A Season of Berries

I love how every growing season is unique. I don't remember having any berries last year. This year we've had a lot of rain and humidity, and we've had excellent berry crops. My freezer is full of raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. Here are a few pictures and the berries just keep coming....I can already taste the fruit smoothies all winter long....

After crawling through woods and high grasses, getting scratched by thorns and flanked by flying bugs, it's now clear to me why fresh berries are expensive. I never thought about this until I became interested in where my food comes from, and began harvesting and preserving some of that food myself.

Just Peachy

One of the things I look forward to in July is buying peaches off the TreeRipe Citrus truck, straight from Georgia. These peaches are so delicious--so utterly unlike anything we can buy in the Midwest--that this year I bought 60 pounds. Now I am a little conflicted about this, since I try to buy local and a lot of fuel was used in transporting these peaches a long distance, but at least I know where this food comes from. I figure it's better than buying from large grocery store chains, where I don't know where the food is from and often it's not even from this country.

Every June I anticipate the newspaper ad announcing that the TreeRipe Citrus truck is coming. This year I arrived about 15 minutes early and I stood in line for about 20 minutes. You must understand the whole experience of buying peaches. The sun was out, the weather beautifully warm. Everyone around me in line chattered endlessly about the quality of the peaches and what they did with their peaches last year and what they'll do with their peaches this year. By the time I bought my peaches, there were probably three times as many people in line behind me than there had ever been in front of me. As the line grew, traffic in and out of the small parking lot became chaotic and congested--people of all ages congregated to get their hands on those wonderful peaches.

Last year I bought 30 pounds of peaches and mostly froze them, but this year I did some research beforehand and got a bit more courageous. I stumbled on to a MAC DADDY food preservation site: http://www.clemson.edu/extension/hgic/food/food_safety/preservation/
I like that their recipes are also available in printable PDF format. This site helped me be courageous enough this year to try canning and dehydrating, in addition to freezing my peaches.






As with all food preservation projects, it takes alot of time and effort. But I think one of the ladies in the peach line summed it up perfectly when she said, "You just feel so proud when you're done canning those peaches." I couldn't agree more.