Well, can I tell you one of my family’s all-time favorite treats? Canned peaches…
Yes, I know. But it’s become a fun thing that Bryan and Blayne (who is 18 months old) love to have as a treat in the afternoon is to pop open a jar of peaches and have a snack together. I must say, it’s insanely adorable and I indulge them when I can because they love this father/son tradition.
So we can go through some peaches in a year. Since it’s the height of peach season here in the Peach State of Georgia, we’re canning a year’s worth of peaches. In order to make this reasonable financially, since we don’t yet have peach trees (big dreams there). We went to our local peach farmer and got several boxes of their overripe/not-as-beautiful peaches. They were selling for $35 per half bushel (which is about 21 pounds. Our boxes were about 25 pounds, and we got them for $10 apiece. Now, we did have some that were bruised or going bad, so we had some “waste” (it’s just compost, right?). But the price difference was enormous.
So my mom and I spent a day blanching, peeling, slicing, and canning peaches. We did ours as slices. Our very ripe peaches wouldn’t do halves, and I really don’t see the point since my family is going to chop them up anyway. So slices and pieces it was, with no care for beauty. We did a very light syrup to keep the sugar down since peaches are sweet anyway. We used the recipe for syrup and times for waterbath canning from this book: Complete Guide to Home Canning, which I like for more ingredient canning.
My family has already broken into the jars that didn’t seal (I had a couple) and given this recipe a thumbs-up. Our five boxes (about 125 pounds, give or take) came out to 54-quart jars of peach slices. We took the tiny pieces and such that wouldn’t jar nicely and stuck them in a bowl, from which we got 16 pints of peach jam as a bonus.
I did have one quart and one-pint jar break. I’m guessing that some of our jars got a bit banged in the recent move, and may have had weak spots. That’s okay. It’s pretty annoying, but not the end of the world.
Oh, and if you’re mathy, like me, you can do some quick estimation to realize that this came out to be about $1 per jar in peaches, and jars are reusable… So for the cost of a lid and a buck, I now have snacks for my family for daaaaaaaays. Some of the jars will become cobblers or such, but most of them will just be enjoyed as is.
And you know what? My family is already saying maybe we need a second peach canning day to make sure we have enough. I can’t think of a better compliment for the peaches.
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