Peach Pickin'

Last week we went peach picking at a local U-pick orchard. 

Rylan was absolutely in love with the orchard and came home with a perfect vision of how he wants his future orchard to look.  And I will say it was nice- the trees were all pruned and kept to a accessible height. Even Annika could reach a lot of the fruits.

 We picked a ton. In about 15 min. A total of 5 bushels- with one half bushel being nectarines.

 See that nectarine Cale is holding? They were huge! We had 3 carts full of fruit  to bring home with us.

Aren't the beautiful. I love the color! And the kids had a blast, and would have picked more if we had let them.

We also picked a gallon of blackberries while we were there. They had apples too, but those weren't quite ready.

Then I spent just over 2 days in the kitchen. Peeling and cutting and boiling and canning. In total I got 84 quarts of peaches. And the knife only slipped once! Which in my book is a success! We still have a fair amount of nectarines left for eating and a few peaches to make some preserves. 

If you've never canned peaches and are planning on it, I've written up the how-to over on The Free Range Life!