Pickin' Peaches

There is an old compost pile that borders our property and the next door neighbors. The ground is rich and fertile there and it is no surprise that some peach pits thrown in there germinated.  The old compost pile boasts several nice sized peach trees that yield some real nice peaches each year.

Delicious Peaches!

My neighbor taught me an important lesson about peaches about 10 years ago.  We had just moved into our house and he brought over a bucket of peaches from some of these very trees I'm talking about.  Except there was one problem - none of them looked edible to me.  They all had holes where birds had pecked on them.  Some of them had soft brown spots and holes from birds on them.  He told me something that has stuck with me to this day.  He said, "Kyle, those peaches are perfectly fine.  Just cut the bad parts off."  You know what?  He was right.  I would have missed out on lots of delicious peaches had I not taken his advice.

That seems like such a simple thing, but it highlights the myth of the PERFECT store-bought fruit or vegetable.  It is largely a myth.  In nature, most things don't turn out perfect.  Lots of produce from your garden may have bad spots, or are misshapen, or maybe have a spot that isn't perfectly ripened or gets bruised during harvest.  That's just the way it goes.  You know what else?  People are like that too.  There was only one person who ever walked this earth that was perfect.  Everyone else has "bad spots," but we don't throw them away.  Most people have scars from life that may not make them look or act appealing.  But we don't give up on them. The bad spots can be overlooked and we can find the goodness in people, if we look for it.  

Peach trees in the compost pile

Some peaches will be on the trees but many have fallen to the ground.  You can walk underneath the trees and the rich, sweet scent of ripened peaches fill the air with a wonderful aroma.

Ripened peaches littering the ground

Some of the peaches fall and are gathered up.  Others, well, we don't get to them in time before they are all dark brown and spoiled.  Others fall into the water or are devoured by the squirrels.

Fall where they may

Not to worry, the chickens like to eat peaches - especially the rotten, nasty looking ones!  We throw them all the peaches that can't be salvaged.

Chickens fighting over spoiled peaches we've thrown to them

This afternoon we ended up with a nice colander of peaches.  We wanted to go ahead and process these as there will be more on the way.

Colander of fresh picked peaches

It's really a simple process to remove the peach fuzz.  Get a pot of water boiling and drop the peaches into the boiling water and leave for about 30 seconds.  Then remove them with a slotted spoon and dump into a bowl of cold water.

Boiling water and peaches cooling in a cold water bath

In a minute the peaches will be cool enough to handle.  Simply grab the peach and pull on the skin and the entire peach skin/fuzz will come off like a shirt, leaving you a whole peach with no fuzz.

Removing the peach fuzz

Then we break it in half and remove the pit.  We throw the pit in the compost pile where it will grow another tree and keep the cycle going.

Removing the pit

Finally, we have a nice big bowl of fresh pitted peaches.  We do a little quality control on them, cutting out any brown spots or soft spots.

Bowl of pitted peaches

Tomorrow we'll discuss a couple or three things we do with these peaches once we've gotten them to this point.