Canning peaches

Once a month work takes me over the mountains to Wenatchee for a meeting.  It's a 3 or 4 hour drive, but through mostly beautiful country and when you finally drop down in the valley you are surrounded, just surrounded on all sides, with fruit trees.  Apples and pears and cherries, of course, for which the area is famous.  But also peaches, nectarines, and apricots this time of year. 

I still sometimes think about Liam's first peach; what a miracle it was to him.

Every year I buy more peaches than we can eat and every year we put up peaches.   Despite all this practice I'm not that great at it. They tend to float and they can get a little mushy at the top.  Maybe next year I'll try hot packing them.  But, no matter what they look like they always are a welcome bit of summer sun in January and February when it seems like, in the words of Jim Weiss, "the sun has forgotten the way to our neighborhood."

  

This year Liam helped.  He peeled most all the peaches and helped to pack them into the jars.  He washed the lids and the rings.  And he helped put the finished jars away.  A little bit of summer, on the shelf.