Shortly before writing this, I was standing over the sink, eating a perfectly ripe peach. This is one of my favorite summer pastimes. The flesh of the peach is so full of juice it only makes sense to eat it over the sink, juice dripping down my chin, the tiles of the kitchen floor cool against my bare feet. While I eat the peach I look out the window over the sink to see if the groundhog is wreaking havoc in the garden or if I need to go out and harvest another bowl of sungold cherry tomatoes. The peach coats my fingers in juice, the little peach hairs stick to my lips and I am just so gosh darn happy. Ahhh the joy that a peach can bring.
We’re in the height of summer and it’s that time of the season when I am longing for the cool mornings of fall, gentle breezes that carry the scent of leaves ablaze with color as they undress the trees. Still, if it must be above ninety for yet another day in a row (I’ve simply lost count at this point), I might as well enjoy the fruits of summer; specifically, peaches.
Peach season in Virginia hits in late June and stretches in some orchards until Labor Day. As a kid, I loved our family trips to our friend’s orchard. Running between the rows of trees, slipping on fallen fruit, chasing the giant Samoyeds that guarded the property and sampling so many peaches or cherries or apples that my stomach would ache by the time we left.
At home a chore I never minded was washing all the fruit we had picked (I once told my mom I wanted to polish apples for a living) and helping my mom process it. Peaches were mostly reserved for eating fresh, though my mom taught me how to make a tasty peach crumble (hint, it’s even better with blueberries added in!) and apples went into sauce.
This summer I haven’t made it out peach picking yet, but I have bought several quarts at various markets around the region. If you’re looking to purchase local peaches before they go out of season, we recommend the following orchards/farm markets:
Chiles Peach Orchard - Crozet
Drumheller’s Orchard - Lovingston
Fruit Hill Orchard - Palmyra
Gross’ Orchard - Bedford
Henley’s Orchard - Crozet
Ikenberry’s - Daleville
Morris Orchard - Monroe
Virginia Gold Orchard - Natural Bridge
When you have picked your peaches and are looking for a recipe you may wonder, crumble, cobbler or crisp- what is the difference?
Or, perhaps you are looking to keep the oven turned off and utilize your peaches in another way. Our friends over at Edible Austin have created a peach filled menu complete with:
And, if you’re needing to cool off, I’d give these peach popsicles a try.
From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee From blossoms comes this brown paper bag of peaches we bought from the boy at the bend in the road where we turned toward signs painted Peaches. From laden boughs, from hands, from sweet fellowship in the bins, comes nectar at the roadside, succulent peaches we devour, dusty skin and all, comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat. O, to take what we love inside, to carry within us an orchard, to eat not only the skin, but the shade, not only the sugar, but the days, to hold the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into the round jubilance of peach. There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom. Li-Young Lee, “From Blossoms” from Rose. Copyright © 1986 by Li-Young Lee.
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Until next time,
Lisa