too, so this is our best option.

It is a LOT of work though, so I was more then happy when Mom got home from work to help with the jarring part. My goodness, I could not have finished without her.

So, here's how we do our peaches..

We look for the best, ones with big bad spots are put aside to be cut up and frozen (or eaten while we work). This just makes it a little bit easier when we're peeling and slicing the peaches we plan to can. You don't want any bruises going into the jar because that can ruin the whole container. You want something that is at a good ripeness, the kind that gives a little when you squeeze it, but doesn't drip juice.

So the best ones are washed, get a small x (let's say quarter size) cut into the bottom, and parboiled..
- This is a ~30 second bath in boiling water then plop them right into an ice bath. Once cooled off (10 seconds) I pull them out and grab one of those flaps from the x we cut in the bottom. This just helps it peel a bit easier. Also, here's where it's important to really have the best, properly ripened peaches. Too ripe and you'll lose a lot of flesh, not ripe enough and it's very hard to peel.

Once they're peeled we check for any bruises and cut out the pit. I like mine to be halved or quarter when I open them up in the winter, so cut to whatever your preference is. You should be left with a big bowl of beautiful peach flesh with no bruises and not pits or stems.

Toss those peaches into a jar until it is almost full. Now there is a liquid added into the peaches to keep them at the right consistency. If you want no sugar added, you can just fill it up to a half inch below the rim, with water. If you aren't worried about it make a simple syrup and toss that in it's place. This year, for the first time, we made a light simple syrup with local honey. I boiled about 4 cups of water to a cup and a half honey. (occasionally a little less honey, we'll see how it turns out). I love honey, in everything, so hopefully theseare as delicious as usual!
 ** The simple syrup is to keep the color and consistency of the peaches, adding water will not hurt the peaches, but they may brown a bit more and not quite stay the same. Totally your own preference.

So jars are full and ready to hit the water bath. Mom and I had a disagreement, and met in the middle, at 25 minutes. All the tops popped, no casualties. All in all, a pretty good canning experience.

 Here we are right in the middle of a few steps at once, we've got some fresh peaches, peeled peaches, peaches in need of simple syrup, and a few ready to go. It really was a team effort.

And in case you were wondering, of COURSE Charlie was helping us. Here she is getting sleepy, so mom took a break to read her a book. 

Fall Activities part 1

Well we had TONS of great veggies and fruits this summer. What we don't grow ourselves, we buy as local as possible. I'm talking road stands around the corner. There are some great secret spots down by us with inexpensive, organics that you can buy in bulk. We go a little crazy with freezing and canning these delicious treats.. Tomatoes, salsa, peaches, apples, tomato sauce, apple sauce, and grape jam are all canned throughout the year. We have eggplant, asparagus, broccoli, eggplant, peaches, beans, peas, and leafy greens frozen. Good thing we got a bigger chest freezer!

 One of our batches of peaches

 Top left shows most of our canned goods. The other two pictures were random baskets we picked this summer for meals. It's hard to not miss these days. Fresh berries, still warm from the hot sun.. Crisp peas, a pepper you can bite into like an apple, cucumbers you don't even have to wash to enjoy! Who can beat that!? My mouth is watering just thinking about all the great tastes of summer!

Mum saved lots of seeds from our garden for next year. All of our melons did wonderful this past season.

 Jen invited mom to sell a few things at a nice event at her work. She set up a table, took local apples, honey, and apple sauce. We brought one of our dogs, met interesting people, and really enjoyed ourselves. There was also a great group called Howling woods farm. They rescue and care for wolves and wolf hybrids. It was very informative and we got contact with these amazing creatures!

 This wasn't our best summer for being on top of our garden.. I know this, but it was still a beautiful garden. Here's two shots of different angles. The first shows a line of our enormous sunflowers all lined up against the chicken pen. When these started to die the chickens would fly up and pull the flowers down. They absolutely LOVE the seeds. 

A step in the right direction

Boy did we have a great summer/fall season! We decided that none of our great veggies should go to waste, and what better way to preserve than can? And, we sure did do a LOT of canning.. Over the course of a few days we processed hundreds of tomatoes making sauce, puree, and stewed whole tomatoes. Some were from our garden and some were from the local market down the road. 

Below is a picture of the simmering veggies. The right is some tomato sauce reducing and the left is miscellaneous veggies that we boiled to make a great broth. 

I had been canning for years, so it was a great thing to share with Michelle. She was eager to learn and very helpful. Her enthusiasm made it even more fun.

 This was some of the things we pulled out of our garden one day! A very bountiful season : )

We've also got some canned peaches, apple sauce and chopped apples (for apple crisp this winter) in that cabinet.

We froze lots too.. local blueberries, corn, strawberries, asparagus, and kale. From our garden we had tons of eggplant, spinach, escarole, and peppers.We dried seeds from some of our best crops to be used next year as well. Over all it was our best season of growing, preserving, and enjoying the local/our own vegetables. Can't ask for anything better! 

It's January now and we are still enjoying some of our produce from last summer.. and preparing for another, even better season.