Monday, July 22, 2013

In the past three days I've tucked away a beautiful pile of fruit in my freezer: a total of 14 pounds of pitted, sliced peaches and 28 pounds of pitted sweet cherries.

Emma and I picked the cherries on Thursday at an orchard over across the valley in Cove. We waited until evening to pick so it wouldn't be so hot, and spent a peaceful hour and a half watching the sun set over the valley.  We got 34 pounds of cherries off our one tree. Pretty good, considering a late freeze damaged the fruit set! I pitted them on Friday afternoon, right before heading out for a weekend camping trip. 

I bought the peaches last Wednesday while on a work trip over in central Oregon, at the Kimberly Orchard. They have the best peaches ever. The freestone peaches aren't ripe yet, so I got a 20-pound box of almost ripe semi-clings, figuring I'd just slice them the best I could. Turns out that by Sunday night when they were fully ripe, they were so meltingly luscious that they just sliced right off the pit. And I didn't even have to scald them, the skin peeled right off!

While I wasn't particularly pleased to have to rush to process 34 pounds of cherries right before leaving for the weekend and 20 pounds of peaches immediately after getting back, I wouldn't trade that work for anything.  I love having delicious, flavorful fruit stashed in the freezer for later in the year. 

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