Peach Processing Day - in pictures

Living in Wisconsin, we don't see (m)any peach harvests since peach trees aren't necessarily grafted for our growing zone, so when the truck came on Wednesday, I thought I'd give my first try at processing peaches.

First, let me say....... all those YouTube videos are wonderful and great, but.... THEY LIE!  Soooo many of them were saying, "oh, if you're new to canning....peaches are the easiest way to start."

Ummm...

No.

NOT that the canning process was necessarily all that difficult, but... PUTZY!  AND, if you're really trying to keep the peaches looking "nice" in the jars.... goodness.  What a putzy putzy process.   If one is new to the canning process, I would suggest PICKLES!  Now, THOSE are easy-peasy!

 



I'm just glad I started the day processing enough for the 7 quarts to fill a canner, because once I had enough to fire up the canner (which took about 2 hours), then I shifted to preparing 18 lbs for a 6-gallon wine batch.  Now THAT was easy peasy!

The recipe calls for 2.5 lbs of prepped peaches per gallon, but I don't mind having a little extra fruit.  Roughly 3+ lbs of whole fruit were weighed out; 3 batches were peeled and 3 were left with peels on (recipe doesn't call for peeling).  Pitting these were fast because I didn't really care if the fruit ended up getting 'smushed' or broken;  it's all gonna be mush once juiced anyway.

Each vac bag was filled with around 3 lbs of fruit (I kept adding a bit more each batch), sealed, and tossed in the freezer.  Six bags, 3 lbs each... all ready for wine prep (most likely on Sunday).

The corner table still held some fruit, but I wasn't about to process them into a few more quart jars for canning.  Nope.  Done with that for now.  Instead, we searched out a few recipes...

Peach Cobbler Recipe

 All that's left after supper.... stuffffffed

and Peach Jelly Recipe from the peelings...

YUM!

When people in Wisconsin want peaches... wine-making updates

As some of you may know, wine-making has become an upfront hobby of mine since the summer of 2017 when a family acquaintance 'scolded' me for mowing over our yard full of dandelions.  She shared her brother's Dandelion wine recipe with me, and truly......as the saying goes, the rest was history.  Some of my favorites since then... the 2018 Cherry is ranked #1 followed closely by the 2018 Currant, but this 2017 Banana was just bottled last month after aging for 3 years.  Yummmmmmmo.

The root-cellar wine racks are just about filled right now after bottling the 3-gallons of banana ('17), 6-gallons of Cherry ('19) and 3-gallons of Blueberry ('19) recently.

2019 Cherry

The emptied carboys from the recent bottling were supposed to be set aside for the Cherry and Currant harvests this summer, but a friend has a BEAUTIFUL rhubarb patch that she rarely makes a dent in, so she invited me over to save her the guilty feelings of watching it all go to waste this year.  Besides, it's her MOM that is the family acquaintance mentioned earlier 👍

A morning of rhubarb picking lead to a freezer full of fruit. A few days later, the fruit was thawed, placed in my steam-juicer (one of my best purchase decisions last summer!) resulting in enough juice for a 6-gallon batch of Rhubarb wine.

a few of the wines underway

So, back to the title of this post...
It's not common to see Peach trees growing in Wisconsin; there are some, specially in the southern parts, but we cold folk up here in the north don't have much luck due to the higher chances of late spring frosts.  Enter: the Pearson Farm of Georgia.  Working together with the Tree-Ripe Fruit Co.,  truckloads of peaches are shipped up to us poor peach-deprived people of the northern states a few times over the summer, so when the truck arrives....

... you wait in line.  But SOOOOOO worth it!

A few days of these ripening on the table should get them all good -n- ready for the 2020 batch of Peach wine in addition to some canned peaches 💛