Sunday, August 3, 2008

Just a peach away from insanity

"An apple is an excellent thing -- until you have tried a peach."George du Maurier (1834-1896)
I'm not sure what I was thinking at the time when my mother-in-law called to say the peaches were ready and bring a bucket. My dear husband, packed 4 five-gallon buckets and 3 large boxes in the back of the truck. I'm thinking "You're nuts if you think we're picking that many at your parents."
My dear in-laws leave outside a small town in OK with about 5-7 acres, some of it they have planted quite a nice garden : Corn, beans out their ears, tomatoes, cantelope the size of soccerballs (I have one in my new fridge), black berries, cucumbers, squash, sunflowers, and a few trees of peaches - or so I thought. Waiting until the cool of the evening (okay, I'm talking about 95ยบ here) we ventured out to the orchard, fully expecting to be done in 15 minutes. There I made a horrible discovery - they do not have three peach trees - it was more like 8 and they were so loaded that limbs were bending, splitting, and breaking. We quickly set to work, filling all three buckets, plus more than a few they had, and set about to separate them inside. We brought home 3-4 five-gallon buckets, plus 3 large boxes. I'm going on record to say that my husband is nuts!
Can you guess what we did on Saturday? Yep! PEACHES!!! Now, mind you, it wasn't all hum drum. Dave and I took the kids back to the days of "yester-years" in terms of music and got out some of our old audio tapes: DeGarmo & Key and Carman. Yes, there were some looks, but we saw more than once, their eyes light up, heard toes tapping, and "Hey! I've heard this song before!" We even took a break to watch a few videos on God Tube. I think they decided that the music we listened to wasn't all THAT bad! They said it was actually kind of "rocky" - whatever that meant.
By early evening, we were feeling like the children of Israel in the wilderness when they got the manna. But were rescued by two good friends came out to take some peaches off our table. All in all we put 42 quarts of peaches in our freezer, some in our fridge and some are STILL sitting on our kitchen table!
Peach cobbler anyone?

3 comments:

Flourchild said...

WOW! I can't believe all those peaches! Gosh you can make peach cobbler, peach pie, peach ice cream, peach crisp..well you get the idea! What a wonderful memory your kids will have of the peach day! I would love for my kids to do something like that. Enjoy!

Unknown said...

WOW!!!! That looks good to me.
You can have peach smoothies, peach topping on pancakes and waffles, and french toast, and yummmmmmmm.....

We're still eating on our peaches, but I think I may get to freeze a few. I wish I had a bigger freezer, though, I'm gonna have to be sparing with my frozen strawberries and peaches until next summer, b/c we simply don't have room to put up a bunch. Oh well, with just two to feed, it's not such a big deal *shrug*

Anonymous said...

Did I already tell you that you have a gold mine in peaches? God has really blessed you & that's awesome how the whole family pitched in! Think my kids would be eager to start out & then 30 minutes later would be throwing in the knife. This reminds me of the summers we had to help shuck & cut the corn off the cob, cut up strawberries & snap those peas.