Peaches!

This year we had a crazy amount of peaches! The tree was so heavy with peaches the branches were almost touching the ground. We really should have thinned it down more, but it was so hard to pick and throw away little peaches. :) This has definitely been our best year for peaches so far.

Sage love to help pick peaches. :)

These are some of the peaches we gave away. We gave a bunch away, and then just started calling people and telling them "We have boxes on the deck, Come and take what you want!"

There are still a bunch on the tree!!!!

My mom was visiting this week, and was a huge help. She helped me to tackle the peaches and other foods we were harvesting. This isn't everything! i've got over a dozen pints of peach halves, half a dozen quarts, two dozen jars of peach jam, two dozen jars of blackberry jam and four pints of salsa. i went out this weekend and bought more canning jars. :) My deep freezer is packed to the top!

We took a box of peaches down to our neighbor, and he said he'd take all the spotty, bruised and ugly ones. He's going to make a batch of peach wine and give us a couple bottles in exchange.

When we were canning, freezing and baking peaches...all the skins, soft spots, mushy peaches etc were fed to the chickens. All the badly bruised and rotted peaches are going into our compost. Next year, it'll be added into our garden to help grow more food. So even though i hate seeing rotting peaches on the ground, nothing is really wasted. It's all a circle. It's truly amazing how much one tree can provide.