Putting Up Peaches! Freezing.

 

For the past several years, I have bought fresh peaches from a Mennonite friend I know who travels with a truck and trailer to peach orchards in several states and sells peaches from his home in Crockett, Kentucky, in the Mennonite community in which I have so many friends and connections.  We freeze the peaches and use them during the winters for cobblers which are wonderful in cold weather.  We have also begun in the last year to fry peaches just as you would fried apples and they are also a great addition to a country breakfast and a nice flavor break from always eating apples.  Due to both the loss of quite a bit of food value and the extra labor involved, this year we decided to try freezing one half bushel box of peaches with the skins on instead of peeling them.  As a test, we made one cobbler with the first box of peaches we bought a few weeks ago without peeling them and it worked quite well.  I have always eaten fresh peaches skin and all and the idea of eating the skin has absolutely no negative connotations for me.   So yesterday, July 31, 2021, we decided to freeze our second half bushel of peaches with the skin intact.  The amount of waste, especially without hogs or chickens to eat the peelings, is incredibly smaller.  Where we usually have gotten seven bags of peaches, minus the few we eat, cook into a fresh cobbler, and a few to give to an elderly neighbor.  Without peeling the peaches, we got the same amount of eating, fresh cobbler peaches, and give away peaches, but had nine bags for the freezer.  That math makes a lot of sense.  I have to admit that we did not do any research about freezing peaches with the skin on before we attempted this which is not usually our first action.  This morning, after having already frozen the peaches, I have read a few articles on the internet from people who have regularly frozen them with the skin on and they all agree that they like it that way.  But one person said that peaches frozen with the skin on will shed the skin when they are thawed.  We will have to see how that turns out in a month or so when we eat our first bag of frozen peaches.  My niece in Kendallville, Indiana, who has frozen, dried, canned, and preserved food for many years in any way possible says that she uses a hot water bath with peaches to cause them to shed the skins before she freezes them.  We considered doing it that way but decided the extra labor with the hot water made it more attractive to just remove the pits, slice them, and freeze them.  Plus, there were two jobs when I was growing up which I hated with a passion and they were helping can beets and tomatoes because my mother used the hot water bath method to get the skins off the beets and tomatoes and that hot water in a three bushel tub was something that I never came to accept willingly.  I just did not want to repeat the experience with peaches.  

I can't wait until that first fall morning when we have fried peaches as a part of our breakfast. 

Mail Order Seed Catalogs--A Sure Sign Spring Is Coming!

Today, January 28, 2020, I received my first mail order seed catalog in my mail box.  Yesterday, while walking at the Lexington Kentucky Arboretum, I saw several robins.  Spring cannot be far off.  For most of my life since I was a child, I have known that the arrival of mail order seed catalogs was a sure sign of impending spring.  Yes, I know that the commercial seed companies do mail those catalogs in the dead of winter.  But, in addition to bringing photographs of perfect produce, these catalogs also bring hope to the hopelessly home bound.  When your first seed catalog arrives in the mail, you know that the earth has continued on its rotation around the sun, that the days are probably already getting a minute longer a day at least, and that the normal rotation of four seasons will likely once again be honored in the universe. 

 

 

 

For most of my life, the Stark Brothers catalog has been my favorite.  But I also enjoy all the others, especially Burpee, .  Any of them can get my blood circulating faster; get me to believing that I should once again raise a garden even though I haven't done it in years; get me to lusting after the taste of a fresh, warm, sun ripened, homegrown tomato eaten with a salt shaker in the garden beside the plant on which it grew and less than one minute after it was plucked from the vine.  Nearly all of these spring catalogs will contain photographs of several varieties of fruits and vegetables which I have never grown but always wish I had such as salsify, kohlrabi, rutabaga, Jerusalem artichoke, figs, lingonberry, currant, or marionberry.  

But now that I have read Bill Best's excellent book "Kentucky Heirloom Seeds Growing, Eating, Saving", I know that I, and all of my readers, should exercise caution in making any decision about which seed company to order seeds from, which varieties to plant, and which to actually eat.  Nearly all the major commercial seed companies are primarily marketing varieties of fruits and vegetables which have been genetically altered to produce fruits and vegetables with a variety of characteristics which were not selected with your best interests as a goal.  They are not selected for long shelf life so they can be shipped from a plethora of Third World countries and retain their marketability over a long period.  Most of them are hard, thick skinned, flavorless but beautiful specimens which will attract your attention from a mile off, hold their shape and appearance for days, and taste like cardboard or Styrofoam.  Whenever it is remotely possible, we should all be producing, purchasing, and consuming fruits and vegetables of proven heritage varieties which have protected and preserved over hundreds of years, passed from one grower to another, from parent to child.  They should have been dealt with in a manner which preserved their genetic purity and produced several generations with the very same desirable characteristics.  I do not presume to be an expert of heritage seeds but I learned enough to know that heritage garden plants, fruit trees, and berry vines are best for the entire human race and the planet as whole.  

 

 

 

Yes, it is fun to open that first commercial seed catalog of spring and lust after fresh tomatoes, potatoes, corn, beans, and watermelons.  But out desires should be channeled toward the same varieties our ancestors carried across the oceans from the land of our personal heritage, varieties which have been handed down to beloved children and grandchildren from ancestors who carried those seeds on a pilgrimage to a better home with a vibrant, nutritious garden just behind the house.  Enjoy spring whenever it comes and take some personal action to protect, preserve, and propagate heritage fruits and vegetables.